Ethan said. “You’re supposed to answer when I call.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Her son began trampolining on the bed. “Guess what, Mom?” Bounce! “Daddy says—” bounce “—our plane leaves—” bounce “—in four—” bounce “—more—” bounce “—hours!” He jumped off the bed with a thud. “And I might get some peanuts from the waitress.”
Parker’s throat tightened. She ran a hand through Nicky’s hair, which was still baby-soft. Don’t change too much while you’re gone. “You’ll have so much fun, sweetheart.”
“I know it. You should come, too.”
“Well, I’ll be up in Maine, so I’ll have a vacation, too. And Daddy will bring you up there when you get back. It’s really pretty. We can eat lobster. Maybe go sailing.”
“Okay. Kiss Elephant.” He held up his stuffed animal for a smooch. Parker obeyed, then gathered her son in her arms, breathing in his salty little-boy smell.
“I love you, Nicky,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, Mommy,” he said. Then he wriggled out of her arms, seeming to see her suitcases for the first time. “We won’t live here ever again?” he said, his voice quavering.
“No, honey. I’m sorry.”
“Then I want a house just like it.”
“We’ll have a smaller place. Like Daddy and Lucy’s.”
“I want this house. I’m gonna come back here and live!”
“Nicky, pal,” Ethan said, “this house is really big. It’s meant for lots and lots of people. But the new house will be yours and Mommy’s. And you can help pick it out, right, Parker?”
“Definitely.” She gave Ethan a grateful look.
“I want it to be purple.” Nick folded his arms across his chest.
“I love purple,” Parker said.
Ethan glanced at his watch and gave her an apologetic look. “We really should get going.”
This was it. Three weeks—twenty-three days, if one was counting, and Parker definitely was—without her son. She picked him up again and held him tight, relishing his strong little arms around her neck. “I love you, Nick. I’ll call you every night. And we can use Skype.”
“I’ll call you every night,” Nicky said. “And every morning. And in the daytime, too.”
“Anytime you want,” Ethan said. “Lucy, can you take Nicky down to the car?”
“You bet.” Lucy hugged Parker. “Love you.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Fling.”
“Sure,” Parker said. “You guys have fun, okay? It’s the trip of a lifetime.”
“Bye, Mom! Elephant says bye, too!”
“Bye, Elephant! Bye, Nicky! I love you!”
Then Lucy took Nicky by the hand and led him down the long hall. Don’t worry, Parker, chimed the Holy Rollers. No one can replace you! You’re the mom!
“Parker.” Ethan took the shirt she was folding—and folding and folding, apparently—and put it on the bed. “I know this hasn’t been easy. And you’ve been a rock. But I know it’s been…a lot.”
His eyes were so kind and nice that Parker could feel her own filling. Dang it. “It’s a little overwhelming,” she whispered.
“I know. But you’re not alone in this. I love you, Lucy loves you, you gave my parents their only grandchild, and they think you walk on water. You have all of us.” He kissed her forehead. “Especially me.”
Not for the first time, Parker wished things had been different with her and Ethan. The guy was damn near perfect. “I do know that, Ethan. And I appreciate it. Things aren’t that bad, really. It’s just been…fast. But I’ll flip the house up there and we’ll be fine.”
He looked at her another minute. “Okay.” He squeezed her shoulders and let her go. “I’ll call you when we land.”
“Thanks.”
“Have fun in Maine.”
“I will. I really will. It’ll build character.”
“You have plenty of character.” With that, he hugged her again and left. A minute later, she heard the echoing thud of the front door closing.
Alone in an eight-thousand-square-foot house.
Once, when she was seven, she’d roller-skated down the big hallways and into the vast kitchen, where Bess, the cook, had given her a slice of rhubarb pie. Most of the year, the Welles family—Althea, Harry and Parker—had lived in New York, in an apartment on the Upper East Side, but Grayhurst had always felt more like home. When she was very small, her grandfather had still been alive, and she had some cherished memories of a man with a deep voice who smelled like Wintergreen Life Savers. For a few magical weeks each summer, they’d come here and be together, Harry around for dinner, Althea making sand castles on the beach. Her three cousins, all girls, would come over to play, and they’d spy on the grown-ups, and make forts in the endless rooms of Grayhurst. Her dad had taught her to sail, and she and Althea played tennis after dinner.
But when she was ten, her parents divorced, and summer was never the same. Harry became a stranger, and Althea married Clay, the first of Parker’s stepfathers, less than a year afterward. Per court order, she’d visit Rhode Island for a week or two in the summer, sometimes foisted off on her aunts, then spending a torturous few days alone with Harry, who’d work most of the time. Then it would be off to whatever summer program was the in thing that year—a summer at sea, another at the Sorbonne, one in Scotland with other daughters of rich people. And don’t get her wrong. She’d had some great times, seen some beautiful places.
But those summers here, at Grayhurst, before she realized what kind of man her father was, before her mother had become a serial trophy wife…those summers had been the best. Her fifth birthday party had been here, and there’d been a white pony. When she was nine or so, she’d had a sleepover, and the gardener had rigged up a screen in front of the indoor pool, and Parker and five friends had bobbed around on inner tubes and watched Jaws.
And this was where she’d brought Nicky home after he was born. She’d rocked him in her grandmother’s Morelock chair and looked out at the sea. How could she not love the place where she learned how to be a mother?
Now Nicky’s beautiful room would be someone else’s. The dining room where they’d once tied a rope and played Tarzan, the topiary in the back where they’d had so many lunches, the back parlor where she and Lucy had spent many a girls’ night, laughing until they cried…all someone else’s.
Well. Self-pity wasn’t going to get her car packed up. The moving truck was coming to take her clothes and most of the stuff to storage—Nicky’s bunk bed, the big white sofa she had in her office, the collection of Holy Rollers books in their many translations. The photo albums and framed pictures of Nicky’s artwork.
