Family Pictures (38 page)

“Oh my … this is too … oh…” Her eyes are filled with tears, her hands shaking as my own eyes fill with tears.

“It’s not too
anything.
I know you love citrines and I know you admired the orb I was wearing a couple of weeks ago, so I made this for you.”

“But you sell these for so much. This is too much!”

“Oh, stop!” Patty shushes her, lifting up the necklace. “When someone gives you jewelry, you just smile prettily and say thank you.”

“Thank you,” Barb says. “It’s not enough, but thank you. You are
so
good to me!” She flings her arms around me in a big hug.

“You know it’s
my
birthday tomorrow,” Patty says suddenly. “And I think I have another one the day after that.”

I laugh, just as Patty’s face turns serious. “This jewelry stuff is doing really well,” she says, “but you can’t leave us, you know. You, me, and Barb are a team. Neither of us have the time or the patience to start training some new girl to work here.”

I can’t deny the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. I couldn’t afford to leave my waitressing job, not yet, not for a long time, but it’s true the jewelry is selling, and I have wondered if it will ever reach a point where I could stop.

“I have no plans to leave,” I laugh. “Not unless I have a long-lost aunt who suddenly dies and leaves me her millions. Which, given my family background, is not very likely.”

Barb squints at me. “What about if you get married?”

“Barb!” I yelp with a giggle. “I’m never getting married again. But even if I did, I’d still work here.”

“See?” Patty looks at Barb, shaking her head. “Hear that? She’s getting married again.”

*   *   *

I won’t get married again. I thought, all those years ago, that marriage was the ultimate cherry on the icing of the cake—that marrying the right sort of man, a man who could give me the lifestyle I had always dreamed of, would make me happy.

Look where I ended up.

I don’t believe in marriage anymore, even though I have Mr. and Mrs. W as an example of how it can work. I believe it can work for other people, but not for me; it’s not what I choose. And yes, I know I felt the same way about happiness until I was proved wrong, but this is different. This is my choice.

Which is not to say I don’t believe in love. Oh
how
I believe in love, now that I know what it is. How I believe in trust, and kindness, and peace.

I believe in lust, in being reduced to a glazed, gasping wreck at the mere memory of how he pulled the strap of my nightgown down to expose my breast, slipping his fingers inside me as I moaned.

I believe in certainty. That my man is where he says he is; that he does not disappear to work, leaving me with no way to get hold of him; that when he is with me, he is with me. One hundred percent.

I believe all these things because of Cole. A man I never dared dream I deserve, a man who has restored my faith in all things good, and pleasurable, and right.

A man I love—a relationship that feeds my soul, that doesn’t need a piece of paper to explain to the world how committed we are.

*   *   *

“Hello?” My arms are filled with grocery bags as I push open the door with my hip, seeing no one in the house. “Anyone home?” I call upstairs. Silence.

I dump the bags on the table, checking my watch. A few hours to go before everyone arrives. I’m still not entirely sure how we’ll fit, but Cole assures me Thanksgiving will be more fun if we’re all squashed together. And there’s no doubt we’ll be squashed.

Buck, Grace, Chris, and Eve. Together. Chris and Eve have been inseparable for the past year, each helping the other to become the people they are supposed to be. Sylvie and I have our fingers crossed it will last. How can it not, when Chris is more of a man in the warmth and security of her love, and Eve? Eve has blossomed into a woman, fully inhabiting her beauty, her grace, her skin.

They are glorious with, and for, each other. We all feel it. It is impossible to relate the Eve who almost died with the radiant girl who lights up every room she enters.

My family are all coming, joined by, naturally, Mr. and Mrs. W and Cole.

And Sylvie.

My dearest friend.

*   *   *

I wash my hands and tie an apron round my waist to start prepping the food, turning the music on so Jason Mraz can keep me company. Onions are sliced and placed in a stainless-steel bowl, butternut squash peeled and diced, spices measured out and toasted, crushed in a pestle and mortar.

The turkey is brining, the stuffing almost finished as the door slides open, Buck running in, his cheeks flushed with cold.

