The New Normal

by Brogan, Tracy

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I wish I could fix all this.”

  “You could come home,” she said, snuffling the words against his shirt.

  “I wish that would work, but coming home wouldn’t fix anything.”

  Her sigh was one of decades of sorrow, even though she was just fourteen. “I know. Mom wrecked it. She wrecked everything. I still love her, but I don’t know why she’s being so stupid.”

  Maybe Ben should tell Addie that calling her mother stupid was disrespectful, but this might be one of those times when he was just supposed to listen. And besides, he couldn’t argue with his daughter about something if he agreed with her. Sophia was being stupid. And she had wrecked everything. Maybe he hadn’t been the perfect husband—in fact, he knew he hadn’t been—but he also hadn’t once looked at another woman from the day he’d met her. She’d been all he wanted. And now all he wanted was to put that beautiful, innocent smile back on Addie’s face.

  “Mom’s doing her best, I guess,” Ben said, stroking her soft hair as they stood close together. “I don’t really understand it, either, but I do know that she loves you very much. Just like I do.”

  Addie snuffed again. “Can I get a bed that has a cushy headboard?”

  He leaned back and looked down at her. “A cushy headboard?”

  “Yeah, like one made of fabric, and maybe could we get a new light for the ceiling, because that one is seriously ugly.” She pointed to the ceiling fan, which was the same awful 1980s rattan style as in his bedroom.

  “Yes, you can absolutely get a cushy headboard, a new fan, some cool posters. Whatever you want. We can even go to the furniture store right now if you want to. Do you think you’re up for some shopping?”

  Her tiny smile felt like a major victory. “I guess.”

  “Isn’t that Ethan’s dad?” Tess whispered to Carli as they stood at the counter of the Home Depot paint department.

  Carli turned to look, and sure enough, there was Ben strolling down the paint aisle next to a striking young girl with thick light brown hair and blue eyes. She had the look of a Chase for sure.

  “Ben?” Carli said, her voice full of more surprise than was warranted. Tess gasped beside her, embarrassed by her mother’s loudness. Mia wasn’t paying much attention, more focused on watching the paint shaker do its shaking.

  Ben turned at the sound of his name, and his smile was slow but genuine.

  “Carli. Hi. Are you here getting some extra keys made? Maybe some more decoy rocks?” he asked as he reached her side.

  “No, but thanks for reminding me. I probably should. I’m actually here getting some paint.” She pointed to the can of Periwinkle Paradise that Tess had chosen for her own room as the sales associate set it down on the counter with a thunk.

  He glanced at it and nodded. “Ah, me too. Lots of paint, lots of fixtures, lots of everything.” The girl at his side brushed against him, and he put his arm around her slender shoulders. “This is Addie, by the way. My daughter.”

  Addie’s smile was shy and hesitant, her head dipping after brief eye contact.

  “Hi, Addie. How are you?” Carli said.

  “Fine, thank you,” she murmured and blushed.

  “Hi, Addie. I’m Tess, and this is Mia.” Carli’s daughter pointed over her shoulder toward her other daughter. “Do you go to Glenville High?”

  “Sort of. I go to the middle school.” Glenville High School and the middle school were part of the same campus, but they were housed in different buildings. They shared a media center, gymnasium, and lunchroom, but the classrooms were separate.

  “Cool,” Tess responded. “Do you have Mr. Evens for history? He’s the best teacher because all he ever does is show movies and then you talk about them for, like, ten minutes.”

  Carli turned to Tess. “All he does is show movies?”

  Mia moved forward, now facing in the direction of the conversation. “Oh yeah. I had him, too. Lots of movies.”

  Carli’s cheeks flushed, not that she had any reason to feel embarrassed about this, but it seemed like something she should have known about. This made her look like a negligent parent. And she wasn’t. For some inexplicable reason, she didn’t want Ben to think that she might be. He already thought she was a lousy dog trainer and an unreliable keeper of her own keys.

  “My son had him,” Ben said, as if noticing her discomfort. “I didn’t know about the movies, either, but that might explain how Ethan got an A.”

