Issuing a restraining order against your neighbor was mathematically challenging, it turned out, where yards as literal rectangles of grass made more sense than as units of measure, and there weren’t nearly enough of them in between. Detective Bryant had called first thing and told her that since Paul had already been making moves to put his house on the market, he’d been ordered to relocate back to the dingy apartment. Evidently, they expected him to cooperate fully now that his medical license could be in jeopardy. He’d warned Izzy, though, that the media weren’t as likely to keep a safe distance once they got word of his arrest. Any time now.
Oddly, for the first time in a long while, Izzy wasn’t worried. Not about Paul or anything else. It was as if the impossible sadness and fear she’d been unable to hide from in the world around her had arrived on her doorstep and she had looked it in the eye and turned it away.
Not here.
Not me.
The fact that help had arrived when she needed it, and had put its faith in her and in the truth, had restored her belief in something. The world was not against her. The right people, evidently, were on her side.
She waved Clara closer. “It’s freezing out here,” she called. “Come drink something warm and non-nonalcoholic with me.”
It took only a glance to know that of course Clara wasn’t feeling smug about being right about Paul. She was feeling sorry. She hadn’t wanted to be right. Izzy never should have bristled the way she had.
She led the way into the garage and held open the door to the kitchen. “Irish coffee?”
Clara shrugged. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya.”
The brewer’s burner light still glowed warm, as if expecting company all along. She moved to get the Baileys from the fridge while Clara settled onto a counter stool.
“Of everything that ever bothered me about Second Date Update,” Izzy told her, “I now know firsthand the worst thing.” In the cupboard by the sink, her hand hovered over a set of stemmed dessert coffee glasses, then chose two larger, cozier hand-fired clay mugs and began to fill them. “Sometimes you can get a read on the callers right away. I’ve seen it all—and a lot of it, I’ve seen coming.”
She carried the mugs to Clara and handed one over.
“But sometimes,” Clara finished for her, “you can’t tell.”
“Not even when you’re really trying.” She fixed her eyes on Clara, hoping to convey something not unlike an apology. Clara waved it away as if she’d spoken the words aloud, and just like that, the air was cleared.
“Please tell me they aren’t going to make you do some kind of follow-up on the air.”
“They’re not going to make me do some kind of follow-up on the air. Because I’m not going back.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “You’re going to quit?”
“Would you believe Yellow Springs Public Radio called this morning and offered me a job?”
“91.3 WYSO?”
Izzy nodded.
“I love WYSO!”
“They saw Hallie’s profile in that gazette thing. I guess their morning producer resigned and they’re desperate for a new one who requires minimal training. Didn’t even want to interview me. Just asked if I was tired of commuting to Dayton and offered to match my salary.”
Clara let out a delighted squeal. “And here I thought we were drinking our sorrows away. We’re celebrating!” She clinked her mug to Izzy’s, and they both took a sip. “You’ve got to tell Hallie. She’ll be so excited to hear something good came of the paper! Natalie too.”
“I take it you’re back on good terms?”
“She was at my back door this morning with muffins. I get the sense she views neighbors the way I do—sort of like family. You don’t get to pick them, and you’re stuck sharing space whether you like it or not, so you might as well try to get along.”
Izzy laughed. “So you admit you’re only nice to me because I’m across the street! I always suspected.”
“Just because you don’t pick your neighbors doesn’t mean you can’t be grateful for the ones you get.”
“Randi and Rhoda are like quirky fun cousins, then.”
“And you’re like the slightly younger sister I never had.”
“I have one of those,” Izzy said. “But I haven’t done a very good job as big sis lately.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“You meant well.” Izzy turned serious. “Actually, so did I.”
Clara took a long sip of her drink. “You know, when I married Benny, everyone was giving us all this unsolicited advice. It’s like an invitation to a wedding is an invitation to unload all your baggage in the form of wisdom onto the couple.”
Izzy laughed. “I noticed that with Penny and Josh. I kept hoping people would quit telling them what to do right so they might screw it up.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I just admitted to that. I’ve been awful.”
Clara laughed too. “No one involved in a wedding is exempt from engaging in some kind of awful behavior. I think it’s a bylaw.” Izzy wished she could let herself off the hook so easily. “Anyway, it was annoying. I didn’t think we needed any advice. We were perfect together, one of the lucky couples. I would have made you throw up in your mouth a little.”
Izzy gave her a look. “You still sort of do sometimes. No offense.”
“None taken. But there was one bit—and I don’t even know who said it—that stood out as useful and true: On your wedding day, you’re choosing to love that person forever, but that’s just the beginning. You have to continue to choose them, every day. It’s not like your other options are going to go away—it’s up to you to turn them away. Marriage isn’t what it once was to a lot of people. And if you really want it to work, you’re not making a one-time vow—you’re committing to a lifetime of remarrying that person every day. That’s not the most romantic thing in the world, but it made sense to me then, and it makes even more sense to me now.”
Izzy nodded at her blankly.
“If you can choose to love someone every day,” Clara said, “maybe you can choose not to love them, for as many days as it takes until it sticks.”
