by Susan Wiggs
“Aren’t you the one who’s been living in Europe?” the woman named Vickie asked.
Oh. So that’s where this is going, thought Sophie. She could tell from the tone of the question and from the looks she was getting from the women that they were not okay with her choice. She decided to confront the issue head-on. In the year since she’d been apart from her kids, she had discovered that one of the most awkward aspects of the arrangement was actually explaining it.
People might think they had open minds about today’s families, but that tolerance only went so far. They live with their dad ranked right up there with They’ve never been to the doctor or They’re allowed to smoke. In the eyes of the world, Sophie knew what these women were thinking. She was a terrible person, a woman who had turned her back on her children in their time of greatest need, the aftermath of divorce. What kind of mother would do that?
“That’s right,” Sophie said. “In The Hague, Holland.”
“Must’ve been so exciting for you.”
“It was, sometimes.” She cautioned herself not to get defensive. For Max’s sake, she wanted to get along with his friends’ moms. Yet among these women, she felt a distinct prickle of discomfort. She used to be defined by her career, prosecutor, diplomat. Now that she had no career, what would define her? Being a mom? Would that be enough to gain acceptance into this chilly tribe?
“We had this image of you as a jet-setter with a string of mysterious, foreign lovers,” Ellie said.
“I’m sure you’re joking,” Sophie said. She wasn’t sure, though.
“I always wanted to get away to Europe, but my family needs me,” said Maria.
“Same here. I’ll wait until mine are grown,” Gretchen agreed.
“I flew to New York on a regular basis,” Sophie explained, “to work at the UN and see my kids. And Max visited me in The Hague several times.”
“Don’t you have a daughter, too?” Gina asked. Their scrutiny burned like the glare of an interrogation light. “In high school?”
“Daisy,” Sophie said. “She just started college in New Paltz.”
“Daisy. Didn’t she used to work at the bakery?” Vickie asked.
“Oh, that one,” Gretchen said. “I’m so sorry about…what happened.”
Sophie took a direct hit on that one. There would never be any definitive explanation as to why Daisy had been so rebellious, so angry and careless. Sophie could ask herself until the cows came home if it had happened due to the divorce, or if it would’ve happened anyway. She told herself not to take the bait of this woman’s phony condolences. “Actually, I’m extremely proud of my daughter.”
“What happened?” asked Ellie. “I didn’t hear. Is she all right?”
“Daisy is fine,” Sophie assured her.
“And the baby, too, right?” Gina said.
The others exchanged glances of surprise. “Your daughter has a baby?” Ellie asked.
“My grandson, Charles,” Sophie informed them. “We all adore him.”
Maria leaned over to one of the other women and said something in an undertone, but Sophie caught the tail end of it, “…out of wedlock.”
Sophie was so surprised by the attack that she laughed. “Tell me you didn’t just say ‘out of wedlock.’”
Maria looked unrepentant. “You mean she’s married?”
“No, but—”
“Ricky, watch out!” Maria was on her feet, yelling to a dark-haired boy on the ice. “Don’t turn your back on number forty-seven.”
That was Max’s number.
“Your son plays rough,” Maria said. “Didn’t he have some kind of meltdown last summer and get kicked off his Little League team?” Maria persisted.
“He was invited to work for the Hornets,” Sophie pointed out. She hoped she’d gotten the story right. Keeping stats for the Hornets—Avalon’s independent baseball team—was a privilege. At least, that was how Max had explained it to her. She reminded herself not to get defensive. She had dealt with international criminals. She could handle vindictive women, surely.
Vickie shook her head and added to the chorus of sympathy. “I suppose all kids deal with divorce in their own way.”
“I guess you all have a pretty clear picture of my family,” Sophie said. “I went jetting off to Europe to be with my foreign lover and left my poor kids to suffer and get in trouble. God, I don’t believe you women. What century are you living in?”
“We’re not trying to pick a fight,” Gretchen said. “Just trying to understand the situation.”
“The situation,” Sophie said, “is none of your business.”
“This is the kind of town where people care about one another.”
Where people gossip and judge, Sophie realized. And she had chosen to move here. To live here. With women like this.
“Just to be clear,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. In her profession she was used to confrontation and arguments. This was supposed to be second nature to her, but she was inches from losing it. “I lived in a furnished apartment within walking distance of the court building and I worked twelve-hour days on human rights cases. I missed my kids every damn minute but they couldn’t be with both of us. And—news flash, ladies—we’re not the first family that’s gone through a divorce.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ellie said. “Lots of families handle it just fine.”
The condescending attitude grated on Sophie. She decided to bite her tongue. She had put her career first. The fact that these women were horrible didn’t change that. She needed to move on from here.
A hockey puck cracked against the Plexiglas with a sound like a gunshot. Reflexively, Sophie raised her arms to shield her face. Then a whistle shrilled, signaling the end of practice. Thank God. Sophie leaped to her feet. It couldn’t end soon enough for her.
“You ladies have a nice weekend,” she said, garnering insincere smiles and assurances. As she walked out into the cold winter evening with her three charges, she wished she could get in the car and drive, and keep driving until she came to the end of the world.