  Now Tess’s cheeks turned pink. “Oh, that’s right. Your son is Ethan.” What a cool liar she was, as if she hadn’t been staring out her window incessantly or standing in the yard with the dog for the past month trying to catch a glimpse of him. Still no sightings. He was like Bigfoot.

  Ben nodded. “Yep, he’s a senior this year. You are, too, right, Mia? Your mom said you guys had a class together last year. Calculus, maybe?”

  His questions to her made them a trio of blushing Lancasters as Mia nodded and simply said, “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any classes with him this year?”

  She nodded again. “A couple. Physics and Spanish.”

  “If he ever needs a ride to school, we can take him,” Tess interrupted. “We’d be glad to.”

  Carli bit back a smile. If Ethan Chase had been a scrawny, pimply nerd, Tess would not have made the offer. That’s why rich, handsome boys grew up thinking they were just a little bit better than everyone else. Stuff was just offered to them, and if this kid was the player they said he was, Carli wasn’t sure she wanted him socializing with her daughters. Well, at least not Tess. Mia’s force fields were firmly in place when it came to boys. She didn’t dislike all of them, but she didn’t find many of them very entertaining, either. Tess, on the other hand . . .

  “Thanks very much,” Ben responded to the offer. “I’ll let him know that. He has his own car, but maybe you guys can work out some kind of carpool for when you’re all around at the same time.”

  “Awesome.” Tess smiled.

  “So awesome,” Mia muttered under her breath so only Carli could hear.

  The sales associate plunked another gallon of paint down on the counter. A shade of the palest pink called Fresh Renewal. Based on the name, it seemed like a good choice for Carli’s bedroom, because never, ever in a bajillion, gazillion years would Steve have let her paint their bedroom walls pink. She wasn’t even sure pink should be her first choice, but it was an act of pure empowerment to decorate her bedroom in the girliest way possible. She’d even bought some fur pillows this morning at a different store. Fur pillows! And lampshades with little tiny crystal pendants hanging from the rim. Renee was going to love them.

  “Do you want this one in eggshell or satin?” the associate asked, pointing to the last empty paint can. Their cart was already full of their other choices.

  “Satin, please,” Carli answered.

  “Well, we have some other stuff to shop for,” Ben said. “It was nice to meet you girls.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Tess answered brightly, while Carli smiled and Mia just gave a mild wave of her hand, which she then used to thwack Tess against the back of her head as soon as Ben had rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

  “Ow, what was that for?” Tess demanded, thwacking her back.

  “For inviting Ethan Chase to ride with us. Ohmygosh, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing is wrong with me. I was just trying to be nice.”

  “Pffffft. Nice, my ass,” Mia said.

  “Girls!” Carli said. “Watch your language. And Mia, stop picking on her for being nice.”

  Carli knew Tess wasn’t just being nice. If this Ethan kid looked anything like his father? Well, nice had nothing to do with it at all.

  Chapter 14

  After days of rehearsals, Carli was finally starting to get the hang of things in the studio. Troy, to his credit and much to her surprise, was a decent mentor and really did know his stuff when it came to broadcasting and camera an
gles and how to sit in your chair so you looked like you had perfect posture but not so ramrod straight that you seemed to be tipping forward. He’d coached her on how to pace her speech so she sounded natural and conversational, and he’d even managed to teach her some breathing exercises and not turn it into some kind of sexual innuendo. They were developing into a nice team. And he’d started calling her Carls, which for some silly reason made her feel like she was one of the cool kids. At least he’d stopped calling her Sheila or Gretchen.

  Today she was learning something new, and working with Allie Winters was like a crash course in how to record a remote segment. Carli was in awe of her ease in front of the camera. The meteorologist-turned-cohost was friendly and approachable and made it all look so easy. She somehow managed to make the interviewee look good, too, and that was often the biggest challenge. They were currently at the Glenville Museum standing next to a new exhibit called The Science of Weather. Marlow was there as well, along with Hannah the videographer.

