man” I needed space. Now I couldn’t envision anything more absurd. Space for what? Where was this infamous space that everyone wanted? It loomed like a gaping black hole, ready to swallow me up, regrets and all.
“It’s okay,” I finally said, remembering the woman on the other end of the line, who was waiting for some response from me. What a pathetic word to offer, but it was all I had at the moment. “Drew has every right to speak to Michael, and Michael is…looking forward to meeting him.”
That was true, I realized. Michael was confused and upset, but there was no mistaking the flicker of curiosity in his eyes this morning, the way his gaze seemed focused somewhere distant. North, in fact, toward Boston.
“I just felt I needed to tell you that,” Sophia said. “I can’t really imagine what this is like for you. Not that a phone call from me necessarily makes it any easier.”
Her soft, husky laugh punctuated her words, and I found myself smiling. No matter what I would have liked to believe about Sophia Keating, she was turning out to be remarkably hard to dislike.
“It does help,” I offered, staring out the window, trying to picture her face, the room she was sitting in as she talked to me.
But when I hung up, I couldn’t avoid the knowledge that I’d lied. Talking to Sophia hadn’t helped at all. Liking her was going to make everything that much harder.
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL, isn’t it?”
Struggling to keep my coffee from spilling as my sister, Nell, jerked her well-worn little Civic to a stop an hour later, I glanced across a sprawling, shaggy yard at an enormous farmhouse. Its white paint was peeling, and one of the pale blue shutters on the second floor was askew, but the porch was trimmed in gingerbread, and two brave potted ferns flanked the front door. Beautiful was stretching it, but the place did have an air of old-world, dilapidated elegance. A shingle swinging in the breeze above the picket fence read Willowdale Farm.
“It’s…lovely,” I said cautiously, climbing out of the car after her. It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of place that catered weddings. Behind the house, a faded red barn leaned to one side beneath a pair of willow trees. Even on a bright spring morning, the farm seemed a bit sad, ashamed of its disuse and disrepair.
Nell had called before I’d left the house. Not that I’d had any idea where I was going aside from away—from the phone, from the bed Michael and I had shared for so long, from the unfinished work piled on my desk, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on. Taking a drive out Route 78 to see the place Nell swore was right for her wedding reception was the perfect distraction.
After one brief, failed engagement and countless boyfriends, Nell was getting married. She claimed that anyone under fifty was still eligible for a traditional white gown, and she had picked one out two months ago with my mother and me in tow. She wanted the whole deal—fancy reception, bridesmaids, throwing the bouquet, everything. Of course, I would be doing double duty as maid—I refused to call myself “matron”—of honor and photographer. The wedding album would be my gift to Nell and Jack, her fiancé.
“I know it’s not much now,” she was saying, sweeping one arm toward the grounds, her dark blond hair swinging. She’d inherited my mother’s thick sleek hair, while I’d gotten my father’s unruly curls. “But they’re turning it into a restaurant and catering facility, and they’re only asking peanuts for anything scheduled before the first of the year.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, struggling to visualize the grounds cleaned up and a fresh coat of paint on the aging shingles. “But will it be done by September?”
“Partly.” She was hedging, walking away to inspect the few lonely tulips blooming near the fence. A nurse for almost twenty years now, she was wearing a denim jacket over light blue scrubs, which meant she had a shift at the hospital later. She looked much younger than her forty-seven years.
Actually, it wasn’t the wedding that meant so much to her. It was Jack. The prospect of sharing the rest of her life with him, after waiting for so long to find someone—that was the important thing.
“He’s the one, Tess,” she’d told me nine months ago over beer at the Trolley one Friday night. Even in the dim light of the bar, cigarette smoke choking the air, her eyes shone. Big and blue, they’d always been a mirror of Nell’s feelings—she couldn’t lie to save her life. And for too many years they’d reflected nothing but disappointment that was rapidly sharpening into bitterness.
“He’s gentle and funny and kind and…” She bit her bottom lip to stifle a grin. “He’s so good in bed. I can’t even tell you.”
“Please don’t.” But I laughed when I said it. My sister was happier than I’d ever seen her, and I could only hope that Jack was the paragon she made him out to be.
The thing was, he’d been close by all along. A high-school art teacher in Springfield, he adored his students and gave private drawing lessons out of the Craftsman cottage he’d restored over the past ten years. He paid his taxes, he volunteered at the juvenile center in Rahway twice a month and he liked cats and dogs.
“Clearly, he’s perfect,” my mother had teased at Thanksgiving, when Nell had chosen to introduce him to the family en masse.
“I like to think so,” Jack said, not missing a beat, and everyone had laughed, including Emma, whom I thought had developed a bit of a crush on him. What was more, he obviously adored Nell.
If he wasn’t arguing about a wedding reception at Willowdale Farm, why should I?
“It’ll be great,” I said, reaching out as she walked past me and grabbing her hand. She looked at me, eyes hopeful and even brighter than usual in the warm sunlight. “I can imagine some gorgeous pictures on that porch and under the willows.”
“I know!” She was beaming again, and she leaned in to give me an impulsive hug. She smelled like citrus and laundry soap, and her lips were cool on my cheek. “It’s going to be beautiful. Shabby-chic maybe, but chic nonetheless.”
I laughed and looped my arm through hers as she led me inside, eager to introduce me to the female half of the couple who’d bought the place and show me the dining room.
“Kara and Peter remind me of you and Michael,” Nell confided as we waited in the drafty front hall. I was admiring the wainscoting and the vintage sconces. “They met when they were in high school, too, and they knew it was love even then. Just like you two.”
There was a wistful note in her voice that I thought was more habit than anything else. As much as Nell loved Michael, part of her had been envious of us for years, of the time we’d already had together, of what she called the “lightning bolt” method of falling in love. How often had she told me, teary and heartsick after yet another breakup, that I should be grateful I’d found my life’s mate before I’d even had to go looking?
“He found you,” she’d said, although this was frequently uttered after a beer or two. “Love found you. How lucky is that?”
Very lucky, and I knew it. I knew it now, at least. Back then, I wasn’t always so sure. I was still in high school, a vague lifetime ahead of me, and there were moments I felt I’d simply traded one comforting certainty for another. Ballet had been my future for as long as I could remember, part vocation, part passion, part habit. After the surgery, even after I met Michael, I would sneak up to my room before bed or on a Sunday afternoon, warming up quickly before
