I wondered how she did it. I worried about my children and my life and what was going to happen every minute. She had never seemed terribly concerned about any of it. I had definitely gotten the worrying from my dad. And then, with no warning, in the midst of my smile, there it was again, that tinge of resentment, that tiny stab that made me realize I still wasn’t over it. I still hadn’t fully forgiven my mother.
As I stepped out the back door, shutting it behind me and not bothering with the key—no one in Peachtree locked their doors, as there was no reason to—I stopped dead in my tracks. Standing at the door to the screened porch was Mr. Solomon, aka the neighbor from hell. He had on khakis and a short-sleeved, button-down, lime-green shirt. I could see a sleeveless undershirt beneath it. He had his pants pulled up high enough that his stomach protruded from between his belt and his pant legs like a basketball half stuck in the sand. He was nearly bald and had these wet, beady eyes that always reminded me of a lizard. I couldn’t stand the man. Truly.
I consider myself to be a nice person. But even I have my limits. And Mr. Solomon was my limit. “I don’t have time today for whatever sort of ambush this is, Mr. Solomon. I have to pick up my daughter at the airport.” I smiled wickedly at him. “In fact, all three of my daughters and my three, soon to be four, grandchildren will be here for months and months. Doesn’t that sound great to you? The sounds of children’s laughter in the yard again?” So no, I wasn’t sure I was 100 percent enthused about the idea of having them all under one roof. But making Frank Solomon mad had to be a silver lining.
I swear he snarled. “Ansley, you keep your sprinkler water out of my yard.”
This might have been the stupidest complaint yet. “Oh, you mean the dirt lot behind your house where nothing can live? Sure. I’ll make sure nothing touches that. We wouldn’t want to go crazy and let a blade of grass grow or anything.”
He cut his eyes at me. “I mean it. I will call Bob.”
Bob had been mayor for forty-seven years, except for that one lost year where we’d taken a chance on Jackson the meeting mover. And Bob had had the hots for my mom for all of those years, thank goodness. So he always took my side in these squabbles with Mr. Solomon.
I crossed my arms. “That’s good news for me, Frank, because you know he always agrees with me.”
“Not when I have the law on my side, Miss Fancy Pants.”
I laughed. “Yeah. Because there is a law saying my sprinkler water can’t hit your lawn. Don’t worry. I’ll keep the water on my side of the fence.” Peachtree had so many inane rules there probably was a law saying that.
His beady eyes got beadier. He turned around and walked the two dozen steps between his house and mine.
One of the things I loved most about Peachtree was how close together the houses were. It was a historic town, and the homes were built side by side for protection and safety back in the pirate days. Each home had a picket fence around its front yard. To increase the privacy and create defined parking, I had also added a picket fence around the back.
Mr. Solomon and I had never been friendly, exactly. He would gripe about our construction noise keeping him up, bemoan that a painter left a cigarette butt in his yard. But we weren’t sworn enemies or anything—until the fence.
He claimed that the fence was five inches over his property line. I said my survey said it was inside mine. Which it was, by the way. Most people would have let it go. What’s five inches, for heaven’s sake? But not Mr. Solomon.
He served me with a certified letter from his attorney. I served him with one right back from my attorney, saying that if he wanted to pay for a new survey, I would consider moving my fence.
He wouldn’t pay. I wouldn’t move. And we’d been fighting about it ever since. That was fourteen years ago. No amount of yoga or meditation could make it so that my insides didn’t seethe every time he shuffled out his back door. I wished I could handle it more like Hal handled Mrs. McClasky and those bikes. But I just couldn’t. The man drove me up the wall. It was so stupid to the outside world. I realized that. But it felt very personal and extremely irritating to me.
I consoled myself with the fact that Mr. Solomon had to die someday. So far, it wasn’t looking good. He had to be nearly eighty-five. And I still saw him leave his house every day, with his insipid yippy dog, for a walk. I immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t the dog’s fault. The dog was adorable. In fact, sometimes I had fantasies of kidnapping little Biscuit and rescuing her from her terrible owner. But she’d be pretty hard to hide right next door.
I knew Mr. Solomon had to be lonely over there all by himself. He rarely had visitors. And I would have been nice to him, taken him dinner, had him over for a glass of wine, if he wasn’t such a vile little man.
I got into the car and cranked the ignition. It was 9:42. Damn it! Now I had missed the window when Kyle was back at the coffee shop to make my latte. Mr. Solomon was going to pay for this.
I pulled up in front of the coffee shop anyway. It was one in a row of smaller white clapboard houses on a side street that had been converted into commercial space. I walked into the plain, one-room shop. It had built-in banquettes around the picture windows, small tables and chairs scattered throughout the back, and a simple counter running down the side. The walls were bare, weathered shiplap. Oh, how I longed to accessorize them. I expected to find the honor jar for my plain, boring coffee. No foam, no whip, no pizzazz.
Instead, I found a note from Kyle. “Check the microwave, Ans. Heat for exactly 27 seconds.”
I almost cheered when I saw that latte waiting for me. And just like that, the calm and happy I had cultivated on the water that morning returned. I slid a ten-dollar bill into the slit in the locked cash register drawer. Kyle deserved an extra tip for this one. As I stepped back out onto the sidewalk, into the warm morning sun, and said hi to several neighbors walking by, it hit me that I had done this all on my own. I had created a new life for my girls and for myself. But as I took a sip of the perfect latte, I had to consider that just because I had done it on my own didn’t mean I had to do it on my own forever.
SIX
come hell or high water
caroline
When I had left New York that morning, the group text from Sloane and Emerson chiming happily about how much fun we were going to have, all the great things we were going to do, had bolstered my spirits and helped me walk out that door. But simply stepping into the airport in Georgia a few hours later made me realize what a mistake this had been. Two gates. Almost no way out. But then I looked over at Vivi. She was smiling ear to ear like I hadn’t seen her do in quite some time.
“Mom, it’s so warm,” she said. “Isn’t that awesome?”
Or eerie, I thought. It was January. Shouldn’t it be colder? It wasn’t tropical or anything. But it was at least in the high sixties, which was practically balmy considering we had left that morning in our down parkas.