  “Thanks so much for having us here today. What can you tell us about this new exhibit?” Allie asked smoothly before tilting her microphone toward a thick-browed woman wearing a short lab coat and a T-shirt that said I TAKE WEATHER CIRRUSLY.

  “We here at the Glenville Museum are thrilled to share this new exhibit, and we’re certain it’ll be a big hit with our visitors.” She gestured stiffly to a wall mural of various weather events. “We’ve got a combination of visual and interactive displays to engage all age groups,” said the woman. She gestured just as stiffly in the opposite direction, obviously nervous to be in front of the camera. “Over here we have some historical artifacts, such as the first Doppler weather radar console, a few portable tornado-detection devices, and some items damaged by Michigan twisters. That’s another name for tornados. But even more exciting than that, we also have on loan to us a tornado vortex generator, a wind tunnel, and a cloud chamber.” Her voice rose an octave, and Carli got the impression that that stuff was supposed to be cool, although she really had no idea what it was.

  “That’s wonderful,” Allie said, nodding as the woman continued.

  “Over on the other side of the room, you’ll find information about research aircraft and weather radar antennae, along with a green screen so kids can perform their own weather forecast in front of a camera. They love that.”

  “Carli and I are very familiar with the green screen, too, aren’t we, Carli?” Allie said, turning toward her.

  Carli actually wasn’t all that familiar with the green screen. She knew what it was, of course, but she’d never worked in front of one. They hadn’t gotten to that part of her training yet.

  “Yes, very familiar,” she said, hoping to sound experienced and convincing instead of newbie-ignorant and uncertain of herself.

  “Maybe it’s just the weather nerd in me, but I think kids are going to love this,” Allie added. “What about over there?” She pointed to a double-wide door located under a big sign that said GLENVILLE MUSEUM PRESENTS.

  “That’s our IMAX-style theater, where we’ll be showing a fifteen-minute movie on a continuous loop with footage of historical weather events,” the woman said. “And we even have a few special events scheduled where actual storm chasers will come to speak. People love storm chasers.”

  “I definitely love storm chasers,” Allie said, her smile deepening, and Carli found herself smiling as well. Everyone at the station knew how Allie had gone storm chasing just last spring and come home with a fiancé.

  “It all looks so exciting on TV,” Allie said later that day as they were all having a postinterview lunch at the museum café. “Moments of it are so intense that you can’t believe you’re really there, but a lot of it is just driving around trying to figure out the best spot to be and then hoping all the weather elements align to give you that perfect storm.”

  “It’s definitely a week I’ll never forget,” Hannah added. “I was scared out of my mind half of the time, but the other half was pure entertainment watching you and Dylan fall in love.”

  “You actually fell in love in a week?” Carli hadn’t meant to sound so shocked, but her current stance on romance made the very concept all but impossible to believe. She’d heard the rumors around the station, of course, but this was the first time hearing the story from Allie herself. She’d assumed the details had been exaggerated. No one could fall in love that fast. Honestly, how did anyone fall in love ever? She couldn’t even remember the feeling anymore. Oh sure, she enjoyed the random zing she got every time Ben Chase popped up in her field of vision, but that wasn’t about romance. It was just hormones.

  “I know it sounds pretty accelerated, but we’d dated before that, and something about being in such extreme circumstances kind of crystallized for me what I wanted from my life,” Allie said. “Once Dylan came back into my orbit, I realized I’d been chasing after happiness in all the wrong places. Now I can’t imagine my life without him. He’s my person.” Her eyes got teary with emotion, and she blushed.

  Carli gazed at her and felt a surge of envy and awe and sadness. Oh, to be so certain about happily ever after. To enjoy the falling and the optimism about the future. To have hope, and to believe that you had a person who was there just for you, all the time. She hoped Allie was right and that she’d picked the right person. Because during those long, heavy moments in the middle of the night, when Carli was being brutally truthful with herself, she knew, deep down, that Steve had never really been her person. Somehow, they’d been playing the roles of husband and wife without really owning it. They’d done all the things married people were supposed to do. They had sex and professed love and had game night with friends. They had babies and took vacations and bought a house. They argued about inconsequential things and then made up, but somehow, through it all, Carli had felt . . . alone. Like she was looking at her own marriage through frosted glass. She’d known for a very long time that something was out of focus, but the harder she’d struggled to make things right, the blurrier it all became. Like fog rolled in and surrounded her. She just couldn’t see her way clear.

