“No,” I said. “You know I’ve been wanting to decorate the house next door forever. I’m going to run over and introduce myself.”
I was so grateful I had picked up a loaf of banana bread at the farmers’ market. I had planned on bribing Sloane to eat with it, but I’d take it to the new neighbor, schmooze a bit. Sloane wasn’t that thin . . . Yes, she was. I was an awful mother.
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Tactful, Mom. Don’t even let them get the first piece of furniture off the truck before you assault them with your portfolio and baked goods.”
Had I said that out loud?
“I’m not even going to mention it,” I lied. I might casually slip in what I did for a living and the vision I had for the house. But that was a far cry from pulling out my portfolio. Although, if I happened to leave a copy of my latest spread in Coastal Living . . . No, no. Rein it in, Ansley.
“You know, Mom,” Caroline said. “I think you should wait a few minutes. I need to run to the store to pick up our last few provisions.”
I shrugged. “So? James has Preston, and Sloane has the boys on the beach. Vivi is certainly fine if I go next door.”
“But you could wait a few more—”
I stepped out the door and turned, my look stopping her mid-sentence.
“What have you done?” I hissed.
She gave me her most innocent look, the one that was so innocent it wasn’t innocent at all. She put her hand over her heart and said sweetly, “Mom, I haven’t done a single thing.”
I felt eyes on me, and I knew, even before I turned, exactly whose they were. What I didn’t know is what those eyes living right next door meant.
NINE
all in
sloane
Three weeks isn’t a long time to know someone. But that’s how long I had known Adam when he returned to post, two nights before he would leave on his next deployment. After that moment in the post office, it was like my entire life, and certainly our entire love, was on fast forward. I had Christmas Eve dinner with his family. He spent Christmas Day with mine. We spent every waking moment of my break from UGA together at my apartment, which was completely devoid of roommates, who had gone home.
This kind of behavior was completely out of character for me. But there was something about Adam and the way he looked at me that very first day. Even though I was in my crummy exam clothes, he made me feel like I was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. No boy I had ever been with had made me feel that way or could have tempered the sting of growing up in the shadows of two extraordinary sisters. Caroline was pretty and smart and so confident and self-assured that the world seemed to revolve around her, and Emerson, let’s face it, was essentially a gift from God, so unusually beautiful and talented. I always felt lost somewhere in the middle.
I should have been grateful, I suppose. I was smart enough, pretty enough, a good artist. I had good friends, and my parents did all they could to make sure I felt special and unique, like I was just as important as Caroline and Emerson. But, come on. How could I ever be? And now, here, with Adam, I was.
Maybe that’s why, very, very unlike me, I said “I love you” first. It was the night before Christmas. We were at his parents’ house, sitting by the crackling, real wood fireplace in the basement of their house on Lake Hartwell, outside Athens. It had a rustic, cabin-like feel to it. It was the kind of place where you just had to drink hot chocolate with extra marshmallows.
His parents were incredible. They were funny and warm and welcoming, and I felt so at home in his world, as though I had been there forever. In stark contrast to my mother, who would have risked life and limb to make sure we didn’t share a bedroom, they hadn’t even considered that we wouldn’t. I felt weird about it, especially since it portrayed the notion that we were having a type of relationship that we weren’t, a type I had never had with anyone, in fact.
That night, after the Christmas presents and carol singing, Adam and I were all alone in the basement by the fire. We had talked so much that I felt like I knew him better than I’d ever known anyone. But there was still one thing I needed to know. Looking up into his soulful hazel eyes, I said, “Adam, what made you decide to enlist? I mean, how could you just leave school and everything behind?”
He was leaning against the couch, his legs out in a V that I fit into perfectly. I leaned up against him, my back against his chest. His strong arms were wrapped around me and for the first time since 9/11, for the first time since my father was taken from me, I felt safe.
He kissed my ear and said, “You know, Sloane, I watched those planes crash into the towers, and it made me sad. But it also made me furious. All I could think about was the people in those towers, my people. They left for work that morning expecting to come home that night, kiss their husbands and wives, and tuck their children into bed. Even the survivors’ lives had changed forever.” He paused, and I let his words sink in because he was right. I was one of the survivors. And every minute of my life since that second tower fell had been just a little bit worse.
He pulled me closer to him, and I could tell he was thinking. So I looked up
