frowned. “What’s that?”
“A dog.”
“A dog.” Just as her mother had suggested.
She liked dogs. She’d had one herself, growing up. So why was she so resistant to the idea?
She knew why; it was because Michael was allergic, or at least he’d claimed to be, though she’d never seen him so much as sniffle. She remembered, with some irritation, how, during her teenage years, they always had to put Buff, her golden retriever, in the laundry room when Michael was coming to the house. Before now, a dog for Jimmy hadn’t even been a possibility.
Now it felt as if getting a dog would be the final nail in the coffin of her marriage to Michael.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
He brightened. “Really? I can get one?”
“Are you going to take care of it? Feed it, walk it, brush it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don’t see why not.” It was so good to see that hope in his eyes again. She smiled and pulled him into a hug again. “Why don’t you think about what kind of dog you want, big or small, and we’ll go to the humane society tomorrow and look.”
“Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air. “I’m gonna have a dog!”
And we’re really building a home without Michael now, Grace thought, without regret.
“Go on in and get ready to go to Jenna’s now,” she said to her excited son. “I’ve got to go back to the school for a couple of hours.”
For once, he didn’t argue. He skipped into the house so lightly she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to see him click his heels together. She would bet he’d clean his face and hands without being told.
She picked up her gardening tools and dropped them into a bucket by the door before stepping into the cool, air-conditioned house.
“Will you be going out tonight?” her mother asked when she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea.
“I don’t think so, why?”
Was it her imagination, or did her mother blush? “I might have some company, and I wondered if you would be around.”
“Company? Who?”
Her mother took a cloth and busied herself drying dishes that were already sitting, dry, in the rack by the sink. “Oh, it’s not important. Just a member of my bridge club.”
Grace was interested. “A male member of the bridge club, by any chance?”
Dot set the cloth down and looked at her daughter. “Now why on earth would you ask that?”
Grace laughed. “Because, Mom, you’re acting very cryptic about this whole thing.”
“I certainly am not!”
“Okay, okay. Look, do you want Jimmy and me to get out of here tonight so you can have your friend over? We could go to a movie or something.”
“Grace Ann Perigon, you do not need to leave the house so I can have a friend over! I merely asked because I wanted to plan on how many pretzels to buy if I had company. But, now that I think of it, I’ll probably go out to the movies myself.”
Her mother was definitely hiding something, Grace thought. It was either a boyfriend, plans for a surprise party, or she had joined a cult and it was her turn to host the meeting. Assuming it wasn’t the latter, Grace’s birthday wasn’t for two months, so it had to be a boyfriend. But why hide that?
Grace suspected she knew why. “You know, Mom, if you ever did want to date someone…” What could she say without sounding condescending? It wasn’t her place to approve or disapprove, but she had a feeling her mother might worry that she would feel weird about it. “Well, I just think it would be a good idea.”
“What would be a good idea?”
“You dating. If you met someone. Although,” she added cynically, “who you could meet around this place, I don’t know.”
“There are lots of nice men around here, honey. You’ll meet someone.”
“Who said anything about me?” Three days earlier Roger Logan, who had a wife and four kids, had approached her in the produce section at the supermarket and asked if she wanted to meet him for a drink later. That about summed up the options for Grace here. She wasn’t even thinking about dating for herself.
Her mother smiled and took two glasses out of the cabinet. “This is about you, isn’t it?” She went to the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of iced tea.
“What do you mean?”
Dot poured and handed a glass to Grace. “All this negativity about Blue Moon Bay? Sometimes I think you’re looking for excuses not to like it here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it reminds you of the years you spent with Michael?”
And the years she spent before that, years in which she could have been taking a different direction with her life. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Mom?”
Dot smiled. “It runs in the family.”
Grace raised her glass to her mother, drank, then went to her room to shower before going to meet Luke. Not that she wanted to impress him; it was just that her pride prevented her from showing up filthy and giving him one more thing to dislike about her.
She stripped her clothes off in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The strong afternoon sun had toasted her skin, leaving a white impression of her halter top behind. The light in this bathroom had always been flattering, and made her tan look deeper than it was. For a moment, she felt as though she’d time-traveled back to a summer two decades before, when she used to cover her Roxy Music album in tin foil and prop it on her chest as she lay in the sun, wearing no more protection than baby oil. She shuddered at the thought now and wondered how many of the faint lines around her eyes she could attribute to that, and how many to the stress of Michael’s abrupt exit.
She took a quick, cool shower, wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her room. It was only five o’clock. There was time for her to rest for a few minutes before going out, so she lay down on the bed and stared at the faded rose wallpaper.
She remembered when her father had first put it up for her. She’d been eight and had just danced in her first ballet recital. Daddy had told her she was a real little lady now, and he let her pick out new “grownup” wallpaper to replace the zoo pattern they’d put up when she was a baby.
This wallpaper had seen her through a lot. The sketched red flowers had hung there, bright but just a little melancholy, through giggly sleepovers; all-night teenage telephone conversations; delirious first dates and tearful breakups; her dog Buff’s death; getting ready for her high-school prom—and her wedding day.
And