  Sometimes while cooking dinner, she’d imagine a scenario where Steve came home with flowers for no reason at all, just because he’d been thinking of her, and then they’d share some engaging conversation over wine and cheese, followed by intuitive and mutually beneficial sexy time. But then in reality, he’d come home, burst in through the front door, drop all his shit in the foyer, and say, “God, Carli. I have a ton of hair in my ears. Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I need you to trim it. I’m late for fantasy football.”

  Sigh . . .

  So she’d trim the hair from his ears and then watch him gobble down that dinner she’d just made so he could rush out the door and give all his attention to his buddies instead of her. She’d give the kids their bath and read them stories and tuck them into bed before pouring herself a glass of wine and watching home-improvement shows until midnight. Sometimes she’d pour a second glass if she thought Steve would come home feeling amorous, but more often than not, she’d climb under the covers and pretend to be asleep when he arrived so he’d leave her alone. He’d once commented on how she was such a sound sleeper. He never realized she’d hardly slept at all.

  “A python,” DeeDee said later that night. “He promised to get our daughter a kitten, and he got her a frickin’ python instead. What’s my ten-year-old little girl supposed to do with a frickin’ python?”

  On the third Thursday of each month, the ladies of Monroe Circle gathered at someone’s house for cocktails, gossip, and bunco. In reality, it wasn’t all that different from lots of other evenings when they got together for drinks and conversation, but on the third Thursday it also included dice. And like most other evenings, DeeDee was regaling the women with yet another transgression committed by one of her two ex-husbands, the fathers of her four children.

  “What did Maisy say?” Erin asked, picking up the dice and rolling them across the table. “Does she even lik
e snakes?”

  “No, she likes kittens, and that’s what her father promised her, but now he’s trying to say that he’s allergic and if I want her to have a cat then I should get her one myself. But I’m not the one who said she could get a pet, because you know who’ll be cleaning up hair balls from the floor? Me. I’m not doing it. I’m not falling for it this time. He makes me so mad, I swear I need a support group for it. You know, like Ass-a-holics Anonymous?”

  Laughter circled Renee’s impeccably decorated family room, where the twelve women sat around card tables draped with cream-colored linen cloths. No one else ever had tablecloths for bunco. The last time Carli had hosted, she wasn’t even sure if she’d wiped the tables off before anyone arrived, but as usual, Renee’s place looked like a Pinterest board. The kitchen island held a bevy of decorative bowls filled with various dips and spreads and chutneys. There were crackers of various sizes, shapes, and levels of crunch and saltiness. There were gluten-free options, too, of course. Renee would never be so negligent a hostess as to ignore the needs of her celiac-challenged guests. And for those with a sweet tooth, there were cookies decorated to look like dice.

  “Maybe he’s trying to get even because he figured out you hacked into his Netflix account and filled up his watch list with Nicholas Sparks movies,” Lynette said.

  DeeDee smirked. “I didn’t hack anything. If he’s too dumb to change his password, then why should I pay for my own account? He’s just lucky I didn’t use his toothbrush on the dog’s teeth. Again.”

  More laughter. DeeDee’s subtle methods of exacting emotional revenge on her previous husbands were mostly urban legend. Carli wasn’t certain which things she’d actually done and which things she only thought about doing, but there was a very convincing story about her taking an old toilet, putting it in the middle of her ex’s driveway, and filling it with fast-drying cement. He’d backed out of the garage without seeing it. Rumor had it there was significant bumper damage to his car but no way to prove it had been DeeDee who’d caused the accident. Her ironclad alibi placed her nowhere near the scene, but Carli suspected she’d had outside help.