No. That was the old Sophie’s way of thinking. The new Sophie didn’t run from trouble.
“How was practice?” she asked, reminding herself to drive slowly and calmly.
“Okay,” the boys replied, predictably noncommittal. She knew better than to ask. She should, anyway.
“So you met Aunt Maria,” Max said.
Sophie stopped, car keys in hands. “Aunt Maria?”
“She likes me to call her that,” he explained. “You know, on account of her being Nina’s sister.”
“That woman is Nina’s sister?” Sophie should have seen the family resemblance—the olive-toned skin, the glossy hair, the flashing dark eyes.
“Yep.”
“She is the sister of Nina—your brand-new stepmother.”
“Mom. That’s what I just said.”
She glared at him in the rearview mirror. “And you couldn’t have perhaps given me a little clue about that? Maybe just a hint?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered.”
It was, Sophie realized, one of the unknown hazards of small-town life. You never knew who you were going to run into.
When she got home, Noah called her while Max was in the shower. “I want to see you tonight.”
Even the sound of his voice was a form of foreplay. She stepped into the bedroom for privacy. “Is this what’s known as a booty call? I have to say, I’ve never been the recipient of a booty call before.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“My son, Max, is spending the weekend with me.”
A pause. “How’s that going?” He sounded slightly chastened.
“He’s so bored he can hardly see straight.”
“Bring him over tomorrow. I’ll show him around my place. You don’t even have to call first. Just show up.”
“Thanks, Noah, but I don’t think so. For all I know, by tomorrow he’ll
be begging me to take him back to his dad’s.”
“My son finds me boring,” Sophie said to Gayle Wright the next day. Sophie had adopted the habit of going on a morning run, exploring the splendor of the snowy lanes and trails along the lake. Noah had taken her to buy a special kind of trail shoe made for traction on snow and ice. At the end of her run, she often stopped to visit with Gayle when her neighbor was out playing with her children.
Gayle, presiding over the construction of a lopsided snowman, regarded her with concern. “He’s twelve, right? What twelve-year-old ever finds his parents interesting? It’s practically a law that he’s supposed to find you either boring or embarrassing.”
“I’m right on track, then.” Sophie took a drink from her water bottle. “I had this whole grand vision of how this weekend was going to be so perfect. Instead, I got in a cat-fight with the other hockey moms—”
“No way.”
“Oh, yes. Way. And he liked your muffins but hated my sloppy joes. They used to be his favorite. Now he’s into Italian cuisine. Nina is Italian. She’s probably a great cook.”
“Don’t make comparisons,” Gale reminded her. “That way lies madness.”
“He fell asleep during Harold and Maude.”
“Now that’s a problem.”
“I know. What kind of person hates Harold and Maude?” While Sophie had sat, transfixed and weeping over her favorite film, Max had fallen asleep on the sofa. She had to prod him awake just so he could shuffle off to bed. When she left him for her morning jog, he’d still been sound asleep. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with him today.”
“Take him skating on the lake.”
“Okay, that covers the first hour. Then what?”
“You don’t have to do anything.” Gayle bent down and fixed Mandy’s mitten, which had come untucked from her sleeve. “Just be with him, the way you were when he was little.”
Sophie swallowed hard. “I can’t say for sure that I ever did that.”
“Of course you did. You probably don’t remember.”
Sophie didn’t argue, but neither did she agree. When Max was little, she’d been busy rushing off from one place to another.
“Take him to see Noah,” Gayle suggested.
Just hearing Noah’s name caused Sophie to have an unbidden reaction. She was glad for the cold air, which concealed her blush. “People take their Weimaraners to see Noah,” she said. “Not their bored sons.”
“Noah would like it. He’s crazy about kids.”
Sophie wondered if Gayle suspected…no, not possible. No one knew. No one would ever know. “He’s probably too busy,” she hedged. Even though Noah himself had extended an invitation last night, she suspected he’d done so out of politeness.
“Not on a Saturday,” Gayle said. “He doesn’t have clinic hours on Saturdays.”
Sophie offered a noncommittal shrug. “I might, then.”
“Mo-om,” yelled Henry, her eldest. “Come and see my tunnel before Bear wrecks it.”
Sophie stomped her feet on the ground to keep them from going numb. “I’d better go. I work up a sweat when I run, but I get too cold standing still.”
“Give Noah a shot—I think he and Max would hit it off,” Gayle said, never knowing—Sophie hoped—that her suggestion held an extra layer of meaning.
“So who is this guy again?” Max asked in a skeptical voice.
“Noah Shepherd. Dr. Noah Shepherd. You met him that one time at the Apple Tree Inn,” Sophie said matter-of-factly. She checked herself in the hall tree mirror by the door. After a shower, she felt wonderful, but her fine straight hair had a mind of its own. She pulled on a wool beanie, then changed her mind and tried the black beret. No, too affected. She picked up a quilted cloche. That was a little better, casual and functional, very un-Bergdorf’s.
