Newport Beginnings

by Cindy Nichols

  But when Carrie came back and sat down beside her, Bethany stared at her chips and guacamole. The rest of them tried to continue the conversation, but it was pretty apparent that Bethany didn't want to talk when Carrie was around.

  The next time Carrie went to baste the ribs, Jen found herself alone with Bethany. Maggy and Faith had disappeared into the kitchen to start setting the table, and she turned toward the teenager. She'd always been one to call her boys out when there was something wrong, and she figured it couldn't hurt now.

  "Okay. What's going on?"

  Bethany mashed the guacamole around on her plate with a chip but didn't raise her eyes.

  "It's obvious that you don't want to talk to Carrie. She's very sad about it."

  Bethany dropped her chip on her plate and let out a wry laugh. "Sure. Right."

  "What do you mean? She loves you. She's your mother."

  Bethany dropped her plate on the table and leaned back in her deck chair. She laced her fingers behind her head and looked out at the ocean. "If she loved me, I would have heard from her in the last four years, don't you think? She called for a while, but even that ended. She's gotten on with her life, and so have I."

  Jen's heart quickened, but she knew getting angry with Bethany wasn't the right way to go about this—if she could help it.

  "That's not true. She thinks about you every day. Talks about you all the time. She's called you, sent emails every single week—you haven't responded."

  "She has? I think I may have blocked her email a while back. I guess that's my point. She gave up, too. She could have tried something when she didn't hear back from me. She even missed my sixteenth birthday."

  Now Jen's blood really was hot. Bethany had completely manufactured this story in her own head. Carrie had written every single weekend, without fail, and Jen knew that for a fact. She also knew some other things and thought it was time that Bethany knew them, too.

  "No, she didn't. None of us did. How did you like the 'Happy Sweet Sixteen, Bethany' sign covering the garage and all the balloons and streamers in the trees?"

  "What? How did you know about that?"

  Jen leaned back in her deck chair and folded her arms. "Because we did it. Faith, your mom and I took our lives in our hands to do that. Carrie even special-ordered the balloons with your name on them."

  Bethany stared at Jen. "Cassidy said Armand did it."

  Jen almost snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand. "Of course. But no, we did it. You wouldn't return any phone calls, and we didn't want to let the day go by without recognizing it."

  "Oh," Bethany said quietly. "And she's emailed every single week?"

  "Yep. It's hard for her, because you never respond, but she does it anyway. Wants you to know she loves you."

  Bethany dug her phone out of her pocket and punched some buttons. Her eyes grew wide and she looked up at Jen.

  "There are over two hundred emails from her in my spam file." She frowned, and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  "Mm-hm. And when she thought you wanted to come and stay with her, she was ecstatic. Very excited and hopeful that you two could start over."

  "Oh," Bethany said, and she shoved her phone back in her pocket as Maggy and Faith came out the front door, giggling as they set food on the table.

  Faith stopped and cocked her head, looking at Jen and Bethany. "Everything all right?"

  Jen raised her eyebrows and looked at Bethany, who'd covered her face with her hands, her elbows resting on her knees.

  Bethany rubbed her eyes for a minute, then dropped her hands. She looked at Maggy and Faith and gave them a little smile.

  "Yeah. Everything's fine. Anything I can do to help?"

  Jen leaned forward and squeezed Bethany's knee. "Think about it, Bethany. She loves you. We all do. And we've missed you. You get to choose what this looks like now. It's your decision.”

  Thirty-One

  Carrie noticed that Bethany had been a little more talkative toward the end of the evening, but not a whole lot. She'd thanked Jen profusely, and she thought maybe she'd seen the sparkle of a tear when Bethany hugged her goodbye after thanking her for making all her favorites. She even handed them a plate of strawberry shortcake to take home with them.

  "It sure was nice to see everybody," Bethany said when they'd gotten about halfway home. The boardwalk was mostly empty at this time of night, and the ocean was calm. The waves lapping at the shore were peaceful, and Carrie felt calm, too.

