“Sometimes, I am,” said Nora. “Today I am. I don’t want to be late.”
Traffic wasn’t too bad; it was early afternoon still. They’d get socked with it on the way back, though. No doubt.
Very occasionally Nora missed looking out of a car window and seeing the mountains and the valleys and the majestic Pacific, symbols, all of them, of the vastness and promise of a recently discovered world. But most of the time she felt better in the canopy of trees along Interstate 95. Even when they were bare, awaiting the first snow, as they were now. Apparently they were in for quite a winter.
“Do you think Santa is going to bring me an iPhone on Thursday?” asked Maya.
“Absolutely I don’t,” said Nora. “You’re eight years old. You just got out of your car seat. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it.”
“I don’t have an iPhone,” said Cecily. “And I’m eleven.”
“It could happen,” said Maya optimistically.
More often than Nora wanted to she dreamed about the Golden Gate Bridge. Sometimes she dreamed she saw a dark shadow falling, falling over the rails. She always woke up before whoever it was hit the bottom. Sometimes she called out, but other times she woke up and lay quietly, while Gabe slept beside her and Ace, the rescue dog they’d adopted in the fall, snorted and shifted and dreamed in his bed under the window. Ace was of unknown origins—there was maybe some shepherd in there, maybe some collie, perhaps a dash of retriever, but not an ounce of Newfie. That was okay. You couldn’t go back and repeat the past, even if you tried. It was never the same.
Most Saturday mornings Nora and Marianne and sometimes their mom and usually the girls drove to the beach with giant coffees from TLC Coffee Roasters and let Ace run on the sand. Gabe came occasionally, if he wasn’t buried with work. Gabe loved being buried with work. He was working as an independent consultant, making steps toward starting his own firm in Providence. It was tough going, getting clients on his own, but when he got them, he shined. He had a new résumé—a correct résumé—and a strong letter of recommendation from the founding partners at Elpis, who cited “family reasons” as the impetus for Gabe’s departure. Joe Stone had cautioned the partners against signing the letter, but they’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
Nora had a stack of ten books on her nightstand and she had read at least two of them in the past three months. Progress! When they’d first moved to Rhode Island she’d made inquiries at a few of the real estate companies in the area, but none were hiring. That was okay too, she decided. She wasn’t sure she had it in her anymore—shining a bright light on all the corners of other people’s lives, poking around to see what was worth what. Leave that for others. (“You could always sell anything,” her mother told her. “Just pick something different to sell. I have a bird-watching friend who has a business selling—” But Nora stopped her. She wasn’t ready.)
“How much longer?” asked Maya. Nora glanced at the clock. “Thirty-five minutes,” she said. “I hope.”
The Hawthorne house in Marin had sold after two days on the market the previous summer. Nora had asked Arthur Sutton to take the listing but he had bequeathed it to Seth, who, truth be told, had done an extraordinary job with the marketing materials. They had their first offer after the open house, and then a small but vehement bidding war ensued. Sally Bentley represented the buyers, go figure, and all went smoothly, with each and every disclosure sheet filled out correctly and filed on time. Nora even disclosed things she knew nobody cared about. She disclosed the heck out of that house. When Loretta Miller filed for divorce and moved in with a woman she’d gone to college with, neither Miller had the energy to bring up Marin dwarf flax. Barry was considering selling.
There was a lovely little Irish dance school not too far away from their new house and every now and then Nora drove Cecily by and parked outside and they watched the dancers through the big glass window and Nora said, “Well?” But Cecily always shook her head. She had taken up soccer. She was a latecomer to the sport—most of the girls in the fifth grade had been playing since the tot league—but after all of those hours and days and years of Irish dancing her footwork was outstanding. She was scrappy, when she cared to be. And she was a fast learner. Her coach thought she had real promise.
“Like, college scholarship promise?” Gabe asked, and Nora had to say, “Stop!”
With their rescue dog, their gap-year-teaching-in-poverty-stricken-India daughter, their modest Rhode Island house, worth a fraction of what their house in California had been worth, you might look at them and think they’d learned to look only outward. Do unto others, and so forth.
But in fact Nora spent an inordinate amount of time going over the events of the past year in her mind, combing them for clues, or looking for some understanding. And every now and then she caught herself doing something she shouldn’t, like checking Gabe’s email. Just to see if she was missing something. Just a quick little peek. Of course she trusted him. But. A spouse was allowed to wonder, sometimes.
One day she spotted an email with the subject heading “Abby Freeman.” Her heart constricted. Don’t, Nora told herself. This is not meant for you. With quaking fingers, she clicked it open anyway. It was from Doug Maverick, letting Gabe know (in case he was wondering) that Abby Freeman, soon after being hired for a full-time position at Elpis, had begun sleeping with Joe Stone. Well, who was to say when it had started, really. Could have been during Abby’s internship. Doug Maverick called it “a sordid affair, really messy.” He didn’t give any other details, though Nora really wanted them. Both had been summarily dismissed once the affair was discovered (unfortunately, by Joe Stone’s wife). The whole situation was awkward, Doug noted, because typically the HR department did the letting go, but in this case…well, anyway. Doug Maverick was going to be on the East Coast just after the New Year, did Gabe want to get together in Boston? Doug had a couple of leads for projects, he’d heard great things about the work Gabe was doing…
You shouldn’t take joy in other people’s misfortunes, Nora told herself sternly. That is not the way you were raised. That’s not the way you’re raising your children, is it? Is it?