“Boots off!” I yell from the kitchen, knowing he will forget, hearing him stomp back to the door. “And before you say anything about rules, it’s not about rules,” I say as he mutters. “It’s about not tracking mud everywhere.” I turn to look at him. “Where’ve you been?”

“Cutting down trees.” His eyes are bright. “We took down all the dead wood by the cattle gate. We’re never going to have to buy wood again,” he chuckles. “Tomorrow we’re going to split the wood.”

“Not tonight, okay?” I warn. “I need you to help get the table ready.”

Buck rolls his eyes and backs out of the room as the doors slide open again.

“Boots!” I shout again as Cole stops and kicks his boots off before walking over to the stove and peering over my shoulder, wrapping his lovely big arms around my waist as he nuzzles my neck.

“Something smells great,” he says, and I laugh, leaning back against him for a few seconds, loving how solid he is, how he smells of wood, and sweat, and … work.

He is the most unexpected of joys. Mostly here now, with me, sharing my bed, sharing my cottage, he occasionally takes off on his trips. Sometimes, if I can get the time off work, I will go with him. When he’s away, I am perfectly happy on my own, and truly on my own this time, not filling my time with committees, and PTAs, constantly having to keep running from my
self.

I am part of an artists’ collective, which I adore; I travel to see the kids—Buck now at SUNY Purchase, Grace working in New Haven, Chris and Eve in New York. I work, have girls’ nights out with Patty and Barb, and every day, I talk to Sylvie.

*   *   *

The day I held her, sobbing, in my arms when Eve was in the hospital, everything changed. Whatever each of us may have thought of the other, whatever anger, blame, resentment I had held, it was gone.

In that moment, she became my sister.

Whether it’s the Midday Report, the Afternoon Report, or the Evening Report, there is not a day that goes by without us checking in with each other.

We have been on vacation together, giggling over too many strawberry daiquiris and unwanted advances from terrible men. We have shared our fears, our doubts, our deepest, darkest secrets.

And we have shared the stories of our marriage to the same man.

I have no doubt that Sylvie was the love of Mark’s life, or at least, the woman he truly loved. I was … a convenience, the right thing, a woman who fit the picture he had in his mind, just as he fit the picture in mine.

Sylvie and I share many of the same experiences within our marriage—the disappearances, the lies—but in all of hers, it is clear that Mark loved her. He truly loved her. In much the same way that Cole loves me.

On my first “date” with Cole—several months after we started sleeping together—I thought that maybe I ought to dress up, make an effort, make him like me more. I pulled out a leftover New Salem outfit, painted my face, curled my hair.

When he saw me come down the stairs, Cole did a double take. I thought it was pleasure, but later, much later, he said it was dismay.

“You are at your most beautiful when you are entirely natural,” he said, and I now believe him.

The children adore him. Everyone adores him. He has become a father figure to Buck in a way his father had never been able to do.

Poor Mark. He missed out on so much. His letters to me have stopped. I hear he’s out of prison on early parole for good behavior. Well, of course. No one can be more charming, or behave better, than Mark.

A year ago, I wrote to him. I thanked him: If it weren’t for him, for what he had done, I might still be living that false life, pretending to be someone I’m not, desperately unhappy with no idea there was any other kind of life to live.

I was careful with my wording. I gave him no openings, was not particularly warm, but polite. I asked him not to respond, told him it was unnecessary, that this was about my closure, but he did respond.

I didn’t understand his response. He asked for forgiveness, seemed to think my reaching out was some kind of an invitation, a glimpse of a way back. He filled his letter—pages and pages long—with memories of times we had shared, and talked of a future that could be ours.

I read it to Sylvie, both of us unable to believe what he had written. I would never have shared it with Sylvie had I thought it would cause her pain, but I knew it wouldn’t—knew she would see, as I saw, the sadness, the desperation.

I know Sylvie found the letter hard, only because she has a need to help people. A week later, she received exactly the same letter, the memories adjusted slightly to pertain to her marriage, but otherwise it was a replica.

She didn’t feel the need to help him after that.

We both hope he finds peace. I hope he finds contentment. I hope he finds his place in the world, one that is founded on truth, one that gives him the same sense of joy Sylvie and I have now.