  "They were all looking forward to seeing you. Thank you for coming."

  Bethany nodded.

  "What did Maggy say to get you to change your mind? I obviously couldn't do it."

  Bethany took a quick glance at Carrie. "It wasn't anything she said. I just realized how long it’d been since I’d seen her, and Jen and Faith. I've known them as long as I can remember, and Maggy was the best babysitter ever. I guess I just realized I missed her."

  Carrie was grateful for the darkness. She wouldn't have wanted Bethany to see the shock on her face.

  "She missed you, too. We all did."

  Bethany fell quiet, and they finished the walk home in silence. As they turned the corner, Carrie noticed a box on the stoop, next to the front door.

  "What's that?" Bethany asked.

  "I hope it's what I ordered from Amazon," Carrie said, handing the leftovers to Bethany and reaching for the box.

  She set it on the kitchen island when they'd gotten inside. She eagerly opened it, pulling out the big Keurig box and the smaller boxes of coffee and tea.

  "Yay. It came.” She glanced at Bethany.

  "You ordered a Keurig?" she asked quietly.

  "I did. And this," she said, pulling out the box of green tea and organic honey. "The honey is from a special bee farm in Arizona. They make their honey only from the flowers of prickly pear cactuses. And I got some lemons today while you were out."

  "That's my favorite," Bethany said, and she slowly stood, taking a step backward.

  "I know. I asked Armand."

  She glanced at Bethany, who had a strange look on her face that Carrie couldn't exactly read. When she didn't say anything, Carrie shrugged and began to set up the Keurig.

  "I got some hot chocolate, too. Want some?"

  Bethany hesitated for a moment but said, "Sure. I'm going to run up to my room for a minute, though, if that's okay."

  "No problem," Carrie said. "It'll take me a few minutes to figure this thing out, anyway."

  Carrie stared after Bethany as she headed up the stairs. This was the most they'd spoken in the entire week since she'd arrived. She wasn't sure what changed, but she was glad for it.

  She set up the machine and filled it with water. The two mugs she'd picked out were special—Bethany had made them for her for Mother’s Day when she was in grade school, before the disaster.

  Bethany hadn't come back down yet, so she quickly dialed Jen.

  "What did you do?" she asked, lowering her voice.

  "I just told her some hard truths, that's all. Is she talking more?"

  "A little bit. I wouldn't say she's a chatty Patty, but I offered to make her some hot chocolate and she said yes. That's something."

  Jen fell quiet on the phone for a moment. "Carrie, when she comes back down, be prepared for anything. And just be honest. Speak from your heart, and tell her the truth."

  "Um, okay. What am I supposed to say?"

  "Trust me. You'll know," Jen said. "I love you, and good luck."

  In Carrie's experience, when someone wished her good luck it wasn't a huge vote of confidence. But she took Jen's words to heart and squirted some whipped cream from the can she'd bought into Bethany's hot chocolate. And waited.

  She finally sat down in the living room and started to flip through a magazine, her hot chocolate long gone. The whipped cream in Bethany's had melted by the time she heard footsteps on the stairs.

  "Oh, hi. I thought maybe you'd fallen asleep," Carrie said as she pushed her
self out of her chair. "Want me to heat up your hot chocolate?"

  "Sure, thanks."

  Bethany slid onto one of the stools at the kitchen island as Carrie popped the hot chocolate in the microwave. When it was finished, she sprayed another dollop of whipped cream on top and slid it and a spoon toward Bethany.

  "I remember this mug. Gosh, these don't even look like hearts. How old was I when I decorated this?"

  Carrie smiled. "I think probably only six or seven. And they look like hearts to me."

  "Well, that's what they were supposed to be. I remember," Bethany said. She took a sip of her hot chocolate and Carrie handed her a napkin when she ended up with a white mustache of whipped cream.

  They both giggled, and Bethany said, "Thanks."

  Carrie wasn't quite sure what to say next, but Bethany seemed to have something on her mind.

  "You okay?" she finally asked when Bethany was almost finished with her hot chocolate.

