Laura settled her long legs on the chair where my mother had sat.
“Your mother told me about Wyatt dying in a car accident. But she didn’t provide details, which, honestly, I wouldn’t have expected her to. When I found out from your father that you were pregnant, I thought the baby would be all she’d want to talk about. I mean, you’re her only child, and you’re having her grandchild. That’s something to be excited about. The few times I did bring up the baby or you being pregnant, she’d give me short answers and then move on to something else. At least now I understand why. I’m so sorry, Olivia.”
“My father and my grandmother stay involved, but it would be nice, now that I’m going to be a mother myself, to have my mother to talk to. Maybe I should start going to yoga because I certainly can’t take up smoking or live on junk food, and I don’t want this baby to be born needing stress-management classes in the newborn nursery.”
I didn’t understand why, after I finished talking, she looked surprised. I began to wonder if she had even been listening to me.
“I have something for you,” she said with the excitement of a preschooler coming home with an elbow macaroni necklace for her mother.
She pulled a loop of beads out of her purse, placed them in my hand, and closed my fingers over them. “These are worry beads, komboloi. My grandfather gave them to me. His father came here from Greece, where they’re used for calming and de-stressing. After yiayia, my grandmother, died, my pappou always carried his with him. Just fidgeting with them helped calm and distract him.”
I rubbed the beads with my fingertips, slipping them back and forth on the silk rope on which they’d been strung. The loop was about as wide as my two hands, with one larger bead set off and an attached black silken tassel. “I can’t take these. They’re from your grandfather . . .”
“Trust me.” She reached over, her hands on my shoulders, movement slight, but it drew my head up to look at her. “You can. Greeks don’t skimp on worry beads. Some of them cost hundreds of dollars. These don’t; they’re white onyx. I have beads made of olive wood, coral, and other stones at home.”
I rolled the smooth stones between my palms, surprised by the soothing sensation. A tactile sigh. It reminded me of my grandmother brushing my hair when I was young. The soft, slow strokes so relaxing they lulled me into sleep.
Laura showed me how to hold the beads and ways to make them quiet or loud, depending on my mood or stress level. “I love knowing that you have these. And so would my grandfather.” She handed them back to me. “I have to leave in a few minutes, but I want you to know I appreciate your sharing with me and how difficult that must be for you. Don’t suffer alone. Wyatt would never want that for you . . . Well, I mean, not that I’d know, but from what you told me about him, I don’t think he would . . .”
She paused, stared at her cell phone, then back at me.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is, please call me if you want someone to go with you to the doctor or shop or whatever. Provided your mother isn’t holding me hostage.”
We both laughed. “No, she’d probably say I kidnapped you.” I hugged her. “Thank you. Thank you. For everything.”
She left but was back before I’d reached the door myself.
“I wasn’t supposed to have those beads today. I meant to grab a different set I thought would be perfect for your mother. But earlier today, I saw I’d brought those instead.” Laura pointed to the beads I clutched. “I came back to tell you I remembered my pappou saying white onyx takes away sorrow and attracts love and happiness.” She grinned. “Is that awesome or what?” she asked and then walked through the back door again.
CHAPTER 34
My mother’s nap seemed to have refreshed her as much as the time my father spent with Evan at the 19th Hole, also known as the club’s bar, after their round of golf.
My parents entertained each other over dinner, which was some sort of chicken casserole from the refrigerator in a container labeled like a CIA classified document: THIS BAKING DISH IS THE PROPERTY OF EDITH WEST, followed by her address and telephone number. I wondered if her husband and children were tattooed.
Since my mother hadn’t been playing and wouldn’t be able to return to golf for months, she was riveted, listening to my dad’s hole-by-hole analysis of his game. I commented that it took as much time to talk about the game he played as it did for him to play it, but I was the only one amused.
He talked about how much he missed being on the course with Mom, and I heard brownie points ringing up like a jackpot on a slot machine. I was semiattentive, more concerned with spearing something with my fork that looked like prunes in the chicken dish, when I heard my name in the same sentence with the word golf.
“Olivia, what do you think?” My father was suspiciously beaming.
“About . . .” I clutched my napkin in case I needed it to hide my reaction.
“About golf lessons. You could use your mom’s clubs until we had a chance to fit you for your own, and eventually the three of us could play. I think there’s even a father-daughter tournament. No, maybe it’s father-son, but that’s discrimination, right? They’d have to let you play—”
“Whoa, Dad. Your train’s leaving the station, and I’m still buying the ticket.” I shook my head. “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t think this is the right time for me to learn a game that’s going to require swinging past my belly in a few months.”
“Why don’t you take a lesson, then decide if it’s something you want to do?” My mother had the gift of asking questions that always sounded like accusations.
“Because I don’t need lessons in skydiving to know I have no desire to leave a perfectly stable airplane?” I picked up the plates and carried them to the sink. “Golf doesn’t appeal to me.” It didn’t appeal to Wyatt, either. A commonality that excluded both of us from my parents’ idea of an enjoyable six hours whacking balls around.