“Funny you should say that,” Izzy said. “I just packed everything I have of Josh into the trash. I’m literally kicking him to the curb—not that he’ll ever know.”
“Do we have Paul to thank for this?”
“I’d prefer to credit his better half.”
Clara nodded slowly, staring into her coffee. “What happened last night … I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the reporters catch wind?”
Izzy nodded. “Detective Bryant said he’d appeal to them to keep my name out of it, but that I should brace for the worst.” She raised her cup to Clara. “Liquid courage.”
Clara was quiet for a moment. “If it comes, it will blow through.” Izzy nodded. She was dragging her feet about calling her family, operating in one-step-at-a-time mode. Her mother would be a basket case. “Hard as it is,” Clara went on, “without any kind of coverage he’d be just … just out there, for some other unsuspecting woman.”
“That will probably be the case—eventually, anyway—whether I’m a blip on the local news or not. Although Detective Bryant said they might have probable cause to get a warrant to search Kristin’s house now. He’s going to try for one, though he didn’t seem particularly hopeful of finding anything, even if it’s granted. So much time has passed, and so much has been packed up.”
Clara looked like she was about to press the issue, then checked herself with a nod.
“He knows my favorite place to hike alone,” Izzy said quietly. “Guess I can’t go anymore.”
“I’ll go with you,” Clara said automatically, and Izzy found herself biting back a grateful smile. She’d been spending too much time dwelling on relationships she didn’t have. The ones right in front of her held so much potential when she stopped being so self-conscious and allowed for the fact that her new friends knew her faul
ts and still seemed to like her. For a moment, she and Clara sipped their coffees in companionable silence.
“You know,” Clara began, “Detective Bryant, he seemed really concerned about you. Sweetly concerned.”
Izzy sighed. “He asked me out, actually—before all this.”
Clara opened her mouth to speak, but Izzy held up a hand.
“Maybe the timing will be better down the road,” Clara rushed to say.
“I know I have a lot to sort out,” Izzy said quietly. “But it’s not just that.”
“He’s not your type?”
Izzy hesitated. For months she’d been lamenting that if life were like the movies, Josh never would have gone through with marrying Penny. Likewise, a Hollywood version of Izzy would have jumped at a second chance with Detective Bryant, disregarding her better judgment with a shrug. But really, it was too bad that the movies weren’t more like life.
If they were, maybe people wouldn’t spend so much time waiting around hoping for alternate endings, or deleted scenes.
She shook her head. “For once, I just want there to be a story with a happily-ever-after that does not involve ending up with a love interest. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Absolutely,” Clara said without a hint of hesitation.
Izzy decided to believe her.
44
I couldn’t be more glad for you—and not just because your happy ending gives me hope that I’ll find mine too.
—Liv’s handwritten note in the engagement card discovered in Clara’s in-box the Monday after the Christmas party
Ohio’s November skies usually struck Clara as unforgiving, but as she turned her eyes upward on her way to the mailbox, this evening’s offering seemed more sympathetic. A full spectrum of blues blended itself into the darkening gray as if to say, I’m sorry this is the best you’re going to get until spring, but I’m trying.
Soon Thanksgiving would come and go, and Christmas would bring enough cheer to distract from the slog of winter ahead. Then they’d all resign themselves to it for the dreary months to follow. She’d adopt a shameless wardrobe of fleece pants and thermal shirts, and hunker down. It wouldn’t be the same without Kristin and her brood crunching across the snowy yard to share hot chocolate after school, but maybe there’d be new friends for her and the kids next door. The pretty Victorian remained the perfect picture of a place to raise a family.
The FOR SALE sign in its front yard was swinging almost imperceptibly in the breeze as a shiny red car slowed to a stop in front of Izzy’s house. Penny’s coat fell open as she stepped out of the driver’s side, revealing the baby bump that was just starting to show, and waved a silent greeting to Clara. Penny had become a fast regular on the street these past weeks, but for the first time she wasn’t arriving alone. The messy-haired, fresh-faced man who offered his hand as she stepped over the curb was smiling at her with such adoration that Clara had to look away at the pang she felt for her friend awaiting their arrival inside. It was almost a shame Penny didn’t know what Izzy had sacrificed for sisterly love, though clearly it was better this way.
Sometimes keeping something from someone you loved really was the best thing—the bravest thing—uncomfortable though it may be.
At the mailbox, Clara peeked at the only real letter in the thick stack of mail, slid it into her pocket, and gathered up the bills and Black Friday circulars, so many that she hugged them to herself as she went back inside, suddenly feeling abuzz with possibility. Benny was in the kitchen, Thomas hanging on one of his legs—“Daddy, want to see what I can do? Want to see what I can do?”—and Maddie on the other—“Daddy do! Daddy do!”—as he attempted to open the fridge with a look hovering between amusement and annoyance. Clara knew that amusement would win out, but also that not all wives and children were so lucky.
And before she could lose her nerve—the images of Penny and Josh and the FOR SALE sign next door intermingling with the one in front of her—an idea that had existed only in her brain was bubbling over.
