by Sarah Morgan
With luck, her mother would be too focused on Rosie to notice that anything was wrong with Katie. “I can’t wait to be Bridesmaid of Honor, or whatever the correct title is. Don’t dress me in purple polyester, that’s all I ask. I don’t want static shock. And don’t spend too much money.” Because this wedding isn’t happening. She turned as the door opened and Mike walked into the room. “I need to go. I’m at work.”
“I’m proud of you. Katie. I tell everyone my big sister is a doctor.”
Big sister is falling apart.
She was a fraud. “Go. Have fun, but not so much fun you forget your inhalers.”
“Katie—”
“I know. I’m the inhaler police. Party. Live life. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She ended the call and slid her feet back into her shoes.
Mike raised an eyebrow. “Nothing like giving out advice you don’t take yourself. When did you last party and live life?”
“I’m partying in my mind. I’m at a virtual party right now.”
“Does that come with a virtual hangover? Who is getting married?”
“My sister. In less than four weeks.”
“This is the sister who is studying fairy tales?”
Katie winced. “I might have overdone that joke. She’s studying Celtic languages, myth and folklore at a certain Ivy League college. She would claim it contributes to the understanding of the culture and beliefs of society. It has been the subject of many lively arguments round the dinner table. She really is super smart, but I still think of her as my little sister and I overdo the teasing.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “It feels like yesterday I was reading her board books.”
“Big age difference?”
“Ten years. I think my parents had given up on having another child, and then Rosie arrived.”
“And you were hit by a massive dose of sibling jealousy?”
“What?” Katie stared at him. “No. I adored her. Right from the first moment I saw her funny little hairless head.” She thought about Rosie, an adorable toddler, following her everywhere. Rosie in her favorite dinosaur pajamas. Rosie turning blue with an asthma attack. “I confess I might be a tad overprotective, which is why I’m flying to Colorado to meet this guy.”
“You haven’t met him?”
“No. And don’t look at me that way. I’m already freaked out. They’ve known each other a couple of months. What can you know about someone in a few months? What if he’s a gambler, or a narcissist? He could be a psychopath. Maybe a serial killer.”
He leaned against the door and folded his arms. “Dr. Doom. Always the optimist.”
“I am not Dr. Doom. I am Dr. Reality, thanks to the years I’ve spent working here. Having the realities of life under your nose tends to cure optimism. There are no certainties in this life, we both know that.”
“All the more reason to grab the happy moments that come your way.”
“Did you honestly say that? If you get thrown out of medicine, you could write greeting cards.” She finished her coffee and walked to the door.
“Katie—”
“What?” She turned and saw the concerned look on his face.
“Does your family know what happened to you?”
“No, and there’s no reason to tell them.”
“They could give you support.”
“I don’t need support. I’m my own support.” Her parents had done enough supporting in their lives. It was time for them to enjoy their time together.
“Maybe a couple of weeks enjoying outdoor living and breathing in mountain air will be good for you.”
“Maybe.” Blocking out his concerned look, she let the door swing closed behind her.
She didn’t care about outdoor living. She didn’t care about mountain air. She didn’t even care about a white Christmas.
She was flying to Colorado for one reason, and one reason only.
She was going to stop her sister’s wedding.
Maggie
Armed with a strong cup of coffee, Maggie typed Catherine’s name into a search engine.
There were pictures of Dan’s mother at a benefit in Manhattan, slender as a reed, blond hair swept up in a style befitting a red-carpet appearance.
Feeling gloomy, Maggie scrolled through a dozen more images.
Catherine, skiing a near-vertical slope in Aspen.
Catherine, fist in the air in a gesture of triumph as she stood on top of Mount Kilimanjaro, raising money for a charity researching heart disease.
Catherine, rushing to a meeting in a form-fitting black dress with a planner tucked under one arm.
Rosie had told her in an earlier conversation that Catherine’s husband had died suddenly of a heart attack when Dan was in college. The family had been devastated by the loss, but Catherine had forced herself forward.
Maggie enlarged the photo. This woman didn’t look broken. There were no signs of grief or anxiety. Not a frown line. Not a silver hair. How could someone survive such a life blow and look so together? A leading American magazine had run an article on her, entitled “From Tragedy to Triumph.” Maggie read it from beginning to end, learning that Catherine Reynolds had set up the wedding business after she was widowed, turning her skills as a hostess into a commercial venture.
Dan was twenty-eight, which meant that unless she was a medical freak, Catherine had to be at least late forties.
The woman smiling back at her from the screen didn’t look forty.
Maggie fiddled with the ends of her hair. She’d had it cut at the same place for the past thirty years and had kept the style the same. In fact there was very little of her life that she’d changed.
While Catherine had been reinventing herself and starting over, filling her life with new challenges, Maggie’s life had slowly emptied. First Katie had left home, and then Rosie. Her daily calendar, once filled with a whirl of school and sporting commitments, had big gaps. She’d carried on doing what she’d always done, working at her job and tending her garden. She’d been used to cooking for four, but that had turned to three, then two and then, after the life had drained from her marriage, one. Instead of building a new life as Catherine had obviously done, Maggie had carried on living a diluted version of the life she’d always had.
