I could tell she was about to get up, leave me alone with thoughts I didn’t want to listen to. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you just sit with me for a while?”
She pulled me into her side, and I rested my head on her shoulder.
And so we sat, two Southern women who’d grown up in this same house in this same town on this same street—but who, somehow, wanted completely, entirely different things.
Parker
SOUTHERN COAST
I HAD VERY DEFTLY PROVEN that the conversations you never want to have are inevitable. I wanted to say Amelia was overreacting. In the moment, I believed that she was. And so I huffed out, walked away, mad that she couldn’t bend just a little, as though giving birth to and raising children that weren’t biologically hers were a small favor to ask someone.
I realized hours later, about halfway out to the middle of the ocean, in my dad’s boat, alone, that I had probably overreacted. Okay, definitely overreacted. I had also played this all wrong. What better way to show the woman you love that you love her no matter what, that you love her more than the life you had envisioned for yourself, than to escape to the sea? Nothing says I’ll do anything for you quite like getting the heck out of Dodge.
What if she was looking for me? The water was dark and still, the sky bright with stars and a full moon whose reflection off the water increased the ethereal feeling. It also felt ominous. My stomach churned with the knowledge that I had done the wrong thing and that it might cost me the love of my life.
The other love of my life, anyway. It hit me like a punch in the face (probably from Mason) then. The other love of my life. Yeah, it was hard for me to move on. But Amelia was having to live with the fact that, no matter what, there would always be this other person between us. Roles reversed, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do it.
Now I understood that the crux of the situation wasn’t even really about babies. I had been too self-centered to realize that Amelia still worried about being in Greer’s shadow. I had done everything I could to let her know that she was the one I wanted. But maybe I hadn’t done a good enough job. Or maybe there was no use trying to hide something so huge from someone who knows you so well.
I should have been more honest with her. Was I even capable of making the right choice anymore?
That was when I turned the boat around. When I looked down at my phone, I saw I was still too far offshore to get service. But as soon as I did, I texted Amelia immediately. Babe, I don’t know why I got on this boat when all I want is you. I’m sorry. I swear.
Nothing. No dots. She could be asleep. But if she was asleep, then she wasn’t as worried about all this as I was. I looked down again. No dots.
I pushed the throttle forward, tired and distracted and unable to keep my eyes off the phone screen, searching for a response that wasn’t coming.
About the time the house came back into view, the phone rang. It was exactly five a.m. I pulled the throttle to slow the boat and answered frantically, “Hello!”
“Parker, my boy,” George said, not frantically at all. George. Not Amelia. “I just sent you a prospectus. Southern Coast has gone under. It’s being dismantled for parts. We might not want it, but we could pick it up for nothing, headquarter it wherever.”
Southern Coast. Greer and Amelia’s favorite magazine. Now my head was pounding. I was too tired to think about this, too drained to deal with it. But my instincts were sharp even when I wasn’t. I couldn’t let Amelia’s favorite magazine fold. I knew she would want it. Whether she forgave me or not, I wanted her to have it. “We can revamp that one, George. It has to be relocated to a Southern town.” I paused. “Maybe even a small one. It needs Southerners writing for it…” I trailed off. “Let me sit down at my computer, and let’s meet about it next week.”
“Ten-four. Good man. You’ll take the lead on this one.”
I nodded and hung up. It was as clear as day to me that Amelia had to be editor in chief. I couldn’t imagine anyone in the vast numbers of McCann employees who could reenvision it like she could.
An hour later, as I was pacing around the bedroom in the guesthouse, all thoughts of Southern Coast gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about my favorite passage in Greer’s last book. It rang so true I had committed it to memory.
Everyone always thinks that thing is going to happen to someone else. That cancer or car wreck, infertility battle or bankruptcy declaration. Other people’s problems. But we tend to think that the really great things only happen to someone else, too. They never believe they will be the one to become CEO, to start the nonprofit, to get the record deal, to change the world. Other people’s successes. But none of these things belong to other people.
The good and the bad could both be yours at a moment’s notice. Me? The thirty-two-year-old dying of cancer? I could be you. But also me? The young woman who transformed a media company for a new generation? (She said humbly.) I could be you, too. So what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Decide now. And then go out and get it. Decide your own future before someone—or something—decides it for you.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to propose to Amelia. Badly. It was right. We were right. And as much as the pain of losing Greer was still with me every day, I could have this love with Amelia in a new and completely different way; one didn’t have to outweigh or obscure the other. It was possible.
How I felt right now had also seemed one hundred percent impossible: I was happy. I was so damn happy. I could hear birds chirp again. The sky looked blue again. I had things to look forward to. Only, this woman who was woven into the net of my happiness had sworn, every time I brought it up, that she would never get married again. But hadn’t she broken up with Harris because he had taken marriage off the table? That had to mean something, didn’t it?
And so I realized, for the millionth time, that life and relationships are all about compromise. It had taken this moment, this feeling of desperation, of panic, of wondering if she would ever speak to me again, to realize that I wasn’t the one that had a right to be mad or worried. Amelia was. She had been completely honest with me from the beginning. I should have believed her.
I thought about that house that had nothing of me in it. Yes, Greer and I had bought it together, but it was all Greer. Every couch cushion and picture frame and tiny trinket was hers. Amelia was right; I couldn’t fully have her in my life unless I was willing to let go of the suffocating grip I had on the past—and it had on me.
When I heard a tap at the living room door, I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned and saw Mason, dressed in his old Cape Carolina High baseball uniform, cap on head, cleats on feet, glove on hand. I could feel my eyes get wide as he opened the door.
“You all right, bud?” I asked cautiously.
He was tossing the ball from his hand to his glove, his glove to his hand, like I had seen him do a million times before.
“I thought about what you said.”
Now my mind was racing. What had I said to turn my brother into the high school baseball version of Aunt Tilley?
“You’re right. I wouldn’t still be playing baseball now. So I started thinking about what I would be doing. What would I have wanted to do after a long and successful career setting records on the field?”