He laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “I know, babe,” he said. “But I’ll be deployed again soon, and wouldn’t it be great to be pregnant before I go?”
I looked into his earnest face. He was so happy, so enthusiastic, so charming. Who wouldn’t want to pass along those genes?
Well, I mean, I wouldn’t. I could never handle the level of fear and anxiety that would hide out inside me every minute if I had children out there walking around.
Were they safe? Were they sick? Would they get cancer? Break their leg? Get an infection that went into their bloodstream? Would they get hit by a car crossing the street? I could play “what if” all day, every day, all night, every night. And I didn’t even have them yet. There was no way. But Adam was so happy and he looked so expectant. I wanted to please him. I wanted to make him smile.
But I didn’t want children. I should have told him. I considered telling him. But I couldn’t bear to send him away, into a war zone, with this huge burden weighing on him. I couldn’t send him away distracted. I needed him focused on his security, his safety. I needed to give him a reason to come back home. I could have suggested we wait until then, but I looked into his eyes and I remembered what he had given me, what he had sacrificed for me. I couldn’t bear to break his heart.
So I said, “That sounds great, honey.”
Adam didn’t know I had an IUD. And what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
EIGHTEEN
well-behaved women
ansley
Mom called the boys to tell them about her cancer. Scott was reporting on a crisis in Venezuela, and despite the major flooding there, he promised he would be on the first flight back to the US. John was at work just an hour and a half away. He didn’t promise to come, didn’t even mention it, in fact.
Carter was a terrific judge of character, and it used to bother me that he didn’t like John. He never said as much, of course, but I could tell. He was usually so warm and open, but around John, he closed up. I’m not saying John is a bad person, necessarily, but I see now that Carter’s assessment of my brother was correct.
John and I have been distant for a long time. I always believed we would evolve past that, but when Grandmother left me the Peachtree Bluff house, I realized John and I would never have what Scott and I had. Because, at our core, we are fundamentally different people. Who would abandon his own sister and practically never speak to her again over a house?
All of that came rushing back to me when I got a text from him that morning: Let me know when Mom gets really bad off so I can come.
I texted back: She’s dying of cancer, John. I’d say time is of the essence.
I could feel the chill through the phone. His lack of response didn’t surprise me, but it would have been nice to be able to tell my mother that her son was coming.
Just like that, she appeared in her robe, fresh from a shower. I was sitting at the dining room table, sipping my first cup of coffee of the morning and sketching a room—something I hadn’t done in quite some time. Over the past several years, I had created mood boards for my clients so they could see exactly what furniture, fixtures, and fabric I was contemplating for their rooms. But I knew already that Jack would let me have free rein, and sketching the rooms I was designing was how I best dreamed them. I liked to think I was drawing them into life. Plus, the sketches were beautiful and would make a terrific thanks-for-letting-me-decorate-your-house gift.
Mom’s cane was tapping rhythmically on the floor as she walked into the kitchen. “Don’t you need to get to your store, darling?”
I needed to go to my store very, very much, but I had seemed unable to pry myself away from my mother’s side since she told me the news. The store would still be there when she was gone.
“I can work on these sketches right here,” I said, standing up. “Let me get your breakfast. I made bacon and eggs for the kids, so I kept some warm for you.”
She touched my hand gently. “Please let me do it while I’m still able.”
I didn’t want to let her. I wanted to take care of her, to make this go away, to have her for years and years more. But that wasn’t the hand we had been dealt.
“I’d like to go with you to the store after breakfast,” she said.
“Are you feeling up to that?”
She glared at me.
Note to self: don’t ask Mom if she’s feeling up to it.
“Great,” I said. “I’d love that. I know Leah would love it too. You can be our design assistant today.”
She shook her head. “You design. I’ll wait on customers. I’ve always wanted to run a cash register.”
I doubted she realized the “cash register” was now an iPad with a Square reader attached. But there was still that drawer that popped open and made the satisfying “ding.”
“What else, Mom?”
“What else what?” she called from the other side of the wall.
“What else have you always wanted to do?”
She peeked her head around the doorway. “Oh, let’s not do that. I don’t want to be one of those dying women.”
I laughed. “You won’t. But if there are things you want to do, let’s do them. Why not? We have time.”
She smiled at me and disappeared again. “I have traveled the world,” she called. “I have no desire to jump out of any airplanes, but I would like to ring a cash register.”
I couldn’t imagine