She pushed her laptop to one side and looked at the file that lay open on the table next to her. It was almost full. Soon she wouldn’t be able to close it.
Reading about Catherine’s determined fight to reinvent herself made her feel pathetic and useless. Catherine had lost her husband in a tragic way. Maggie had lost hers through carelessness. Or was it apathy? She didn’t even know.
Maggie couldn’t shake off the feeling that she’d somehow wasted her marriage.
Part of the reason she hadn’t yet shared the news with the girls was that she hadn’t managed to absorb it herself.
Should she and Nick have tried harder?
Conscious that she’d wasted an hour depressing herself, Maggie closed the file and tucked it into a drawer out of sight. She didn’t want Nick to see it, or it would trigger a conversation she didn’t want to have.
Next she closed her favorite Christmas recipe book that had been open on the table for the past week and slid it back into its slot on the shelf. She wasn’t going to be needing it after all.
It was embarrassing to admit it, but she’d been planning Christmas in her mind since September and making lists since October. The first hint of winter in the air had her thinking of slow-cooked casseroles, hearty soups and roasted root vegetables. She’d been looking forward to the festive season for the comfort of its culinary rituals; stirring, simmering, baking in a warm cinnamon-scented fog. Most of all she’d been looking forward to the time she’d get to spend with her family.
She curled her hands around her mug and stared through the window into the garden while
she sipped her coffee. Frost sparkled and shimmered on the lawn and a layer of mist added an ethereal touch. At this time of year the only splash of color in her garden came from the holly bush, its berries bloodred and plump. Maggie had been hoping the birds would leave enough for her to use as decoration around the house, but it no longer mattered.
She wasn’t going to need berries. Nor was she going to need the mistletoe that grew in clusters on the ancient apple tree. She wasn’t going to be here for Christmas.
She’d already had her last Christmas in Honeysuckle Cottage and hadn’t even known.
She’d never been away for the holidays before. Never had a Christmas that she hadn’t owned. She had friends who delighted in “escaping” at Christmas so that they could avoid the craziness, but Maggie loved the craziness. What would Christmas look like without that?
And why was she worrying about Christmas, when the real issue here was Rosie’s wedding? What was wrong with her?
She checked the time.
Nick had said he’d be with her at eleven and it was now half past. Since he was invariably late for things, including their wedding, that wasn’t a surprise. In the past it had infuriated her that he was fluent in Classical Greek but couldn’t seem to communicate what time he would arrive home. He could read hieroglyphic but not, apparently, a watch or a simple text message.
To begin with it hadn’t mattered. She’d loved his passion, and the fact that he was so focused on the things he loved. What he lacked in reliability, he made up for in spontaneity. One day he’d be brandishing two tickets to a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre, the next a picnic which they’d devoured by the river watching sunlight dance over the surface of the water. Nick had uncovered the fun side of Maggie. For her that was as much of a discovery as Tutankhamen’s tomb. She was the child of older parents who took their responsibilities seriously and invested everything in her development and education. Earning their love had been exhausting, and it was an uncomfortable, stressful relationship. Having fun hadn’t been part of her life until she’d met Nick in her first few weeks at Oxford.
He’d been studying Egyptology, and she English. His reputation and academic career had bloomed. They’d stayed in Oxford, and she’d taken a job with an academic publisher and spent her days editing textbooks. If it had ever crossed her mind that she didn’t love her job the way Nick loved his, she ignored the thought.
And then Katie was born and the strength of her emotion and the power of the bond she’d felt had shocked her. Maggie had loved fiercely, and discovered that her passion was for her children, her husband, her family. For creating a home like the one she’d dreamed of living in herself.
Katie’s arrival gave her the perfect excuse to reduce her working hours. She’d ended up taking responsibility for the childcare simply because she enjoyed it more than she enjoyed working.
When Katie had started school, Maggie returned to work for the same publisher but once Rosie arrived she’d taken a second career break. Her youngest daughter had been born premature, a tiny fragile being weighing less than a bag of sugar. As a baby Rosie had suffered endless coughs and colds, and then came her first asthma attack.
Maggie had never forgotten it. After that, they’d happened regularly, and life became a series of sleepless nights and panicked journeys to the hospital.
For the first decade of Rosie’s life, Maggie had walked around in a fog of exhaustion.
They’d moved out of the center of Oxford and into Honeysuckle Cottage, hoping that the air pollution would be less than it was in the middle of the city. Tests showed dog hair to be a trigger which meant that they’d been unable to have the family dog that Nick had badly wanted.
Rosie’s childhood had been a roundabout of canceled plans and terrifying sprints to the hospital. Then she hit the teenage years and it became harder to control. It wasn’t “cool” to carry an inhaler, and denying her condition landed her in the hospital on far too many occasions. The tension of it affected all of them, as did the general ignorance from their friends and acquaintances who had always thought of asthma as being something mild and benign.