  "Yeah. Sorry I took so long upstairs. I had over two hundred emails that I had to read." She glanced up at Carrie beneath her lashes and looked a little shy.

  Carrie wasn't quite sure what she was talking about.

  "Wow. That's a lot. Who were they from?" She reached up for a bag of popcorn and set it in the microwave.

  "You," Bethany said softly.

  Carrie frowned, confused. "You re-read all my emails? Four years' worth?"

  "I didn't re-read them, no. I read them for the first time."

  Carrie blinked hard. The popcorn began to pop, and all she could think of was that Bethany hadn't known she'd written her every Sunday. For years.

  "You didn't read them before?"

  Bethany stared into her empty mug. "No. I'm really sorry. I guess I was mad when—well, when everything happened and you didn't want me and made me stay at Dad's. I guess I marked them as spam, and they never came into my inbox after that."

  "Whoa, hold up a minute. What do you mean I didn't want you and made you stay at your dad's house?"

  "You know, when I stayed at his house instead of going back and forth. You didn't want me."

  Carries heart stopped beating for a moment, and her throat seemed to close. Rob had assured her that Bethany knew why they were changing the arrangement—in her best interest. How could this have happened? She took a deep breath and realized exactly how it happened. Rob had lied. Again.

  Thirty-Two

  Jen's words popped into her head again—keep your heart open and tell the truth. So she figured she had to. She didn't want to cause problems between Bethany and her father, but she couldn't let her continue thinking that she hadn't wanted her.

  She took a deep breath and asked for some universal guidance or divine intervention or something. She felt like she was going to need it.

  She reached on top of the refrigerator and pulled down the big pink box. She ran her hand over it and set it on the island, sitting down beside Bethany.

  She took another deep breath and turned toward her daughter.

  "Do you remember when you were going back and forth every week? And every Sunday night you would get sick and throw up?"

  "Yeah," Bethany said. "It was kind of hard."

  Carrie nodded. "Right. And every Sunday, you kept getting sick, then started not eating at all."

  Bethany nodded. "Yeah. I don't really know what that was about. It went away."

  Carrie took a deep breath and rested her hand on her heart, grateful that it had turned out the way she'd hoped.

  "Good. And that was why we changed the arrangement. I'd talked to a counselor about it, and she said that it was too stressful for you. That you were having trouble with it, and we should choose a house as primary residence."

  Bethany leaned back and crossed her arms, her jaw tight. "So you just gave me to Dad. And Cassidy. I didn't even know them. It had mostly been just you and me.”

  Carrie shook her head. "No, I didn't. I wanted you to stay with me. I asked your dad to agree to that. You'd be stable, we'd be together, and we lived right by school. He was busy with Cassidy and the restaurant, anyway, and I thought it was a no-brainer."

  "Hm," Bethany said, her shoulders softening a bit as she leaned forward on the counter.

  "I was shocked when he said no. That he wanted full custody, and that I could have every other weekend and summers. I was waiting until you turned twelve to file the formal adoption papers, but you hadn't yet. So I had no rights at all since I wasn't your birth mother."

  Bethany spun her spoon on the counter without looking up.

  "So how come that's not what happened? Why didn't that continue?"

  "I was all set to take you every other weekend, but your dad and Cassidy had just started the reality show. It seems they were filming every weekend I was supposed to have you. I'm not sure I believed him, but I couldn't prove it. By that time, you were a little caught up in all of it and didn't want to come anyway."

  "I guess I was, in the beginning. I don't know how I could have been so stupid. What a joke all that is."

  "Well, at the time it was probably pretty exciting. But later, it was too late and you didn't return my phone calls. Or emails. But I see why now."

  Bethany stood and paced the kitchen floor for a moment, her hands in her pockets.

  Carrie couldn't quite read her face, but it looked like a combination of anger, sadness and confusion. Which would be exactly what she was feeling, herself.

  She stopped herself before telling Bethany that she'd cried herself to sleep for at least six months before the grief lightened. No sixteen-year-old needed to hear that. Even what she had heard so far was probably too much, but there was no way out of it now.