“Think about it, Livvy, okay? It might be a fun thing for us to do together.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.” About as much as I thought about shaving my head, but I hated when my dad’s appeals were on the tipping point of begging.
“By the way, did you reschedule that appointment from this morning?” Dad asked.
I was grateful my head was in the refrigerator looking for dessert. I mouthed my mother’s question at the same time she asked it. “What appointment?”
This moment brought to you by children without a sibling who could have their backs while they’re thinking of a reasonable answer.
“I found half a strawberry cheesecake and leftover peach cobbler for dessert,” I said, holding one in each hand and closing the refrigerator door with my elbow. Ignoring the question wouldn’t make it go away, but I counted on the distraction to buy me time.
“I really shouldn’t, but I exercised today, right?” My father glanced down at his stomach and patted it with both hands. “A little of each one for me.”
My mother passed, as I figured she would, but it meant she had a chance to ask the question again. “Did you reschedule a doctor’s appointment?”
Lying was not only not in my nature, I was a failure at it. I learned early on when I attempted to lie that what came out of my mouth and what showed on my face always contradicted each other. Subterfuge, I was a bit better at pulling off, but under pressure was always a risk. “No, not a doctor’s appointment.” I busied myself with cutting and serving. Handed my father his plate.
The ripples of my mother’s wave of impatience were sloshing on the shore of my hesitation. If she had to ask a third time, I was doomed. The gig would be up, and the ripples would give way to a tidal wave.
“I decided to go see someone . . .” I sat with my mountain of cobbler, rearranging it into a hill as I spoke. “I’ve had so much happening and trying to sort it all out and then being pregnant. I thought it would help, you know, to be able to talk to someone . . .” Since someone became almost the universal code word for anyo
ne in the mental health field, I figured she’d buy in, and I’d told the truth. Or maybe a truth.
“How did you find this person? Who referred you?” Mom leaned over and took a spoonful of Dad’s cobbler.
Was she not going to quit?
“Cara, my boss at Virtual Strategies. She’d gone through a messy divorce—”
My father held up his hand. “Could you answer my question? I asked first,” he said without glancing at my mother. Wise.
“Friday. My appointment’s at eleven o’clock. I should be back by twelve thirty at the latest. I’ll put it on the calendar when I get to the office tomorrow morning.”
That night before I climbed in bed, I reached for the worry beads from Laura. I wished I’d had them during dinner, but I’d left them on my bedroom dresser because the skirt I was wearing when she gave them to me didn’t have pockets.
When I woke up the next morning, they were around my wrist. I remembered holding the beads as I scrunched my pillow under my head and pulled up the sheets. But I didn’t remember falling asleep.
Maybe I was just tired or it was the beads or both.
I made sure, though, when I dressed for the day, I found something to wear that had pockets.
CHAPTER 35
I’m going to deliver these contracts. I should be back in an hour. You’re good?” My father already had his hand on the door, so he’d expected to hear that I was.
“Yes. I have my to-do list, so take your time.” He was halfway out before I finished my sentence.
The first task on my list, not Dad’s, was straightening his office. To the clients, it appeared picture-perfect. But open a desk drawer or a cabinet or a closet, and you found a compost stack of paper or risked an avalanche of it, depending. The day I counted six staplers in various nooks around his office, I suspected a problem.
I’d lived with his line of reasoning long enough to understand what happened: “In the time it would take me to find the stapler, I could pull one out of the supply closet and be finished.” And it was easier for my mother to continue buying replacements than to look for the lost one. No wonder they worked well together.
I’d almost finished emptying the closet, except for what I couldn’t reach without the step stool, when the front bell rang. “Be right there,” I called out, dusting all sorts of schmutz from the front of my linen shift.
I primed my welcome-to-the-agency smile and started talking before I rounded the corner. “Sorry, I was in the back. Evan. You’re here.” My smile soured. “Again.”
“Your powers of perception are astounding. As sharp as ever,” he said with a lopsided grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“And you are as maddening as ever.” Especially so. Because you look better in jeans than I ever will. And I see you and think things no woman pregnant with another man’s baby, even if that man is deceased, should be thinking, much less doing. “My father left about thirty minutes ago. I’ll tell him you stopped by. I’m assuming not for another golf game?”
“You assumed correctly. And I don’t need to see him.” He handed me a plastic tote imprinted with the country club’s logo of a single magnolia. “He left his golf shoes in my car.”
I set the bag on my desk. “Thanks, but he could’ve just picked them up from the club since you work there,” I said, making it sound like he worked in a sweat factory that employed four-year-old kids.
I thought he’d be offended by my caustic tone. And, the shameful truth was, I wanted to see him squirm. The once-and-future king of a charmed life who now settled for a job riding around a golf course.
Instead, he launched into a kick-heeled, perky-eyed description of how waking up in the morning to go to work wasn’t painful anymore, how he loved being outside and not confined by office walls, and how he enjoyed interacting with people in a way that didn’t require taking depositions or hammering them with questions.
“It’s been a while since you and I have had a chance to reconnect. How about lunch one day? We could meet at the club or wherever you want. How about Friday?”