“All this stuff with Kristin and her sister, then Izzy and her sister, has me thinking about my own family,” she blurted out. Benny looked up at her in surprise. “I know my mom drives me insane, but for my part, I could do better.” She expertly relocated Maddie 180 degrees around Benny’s leg, opened the door, and handed him the five o’clock Friday beer she knew he was after.
“You’re getting good at this June Cleaver thing,” he said, taking it gratefully, and she shot him a look. He’d been apologetic in his shock after the incident with Paul and Izzy, and she’d told him the only apology she was after was one for having questioned how she should be spending her days. He’d backpedaled fiercely.
“What does insane mean, Mommy? Your mom is Grandma, right? Grandma drives you insane?”
She really had to start watching what she said around Thomas. She hugged him to her, hoping futilely that he might forget the question. “June Cleaver, at your service,” she told Benny over his head, rolling her eyes.
“Maybe I was just thinking of cleavers in general,” he said wryly.
“Funny. But really. I could get a cheap midweek flight after Thanksgiving, maybe? The kids will have cabin fever before long—Florida sunshine will do them good.” Thomas had turned his attention back to his relentless pursuit of interesting Benny in watching the same Hot Wheels trick for the tenth time, and Clara was practically shouting over him to be heard. “Maybe you’d like a few quiet evenings too,” she added with a smile.
“If that’s what I have to sacrifice for you to reconnect with your mom, so be it.”
She helped herself to a beer too, overcome by one of her increasingly frequent urges to wrap herself in the cozy ordinariness of it all: the banter at the end of a long week, the grilled cheese on sourdough she’d throw together with soup, the movie she’d picked up for after the kids were in bed. “I’ll be the one sacrificing my sanity after one night with my mother. Prepare to defend your actions when I ask why you ever let me think it was a good idea to go.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “Has anyone ever told you you’re really good at doing the right thing?”
She shook her head, pretending she wasn’t still hoping that someone would.
* * *
Christmas lights wound around palm trunks in their best impression of a holiday Corona commercial. Glittery oversized snowflakes hung in windows and storefronts, which puzzled her. Santas and reindeer she’d expected, but why evoke snow? Part of the charm of Christmas this far south was that it didn’t have a thing to do with being cold but was festive anyway.
Clara found she liked it here this time of year. The joy had drained out of the holiday when they’d lost Liv, and she’d been trying to redeem it ever since. Having Thomas and Maddie had poured the magic back in, but seeing Christmas come to life so far from home was like an accidental healing salve to a wound she hadn’t realized was still open.
But maybe it wasn’t accidental. She was here seeking a kind of peace, after all.
“Mom?” Clara stepped into the tiny living room of her parents’ condo and found her mother clad in a hot pink jogging suit that made swooshing noises when she moved, demonstrating for Thomas and Maddie how to use her water aerobics equipment.
No wonder Dad spends every waking minute golfing, she thought, then chastised herself for the cruelty. Her parents had spent so much of their marriage apart that it seemed they’d forgotten how to spend time together, even though now they had nothing but.
“I know this weight is just foam, but you’d be surprised how much water resistance it gives you in toning your core,” her mother was telling Thomas, who nodded solemnly, touching it with his index finger as if it were a curious alien object fallen to earth. Maddie was busy trying to balance what looked like some sort of armband on her head, giggling each time it slid to the ground.
Her mother hadn’t exactly figured out how to employ a more grandmotherly version of her uninspired mothering strategies, but the kids
didn’t seem to mind. Everything about this trip was novel to them—the plane, the rental car, the condo complex arranged as a maze of balconies and shuffleboard courts and, at the center, a pool so heated it was like bathwater. Clara was enjoying the change of scene, too, so much that she almost felt guilty for leaving Benny at home, where winter was blowing in no less bleak than the tension on their street that had not quite subsided. He was hopeful, though, that the extra hours he was squeezing in this week would afford him more family time during the holiday, and for Clara, getting the better end of both deals, that was a pretty good tradeoff.
“Would you mind watching the kids for a bit?” Clara asked “There’s something I was hoping to run out and do.”
She fixed her face in a look meant to imply that Santa had a mission afoot—as so many looks did this time of year—and fortunately her mother wasn’t so far removed from parenting that she missed the reference. Tucking her cropped silver hair behind her ear, for a second she almost looked like an elf.
“Take all the time you want,” she said. “If we aren’t here when you get back, check the pool.”
The drive to the coast was short, and Clara followed the two-lane road along the Gulf through stop-and-go traffic for a few miles farther, until she reached the pier. She pulled the rental car into a spot and put more money in the meter than she’d need, just to be safe. Before her was an array of shops filled with impulse buys and guilty pleasures, and she set about browsing through one boutique, then the next, running her fingertips over racks of first-name key chains and palm tree magnets and sunset postcards. She stopped to examine miniature chests carved from driftwood, beds of perfect tiny shells inside. Colorful kites with long tails, fashioned to look like exotic animals turned airborne. Pretty flower-print sarongs, the kind that always seemed like just the thing until you got them home and realized they never fit any occasion in the Midwest.
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