  "What's in the box?" Bethany asked as her pacing slowed.

  "I just wanted to show you that I hadn't given up on you. And I hadn't forgotten, either."

  She took off the top of the box and laid all of the newspaper articles on the island. The photos of Bethany, the articles about Bethany.

  And her heart lifted as Bethany laughed when she finally laid out all of her school report cards, all the way back to kindergarten. And the book that she'd written for her on Mother’s Day when she was four.

  "Oh my gosh, did I draw that?" she asked, pointing to a picture of stick figures, one taller than the other, both with dresses on. Or triangles, more accurately. The taller one's dress was orange with flowers on it, and labeled “Mommy.” The other stick figure was labeled “Me.”

  "Yep. You did."

  "I guess you wore crazy clothes even back then," Bethany said with a laugh.

  "What do you mean?" Carrie asked, looking down at her bright-orange paisley bathrobe.

  "Never mind," Bethany said.

  Bethany took a few minutes to go through the remaining contents of the box. Carrie made them both another cup of hot chocolate, hoping that Bethany might stay for a while.

  They laughed about the artwork, the little book about dinosaurs that Bethany had written in sixth grade and the book about butterflies.

  "I remember I wanted to work at Jurassic Park," she said with a laugh.

  "You did. Except you wanted to be a dinosaur, not a scientist."

  "What is this?" Bethany asked, lifting out a green hat with a feather on it. It was small, but she tried to put in on anyway, which made them both laugh.

  "I can't believe you don't remember. We got that on your first trip to Disneyland. It's a Peter Pan hat. And you wanted to be Peter Pan for Halloween. And you made us call you Peter for almost a year."

  Bethany rolled her eyes. "I don't believe you."

  "I have pictures in there somewhere. But ask your dad. He was really annoyed."

  Bethany looked up at Carrie and smiled. "I bet." She set everything back in the box and carefully placed the lid back on. "Do you mind if I take this in my room? I'd like to look at some of this later."

  Carrie nodded. "Of course."

  "Thanks." Bethany glanced at the microwave and took an exaggerated sniff. "Popcorn smells good. Wan
t to have some and watch TV?"

  Carrie blinked a few times, not sure she'd heard correctly. "You want to watch TV? With me?"

  Bethany smiled sheepishly. "Yeah. I'd like that. Do you have Netflix?"

  "Yes. What do you want to watch?"

  Bethany poured the popcorn into the bowl that Carrie held out. "How about Gilmore Girls?"

  Carrie laughed, her heart lifting. "Again? Sure," she said as they headed into the living room and made themselves comfortable.

  Thirty-Three

  The fashion show was only a week away, and time had sure flown. Many Scrabble games had been won and lost, and Carrie was up by one in the ongoing tally. They'd played so many times because Bethany said she needed to be ahead by the time Rob and Cassidy got back, and Carrie was doing her best not to let that happen.

  "You ready?" she called up the stairs to Bethany.

  They'd gotten together with Dirk and Abby a few times in the last couple of weeks, and they were meeting them for doubles tennis today.

  Bethany bounded down the steps, her rackets slung over her shoulder.

  "Okay, ready."

  "Hey, we're going to Jen's for Sunday dinner, right?"

  "Yep. As always. It's that or starve," Carrie replied, picking up her own rackets and backpack.

  "What do you think about inviting Abby and Dirk? You think she'd mind? I really like them."

  Carrie considered that for only a second, knowing that Jen wouldn't mind at all. She texted her to confirm, and said she could pick up anything from the grocery store if she needed more.

  * * *

  Nope, I've got plenty. Just bring yourselves. See you later! Ooh-la-la!

  * * *

  Jen and Faith had been teasing her relentlessly about Dirk. She couldn't quite figure out why. They were just two friends having fun with their teenage daughters. But she did notice again how handsome he was as he ran around the court. They'd decided to play against the girls today, and it went pretty well—except they lost. But they did realize that they played well together, and she immediately said yes when he suggested they join an adult league.