She was taking great pains to make sure this appeared to be the most informal of visits. She wore makeup every day, didn’t she? And the fact that the jeans and sweater were brand-new didn’t mean anything. Half her wardrobe was new, acquired to help her adapt to the climate in Avalon. The fact that she looked good in the formfitting parka—all right. She had her vanity. Every woman did.
“And you, like, have a crush on him?” Max asked.
She whirled around to stare at him. Dear Lord. She wondered if this was just a stab in the dark on Max’s part or if there was some kind of visible glow of attraction so obvious that even a young boy could see it. She felt compelled to play dumb. “Now you’re being silly,” she said. “Not to mention inappropriate. Why on earth would you say something like that?”
“Lipstick,” he said.
“I always wear lipstick.”
“I still don’t want to go see your neighbor. You sure you don’t—”
“I do not,” she said. “Heavens, are all boys your age so suspicious?”
Max shrugged.
“For the record, Noah was very helpful when I first got here in the middle of the last big snowfall. And he has a very interesting animal hospital and I simply think you’d enjoy seeing that.”
“Gosh, just like a field trip,” he said with phony enthusiasm. “I love field trips. It’ll be exactly like school, but on a Saturday.”
Sophie glared at him. “When did you turn into such a cynic?”
“When did you turn into robo-mom?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Robo-mom, with the hot chocolate, the car pool and sloppy joes and movie night.”
“I’m not a robot,” she told him, “because I have feelings.”
“And I’m not a cynic,” he shot back, “because I have feelings, too.”
They glared at each other for a long moment.
“If you hate it at Noah’s, we’ll come right back,” she said, opening the negotiation.
“Too awkward,” he countered. “Once I’m there, I’m trapped like a rat.”
“He’s got a puppy,” she said.
That startled him. “What do you mean?”
“Noah. A puppy. As in, a tiny baby dog that wants to play and lick your face, and make you laugh for absolutely no reason.”
“The guy has a puppy?” Max grabbed his boots, stuffing his feet into them as fast as he could. “Jeez, why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t want to have to play the puppy card.” Sophie smiled as she followed him out into the bright winter morning. It was almost like cheating.
As Max loped up the driveway and crossed the road, she found herself wondering where the years had gone. Her son, whom she thought of as a little boy, was growing at a crazy rate. He was big and strong and athletic, and from behind, he looked almost manly.
He slowed down to wait for her at Noah’s driveway. Someone had dug out around a painted wooden sign that read “Shepherd Animal Hospital.”
Sophie wondered if she should have called first. Her gloved hand touched the phone in her pocket. No, if she called, that would seem too deliberate. Too calculated. And even though he’d extended an invitation the previous night, Noah might feel as though he had to treat them like company.
It was better to just casually drop by, she decided. Neighborly. She was learning to be neighborly.
She only hoped she could stand being in the same room with Noah and refrain from jumping his bones.
As she and Max approached the house, Sophie studied the way it crowned the brow of the hill, its largest windows oriented directly at the view of the lake. At one time, she guessed long ago, this had been the only house in the vicinity. Other than going to college and then vet school at Cornell, this was the only place Noah had ever lived. She wondered if he would always live here. If he would die here. She wondered if that gave him a feeling of satisfaction, of belonging and continuity…or if it felt impossibly stultifying and made him want to gnaw off a limb to escape.
“Hello,” she called out when they reached the front porch. “Anybody home?”
This was no big deal, she reminded herse
lf as she knocked at the door. He was a neighbor. She knocked again, and was immediately inundated with misgivings. She should have called first. It was bad form to just show up and—
“Just a second,” she heard him call.
There was some barking from Rudy and high-pitched yaps from Opal.
“Dogs,” said Max, his facing lighting up. “Those must be his dogs.”
“Did you think I was making it up? Like I told you, he’s a vet. Of course he has dogs.”
Noah was half-naked when he answered the door. He wore running shorts and shoes, a white towel around his neck. He was glistening with sweat and grinning at her. “Hey,” he said, holding the door wide open to let her in.
“I should have called first,” she said. “This is a bad time.”
“This is a great time,” he said, wiping his hand on the towel and holding it out. “You must be Max. I’m Noah.”
Max shook hands with Noah, but all his attention was on the dogs behind the baby gate in the hallway. “Do you mind if I pet your dogs? I really like dogs, but we can’t have one where we live.”
Sophie hadn’t realized that, but it made sense. The grounds and buildings of the Inn at Willow Lake were pristine, probably not the easiest place to keep a dog. Interesting, she thought. A chink in Greg’s superdad armor.
“Sure you can pet them,” said Noah. “They live for affection.” He disengaged the baby gate. “This is Rudy, and the little one’s Opal.”
Max melted to the floor, trying to hug both dogs at once. They swirled around him, vying for his attention until he laughed aloud. It was, Sophie realized, the first spontaneous laughter she’d had from Max all weekend. Dogs could bring smiles from a stone—or from a boy who was determined to give his mother a hard time.
“I was downstairs, working out,” Noah said. “I just need to turn the music off,” he added. “Want to come check it out? You can bring Opal.”
It was obvious Max was not going to let go of the little caramel-colored fluff ball. He and Sophie followed Noah down a flight of stairs to the basement.