It was something. But I wasn’t sure it was enough. I knew I could find someone else, probably pretty quickly. On paper, he would probably be as good as James. But in my heart, I knew that no one else would ever measure up. I would spend my life comparing every man with the one I had fallen so hard for. Young love is only for the young. Nothing else compares.
James took my hand across the table and said, “I know you have no reason to trust me, Caroline. But if this horrible couple of months has done anything, it has reaffirmed that you are the one and only love of my life. We were made for each other, and I’ve known since the day I met you that I don’t deserve you. But I promise you that I will never hurt you again.”
I closed my eyes, took a sip of champagne, and tried to let his words sink in, tried to let them fill up some of the emptiness that I felt. But I knew already that it would take more than words to fill up the holes.
We skipped dessert after a peerless meal, and James said, “So we have an hour and a half until we pick up Vivi from the movie.”
He looked at me questioningly.
I took my last sip of champagne, and I knew it was probably too soon. I knew it was something I might regret. But it might be exactly what I needed.
Because as much as I loved James for his heart and his head, the physical had always been a big part of our relationship.
“You are,” he said, kissing my neck as my dress fell to the floor, “even more beautiful today than you were when I met you. Even more than before the babies, even more than the night I first laid eyes on you.”
I finally kissed him. It felt like something opened up inside me, something that had been closed for a long time. As he whispered “I love you,” I felt like one day, someday, I might be able to say it back.
TWENTY-NINE
the zookeeper
ansley
The St. Timothy’s youth group has for the last twenty-six years earned all of the money it needed to take its annual ski trip by “flocking.” Flocking is a tradition that makes the decorator in me cringe and makes the rest of me laugh. The youth group puts dozens of plastic pink flamingos in someone’s yard. In order to get the flamingos out, said person has to make a donation and then has the option of paying an additional amount to have the flamingos put in someone else’s yard.
My house has been flocked every year that I’ve lived in Peachtree. And for good reason. I don’t pay to have one person’s yard flocked. I pay to have ten. I have to. Because if my yard was flocked and then the flamingos showed up in Mr. Solomon’s yard immediately afterward, he would know I did it to him. Our deal is that the youth group randomly flocks Mr. Solomon’s somewhere in there. Sometimes it’s the tenth yard, sometimes the seventh, sometimes the fourth. It irks him to no end, which brings me an endless amount of joy. I get to be a fly on the wall when he is out there shaking his cane at those kids and his little dog is barking at the plastic pink birds.
Now I wished I could be a fly on the wall at the Beaumont family vacation to the Cloister. Caroline had just called for the nine-hundredth time to check on Preston, and she sounded happy. But that could have been because she was going to go play tennis for the first time since the baby. Or it could have been because, although Emerson is the professional, Caroline is a fabulous actress. Sometimes, in fact, I thought she pushed Emerson so hard because, deep down, she wanted to be a star—she just didn’t want to work for it. Some people would have seen that as a flaw, but I never did. She never wanted to work, and she found a way not to do so. It was perfect, if you asked me.
Well, you know, perfect until the man left her.
I had Mom propped up on the couch in the living room, a pillow under her leg, and was carrying a glass of water for her, a sippy cup for Adam, and a bottle for Taylor. Taylor was too old for a bottle, but Sloane couldn’t quite gear herself up to wean him, and I thought it was probably OK for her to take a break on this one thing. I could see the weariness of being away from her husband starting to take its toll on her. And she had a long, long way to go.
I was thrilled that one of her summer friends, Natalie, had called to say she was in town. Sloane didn’t want to go out to dinner, but if I had to see her in those sweatpants and that T-shirt one more time, I was going to scream. Caroline had said not to worry. She would schedule an intervention. I had held her off for a couple of weeks, but this was Caroline. She would intervene on the sweats situation sooner rather than later.
I had followed Sloane up to her room and said, “Please go to dinner with Natalie, sweetie. You need to get out of the house and have some fun.”
“But the boys . . .”
I gave her an offended look. “The boys are with their grandmother—and their great-grandmother.”
Sloane laughed. “Yeah. That’s great. So you can take care of Grammy and the kids. Sounds like a blast.” She paused. “OK. I guess I could go. I’ll call her back.”
I was a hypocrite. I knew that feeling of not wanting to go out and make the effort. I knew firsthand that it was easier to sit at home and eat Lean Cuisines. But I also knew that when you did go, you almost always felt better when you got back.
I had thought in the back of my mind that Emerson might help me. But she’d said, “Please, Mom. I’m going out.”
Oh, that helpful, helpful girl. I was fairly certain that I would never get a grandchild out of that one; however, I was pleased to say that although she was still on the concerning side of thin, Emerson had gained some weight. I bet she could actually conceive a child if she wanted to—maybe.
So here I was. Friday night. Mom. Adam. Taylor. This wasn’t necessarily difficult, except for the fact that Taylor was absolutely everywhere. The boy was in constant motion, as they always are at that age. There was no way to contain him, so I had to chase him around the house while also attempting to entertain Adam.
I had made Adam these colored tongue depressors with magnetic strips on them and given him a big bowl of paper clips. “You put the paper clips with the same color as the tongue depressor on the magnetic strip. See?” I placed a blue on the blue, a red on the red, and so on.
There was no end to what you could do with a glue gun.
“Okay, Gransley!” he said excitedly.
I turned to run after Taylor and said, “Mom, call me if he needs me.”
Thirty seconds later, she called, “Ansley!”
I grabbed Taylor, who wiggled and squirmed the entire time, and ran back into the living room. “Everything OK?”
“I sure would love a spot of ice cream with a bit of chocolate syrup.”
Wow. Really? I glared at her as Adam said, “I want ice cream! I want ice cream!”
“Oh, no!” I said. “The ice cream has gone night-night already. And we are getting ready to go night-night, too!”