“Me too,” Kristin replied, her voice a hush from behind. “All of it.”
Clara forced herself forward, toward the opposite corner of their end of the pier, where she could look back toward the shore, and watch Kristin go.
“Who were you talking to, Mommy?” Abby asked, just as Aaron called out, “Can we get ice cream?”
“Someone I used to know,” Kristin said, the false nonchalance in her tone failing to disguise the emotion beneath it. “And yes. Ice cream sounds great.”
“When, Mommy?” Abby’s sandals made little scuffing sounds as they retreated down the pier, and Clara had to resist the almost panicked urge to turn, to throw her arms around them all, to say what the hell, she’d go grab the kids, and they could all have one last cone together—with sprinkles—just like old times. Their secret.
“Right now, sweetie. There’s a parlor over there—see the lit-up sign?”
“No, I mean when did you know her?”
Such a long beat passed that Clara thought maybe they’d moved out of earshot.
“In another life,” she said finally.
Clara turned her back to the beach in time to see the clouds on the horizon pull apart in the middle, two divided, billowy clumps of atmosphere, alike but not the same, revealing the brilliant pink-orange of the sunset in between. One moved slowly toward the curve of the coast, a dense, hovering mass seeking land, and the other churned and allowed itself to be blown out to sea. Soon, both would all but disappear in the fast falling night, but they’d show themselves again tomorrow, taking form at first light over another place, where with any luck someone might be undistracted enough to stop, turn her eyes upward, and look—really look—and see the beauty that Clara saw now.
There were so many ways to begin again.
Author’s Note
While most of the excepts at the start of the chapters are fictional, a few bits draw from real sources.
In depicting Yellow Springs, “Everyone’s Favorite Place!” is indeed the tagline of the chamber of commerce, and www.yellowspringsohio.org is a wonderful resource for anyone planning a visit. The narration of the walking tour at the start of Chapter 9 was adapted from the tour housed here, and the copy beginning Chapter 15 is not in fact from a real estate brochure but is drawn from the “Explore” page of this helpful website as well.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline Path to Safety does include the quote cited at the start of Chapter 13, and can be found in its entirety at www.thehotline.org/help/path-to-safety. If you or someone you know is in a dangerous, concerning, or uncomfortable situation at home, know that resources like this one save lives. Readily available help ranges from hotlines to escape plans to shelters. Telling someone, even anonymously, is the first important step. You don’t have to do this alone.
Regarding interpretations of law concerning stepfamilies, The DadsDivorce.com article “Knowing and Understanding Stepparents’ Rights” that opens Chapter 8 is real. And the highlighted passage from Dr. Kirkland’s “Rights of Stepparents in Custody in Visitation” brochure, cited in Chapter 16, is taken from an Attorneys.com article of the same name. Both resources proved valuable in my research.
The Alice Walker poem from which Clara quotes is titled “They Will Always Be More Beautiful” and is available in its haunting entirety at AliceWalkersGarden.com.
There are at least two radio stations in the Cincinnati/Dayton area that have featured “Second Date Update” segments, and many more nationwide. For the record, my local radio hosts have a knack for handling these calls with respect and good humor, and I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake Izzy’s distaste for her colleagues as my own. Freshly Squeezed and its hosts are purely imagined. The show’s neuroscientist guest who talks about the brain chemistry behind love and rejection is loosely quoting anthropologist Helen Fisher and her fascinating 2008 TED Talk “The Brain in Love.” Sometimes something is simply said too perfectly to rephrase.
A debt of gratitude to retired Cincinnati Police detective Jim Day for walking me through various missing persons scenarios and sharing his experience with domestic violence perpetrators and victims (as well as to Cris Freese for putting us in touch). And to Cincinnati’s top-notch OB/GYN John Sullivan, MD, for his insights into how doctors’ personal conflicts do and don’t impact their practice—and for reading with pleasure everyone from Harlan Coben to Jane Austen to, well, me.
My understanding of the financials and fates of insurance policies I owe to my expert husband, Scott Strawser, who is always concerned with doing the right thing and does indeed believe in “following the money.” There’s no one I’d rather comingle my assets with.
With all of the above, any liberties taken were for the sake of the story, and any perceived mistakes are mine alone.