Reconnect? Wouldn’t that first require connecting? “I already have plans for Friday.”
“Already have another date, huh?”
If I hadn’t insulted him first, I might’ve been more offended by his comment. I chalked it up to something I deserved. “As if I’m ‘dating material.’ I’m sure that eHarmony has me on its ‘No Profile Allowed’ list.”
Evan actually looked confused, which confused me.
“It doesn’t have to be lunch. We could have dinner. Maybe go to one of the casinos and eat our weights in boiled shrimp. Like we used to do.”
He didn’t get that there was no “used to” part of me left, but he still waited patiently for my answer. I dug through the candies in the dish until I found something chocolate. I unwrapped the gold foil off the Hershey’s Kiss like there was a Fabergé egg inside. I needed some distraction so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact. Especially since one of my early experiences with Evan had been the way he could look at me as if I were the most beautiful woman in the universe. When he started looking at his law books and his LSAT practice tests that way, that’s when the music started to die.
“First, my disclaimer that I’m not being fresh when I say this. I don’t understand why someone like you wouldn’t have a long waiting list of eligible women—”
“Who says I don’t?” he said. “And stop unwrapping that candy and look at me.”
His voice was gentle and kind, which made it all the more difficult to face him. I popped the candy into my mouth and looked up.
“Why are you making this so difficult? You know me well enough to understand that if I don’t want to or if I’m uncomfortable doing something, I won’t do it. Having dinner with you is not a charitable deduction on my income tax. I would enjoy a night out with someone who knows me already, even if she does bust my chops now and then.”
“This is me waving my white flag of surrender. Saturday night. But not seafood. I retain too much salt. One of the perks of pregnancy. You pick a place, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Meet me? What kind of date would I be if I wanted you to meet me?”
“This is not a date. Single pregnant women don’t date. At least this one doesn’t. If you must pick me up, can you make it around seven o’clock? I get hungry early and often.”
He smiled and actually high-fived me. “It’s a date!”
“It’s not a date,” I repeated loudly and insistently as he dashed out of the office.
Evan wasn’t out the door ten seconds when I reached for my worry beads.
I patted both pockets. Flat. Where were they? I was defeating the purpose worrying about my worry beads.
Dad’s office. That’s where I left them. In my hurry to get to the front, I’d left them on his desk where I’d been sitting going through some of his folders. I resumed my organizing efforts. It took me about twenty minutes to make order out of chaos, but when I finished, he had a closet that didn’t look like an office supply store had thrown up in it.
Dad spotted his shoes on my desk when he returned after his calls. “Evan called earlier to tell me that I’d forgotten these in his car. Told him it wouldn’t be a problem for me to stop by the club and pick them up. He insisted he wouldn’t mind dropping them off here. Nice of him, especially since our office isn’t on the way to the club.”
CHAPTER 36
I called Mia on my way home. Not surprisingly, she was skeptical about Evan’s newfound career and thought there might be more to the story than being disillusioned with the legal profession.
If Evan’s the new golf pro, maybe you should have the investigator check him out, too. Maybe he’s been fired. Or disbarred and doesn’t want people to know.”
I didn’t tell her about agreeing to have dinner with Evan. Since one dinner would probably be the beginning and the end of us sharing meals, mentioning it hardly seemed worth the verbal exchange in the first place.
&nbs
p; Our conversation was coming to a quick end because both Mia and Lily were having meltdowns. Lily was lining up her raisins on the floor, pretending they were ants going to a party. Mia told her ants didn’t have parties, Lily argued they did, and it went downhill from there.
“The nanny is starting this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes. Talk to Laura and see if you can get an idea of how much longer you have to be there. I don’t need much time to get a room in the house ready for you,” Mia said. “I’m off to teach my daughter the no-playing-on-the-floor-with-food rule.”
Remembering Bryce’s conversation with me before I left Houston, I wasn’t sure Mia had discussed with him her grand plan of my moving into their house. Odds were, she hadn’t.
As much as I wanted to return to Houston, I couldn’t do it unless I had a place of my own. And even if I needed to be in New Orleans another four or more weeks, it would take that much time for me to lease or buy a place. Not something I could do alone.
Before supper, I called Amanda, my real estate agent, and left her a message asking for recommendations of agents or agencies in Houston.
Brushing my teeth before bed, I felt a ripple in my stomach. “Sick,” I said to myself in the mirror, “is not what you need to be right now.” It happened a few more times as I settled under the sheets. I was about to check to see what medicine I could take for an upset stomach when I remembered at my last visit, the physician’s assistant had told me that before my next visit, I should start feeling flutters. That I would probably think at first they were gas bubbles, but after a few I would come to recognize them as the beginning of the baby moving.
I placed my hands on my stomach. “It’s you, isn’t it? Well, hello,” I said to my little bump. “I’m thrilled you’re here.” No one could have ever prepared me for that moment: for knowing that I wasn’t just witnessing a miracle but that it was happening inside of me. A little life stirred, and my entire life changed.
Since You've Been Gone Page 17