Of course it wasn’t. She would never. But she couldn’t help it. She smiled, and it felt good.
They pulled into the international terminal at Logan and Nora began scouring the area for a parking spot.
Three wishes, Genie.
Bring her back to me.
Bring her back to Gabe.
Go back to the beginning and start again.
The emails were first addressed only to Nora but as time went on she noticed they were addressed to Gabe too and they got more colorful and descriptive the longer Angela stayed away. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Gabe had handwritten Angela a long letter in October. Nora didn’t know what the letter said, although of course she was dying to read it. (It was much more difficult to spy on communication that wasn’t electronic. Unfortunately.)
Angela was teaching in a school for the disabled. India was hot and dusty and beautiful and destitute and terrifying and loud and bright and wonderful and overflowing with life—it was like no place she’d ever seen. A majority of the children at the school had prosthetic limbs. Most of them were so full of love and joy that Angela couldn’t believe it. Given their circumstances. Given any circumstances! Angela had learned to make chutney and to eat paneer parathas and aloo tikki. And dal. Lots of dal. Angela sent a photo of herself in a sari; a photo of herself on an overnight trip to the Taj Mahal, the building rising like a great white ghost behind her; a photo of herself touching an elephant’s trunk; a photo of herself with her arm around a tiny Indian girl named Sakshi who looked seven but was apparently twelve. Sakshi’s eyes were ridiculously enormous.
“Moon eyes,” said Gabe wistfully, looking at the photo.
In November, Angela emailed and wanted to know if her friend Owen from England could come home with her for Christmas. He taught at the same school.
/> “Of course,” wrote back Nora immediately.
“Where will they sleep?” asked Maya now, as they all squinted at the arrivals board in the international terminal.
“Remember?” said Cecily. “You’re sleeping in with me, and Angela gets your room. Owen gets the guest room. You’d better not sleepwalk, you know that freaks me out.”
“I don’t sleepwalk anymore,” said Maya.
Nora and the girls found the gate and positioned themselves where they had a good view of the passengers. Four hours from New Delhi to Dubai, then a six-hour layover, then fourteen and a half hours to Boston. They would be exhausted. She checked her phone again; Gabe was coming from a meeting in Boston, and he wasn’t sure if he’d make it in time. Nothing yet.
“I see her!” said Cecily, craning her neck. “I see her!”
Nora might not have recognized her own daughter if Cecily hadn’t pointed her out first. Her hair was pulled back loosely. She had more color in her face than she’d ever had before. She was wearing some sort of complicated cottony number. The planes of her face had softened significantly. And—here was the unfamiliar part—she was glowing. She was positively glowing.
“Oooooh,” said Maya. “Look at Angela’s boyfriend. They’re holding hands.” She bounced up and down on her toes.
They drew closer. Owen was tall and thin and British looking, with a serious expression and Harry Potter glasses and an adorable flop of dark hair. As Nora watched he bent down to Angela and said something in her ear and she smiled and pushed against his arm and lingered there in the way you would do only if you were, for lack of a better word, intimate with somebody.
Oh! thought Nora. Oh. Oh my. She recalculated. Of course, they were young and in love, of course there was sex, but she hadn’t expected…well, she didn’t know how to explain it.
She guessed, when you got down to brass tacks, she hadn’t expected to feel like she’d gotten her daughter back and lost her all in the same afternoon.
“Daddy!” cried Maya, and here came Gabe, bounding toward them, his computer bag banging against his hip, his cell phone in his hand.
“Am I too late?” He looked nervous, like a child about to go up and give an oral report in school.
“No,” said Nora. She reached for his arm, pulled him toward the little cluster of Hawthornes. “No, you’re not too late at all. You are perfect. You are exactly on time.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Eternal thanks go to my wonderful agent and tireless supporter, Elisabeth Weed, and to her assistant, Dana Murphy, as well as Jenny Meyer for handling foreign rights. A bucketful of gratitude is due to my brilliant editor, Melissa Danaczko, and the eagle-eyed Margo Shickmanter, and to everyone at Doubleday for welcoming me into the fold so warmly. Jo-Ellen Truelove O’Dell, the very best high school English teacher out there, shared myriad and juicy details about rigorous high school classes and steered me right when I went wrong. Shiloh Hagen did the same regarding the high-end real estate market in Northern California. Liana McCabe answered my medical questions. Blair Nelson talked to me about the consulting world. Todd Jacobsen deserves belated thanks for what has become years of website help. The community of Danville, California, welcomed my family and me during the year we lived there. I don’t know what I’d do without my tiny writers’ club, of which fellow author Katie Schickel is the only other member. Newburyport ladies: you know who you are. Margaret Dunn provided a sounding board when I desperately needed one and along with Jennifer Truelove and my sister put oodles of cross-country miles on the minivan and spent many a night with me in shady, dog-friendly motels. My parents, John and Sara Mitchell; my sister, Shannon Mitchell; and my in-laws in the Moore and Destrampe families always provide love, support, and child care where necessary.
Addie, Violet, and Josie, I thank you for growing up in front of my very eyes with intelligence, grace, and humor. You teach me as much as I teach you. And to Brian, for too many things to name—for everything, really—but especially for bringing us back home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meg Mitchell Moore is the author of the novels The Arrivals and So Far Away. She worked for several years as a journalist for a variety of publications. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her husband and three daughters.
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