But if he doesn’t, we’re both very okay with that.

Epilogue

Sylvie rests her chin on her hand and smiles as she watches her daughter fold into Chris. When she thinks of what Eve has been through, she still can’t believe it is the same glowing girl as the one sitting in front of her.

She is back to the child Sylvie knew: funny, confident, kind. The girl who was utterly confident in her skin.

While Eve started the road to her own recovery by herself, there is no doubt that Chris made the biggest difference. Initially, Sylvie couldn’t help her nerves about the two of them dating. His physical resemblance to Mark was so unsettling, Sylvie presumed this was the basis of Eve’s attraction to him, but their relationship is built on a far stronger foundation, and he is as solid and reliable as his father is not.

Sylvie lifts her wineglass and sips, finding herself locking eyes with Maggie, at the other end of the table. She lifts her glass in a silent toast before glancing at the kitchen with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head, then pushing back her chair and standing up.

The others look at them questioningly as both women head for the kitchen, but they tell them to stay at the table, they’re just going to check on dessert.

Sylvie smiles as she walks over to Maggie, pulling an apple crisp out of the oven. “Have I ever told you how much I like your mother-in-law? Her gardening knowledge is amazing. I could talk to her for hours.”

Maggie smiles. “She’s not my mother-in-law.”

“Not yet,” Sylvie teases.

“I won’t get married again.”

“How can you be sure? None of us know what the future holds.”

Maggie stops and raises an eyebrow. “Will
you
get married again?”

“Ah. I see what you mean.” Sylvie nods, instantly understanding. “Still. He is a lovely man. And he feels like an honest one.”

Maggie lets out a shout of laughter. “You and I are hardly the best judges of character, are we? All those years of marriage, and neither of us knew.” She shakes her head.

“And yet”—Sylvie shrugs—“as you yourself acknowledged when you wrote to him, we have so much to thank him for. We’re unrecognizable from the women we were. Look how happy you are, how you glow. And if not for Mark, I wouldn’t have refound my creativity, built a business—”

“Do you mean empire?” Maggie grins.

“Empire, then.” Sylvie smiles back. “The point being that I am happy and fulfilled in a way I never was before. And most importantly, we found each other.” She smiles once more as she walks up to Maggie and lays her head on her shoulder, as Maggie reaches out and puts her arm around her friend.

“We’ll never be able to thank him enough, you know,” Maggie says, planting a kiss on the top of Sylvie’s head.

“I know,” Sylvie laughs. “Who would have thought?”

*   *   *

“Thank
God
!” Chris shouts dramatically when the two women walk back in the house. “We thought there’d been a murder-suicide in the kitchen. What were you
doing
? Growing your own apples?”

“You’ve been gone for ages,” Grace says. “We were worried about you.”

“What are you all? Our mothers?” Maggie snorts as the children sheepishly shrug.

“Believe it or not,” Sylvie says, “we were catching up.”

“See!” Cole is triumphant. “What did I tell you? They were gossiping. But it’s perfect timing for a picture. Come on, everyone, let’s do this thing.”

“No!” Grace moans. “My hair’s awful.”

“It’s beautiful,” Maggie says. “It’s always beautiful. Who’s taking the picture?”

“Already set up.” Cole grins. “It’s on self-timer.” He gestures to his camera, balanced on a pile of books on the table. “Everyone over on this side,” he announces to much grumbling as one side of the table push their chairs back and squeeze round to the other, amidst much laughter.

Cole waits until everyone is in position before adjusting the camera, pressing a button, quickly running back to the table as everyone cheers him on.

He reaches it just in time for the camera to go off. It captures the children of both families, their heads thrown back in laughter, Eve and Chris, as always, intertwined, Chris in mid-tease at Cole’s lack of speed.

Mr. and Mrs. W, the unofficial matriarch and patriarch, are at one end, Mrs. W leaning her chin on the palm of her hand as Mr. W lays a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Behind everyone, Cole, just in time, is giving the thumbs-up to the camera, and in the middle, luminous with gratitude and love, are Maggie and Sylvie: two women who were supposed to want nothing to do with each other, who beat the odds to become best friends; to become sisters.