Maggie remembered the day Katie had stomped into the kitchen and slammed her books down on the table.
I’m going to be a doctor, because then I can cure Rosie.
Maggie had often felt guilty that most of her time and attention was focused on her youngest daughter, but Katie hadn’t seemed to be affected. She was a bright, fiercely determined child who had grown into a bright, fiercely determined adult. She’d set herself goals, and lists of things to do to achieve those goals. Unlike Nick and Rosie who made decisions based on impulse and emotion, Katie never did anything she hadn’t thought through.
She’d gone from being a hardworking child to a hardworking adult. Now she was a dedicated and talented doctor and Maggie was proud of her.
Unlike Rosie, who veered from one thing to the next, Katie always knew exactly what she wanted and never wavered.
The sound of the doorbell cut through her thoughts and she walked to the door and opened it.
Nick stood there. His long wool coat was one he’d had for years. He wore it with the collar turned up and his favorite scarf wrapped round his neck. He gave her that same crooked smile that had snagged her attention all those years before and she felt a rush of sadness. Where had their love gone? There had been no great falling-out. No clandestine affairs or flirtations. She’d tried repeatedly to identify when her marriage had malfunctioned, but had been unable to pinpoint a specific event. She and Nick had lived parallel lives and then drifted apart so gradually neither of them had noticed, until one day they’d simply been unable to connect the way they once had.
Even their decision to part had been mutual and amicable.
Sometimes she wondered if they’d simply lost each other under the pressure of being a family.
Despite everything, she felt relief that he was here. She needed to talk to someone. Anyone. She opened the door wider. “You’ve lost your key again?”
“For once, no, but I didn’t feel comfortable using it. This isn’t my house anymore.” He hesitated and then stepped over the threshold.
“It’s still your house, Nick. We bought it together and when we sell it we’ll share the proceeds. You have a right to walk in whenever you like.” No part of her was screeching change the locks. Why would she?
“I don’t want to intrude.” He glanced at the stairs and she gave a half laugh as she realized he was respecting her privacy.
“You think there’s a Christmas elf hiding under my bed? Santa? Some muscular young guy?”
Another serious relationship wasn’t on her wish list. As for anything more superficial, well, the thought of an affair was ludicrous.
“It’s cold in here.” Nick touched the radiator closest to him. “Broken again?”
“It waits for the first hint of frost to malfunction.” As usual she was wearing two sweaters, which made her look heavier than she was.
“Do you want me to call someone?” He didn’t offer to look at it himself. Nick could hold a lecture hall spellbound, but he couldn’t fix a dripping tap and was bemused by flat pack furniture.
“I’ve already done it. They’re coming next Monday.”
“You look tired.”
“That generally happens when someone calls you at three in the morning.” She knew Nick probably would have gone straight back to sleep. His ability to sleep, no matter what the crisis, had been a source of envy and frustration over the years. She would have given anything to be able to switch off and let someone else take responsibility for five minutes. Maybe it was because he knew she couldn’t that he’d been able to switch off himself, soothed by the knowledge that she was in charge.
“Rosie shouldn’t have called you in the middle of the night.”
“She was excited. She wanted to share her news. And I’m pleased. S
he might be living miles away, but I still want to be part of her life.”
“But middle of the night calls always scare you. I’m sure you answered in a panic, assuming she was having an attack. Not easy to go back to sleep after that.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Sit down. I’ll make coffee and then we’ll book flights.”
“Oh.” Her stomach gave a lurch. “What’s the rush?”
“The wedding is happening in a little over three weeks. We’ll be lucky to get seats as it is.” Nick ground beans and made two cups. The machine had been their indulgence, a mutual gift that kept delivering when stress piled upon stress. Coffee had become a shared habit during those early, sleep-deprived years and it had stuck. They both drank it black, mostly because they’d been too tired to reach for the milk. “Then there’s the fact that if I give you time to think about it, you’ll find a reason not to do it.”
She took the coffee gratefully, knowing he was right.
“I have to do it. I’m not going to miss Rosie’s wedding.”
“In that case, we need to book.” He put the cup on the table and unwound his scarf.
The scarf had traveled the world with him. It had protected him from sandstorms and dust storms and he refused to be parted from it or have it replaced. It fascinated her that someone so clever could think a scarf could bring luck. She couldn’t understand how someone with his brain could think there was something magical about a wool/cotton mix.
“I can’t believe Rosie is getting married. She’s so young.” She was desperate to talk to someone about it. Nick might not have been her first choice, but as he was the only candidate for her confidences, he won.
“Twenty-two.” He spooned sugar into his coffee. “If this were ancient Egypt, she would have been married a decade ago.”
Comments like that, Maggie thought, were why a woman needed girlfriends.
Sometimes she wanted to lift up the nearest frying pan and clock his clever, but somehow still clueless, brain.