Left to Chance

by Amy Sue Nathan

  PERK

  HOT COFFEE FOR COOL CUSTOMERS

  Two coffee-cup–toting hipsters walked out. I didn’t know what was more unsettling: hipsters and small-batch roasted coffee, or being caught looking at my reflection by someone on the other side of the glass. I turned back to smile, to accept my embarrassment head on, but the man wearing the apron just continued with his work, placing a large pitcher in the center of a high top, and rearranging the smaller ones around it, as if they were an audience. I darted away from the window.

  At least I hadn’t picked my teeth.

  I continued down Main and when I turned the corner, there was Miles standing by the light post, Shay standing by the wall next to him. She leapt toward me and grabbed my hand.

  “Let’s go!”

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  Shay laughed. “Good morning, Aunt Tee. I thought you’d never get here.”

  “Good morning.” I hadn’t expected to see Miles. “I thought we were meeting at the bakery.”

  “Well, it’s not really the bakery anymore.”

  We started walking, Shay holding my hand, being sweet. Being Shay.

  “It’s a reincarnation of Chance Bakery,” Miles said. “Steel-cut oatmeal, organic muffins, gourmet sandwiches and salads. A smoothie bar. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

  “It’s called Fat Chance!” Shay said.

  Of course it is.

  I’d scrolled past the uploaded photos on Facebook and Instagram and had read through enough comments to know that a local woman bought Chance Bakery. From what I could gather, she hadn’t concerned herself with politically correct business names and old-fashioned baked goods, it was all cost analysis, profit and loss statements, and whether gluten free was a fad or the new normal. The new owner was a CPA by training and an analyst by nature. I had a feeling she didn’t give away free cookies. Chance Bakery had always given everyone a free cookie.

  My phone buzzed and I stopped short, yanking my hand from Shay’s, which startled me more than it did her. I was unaccustomed to being attached. I kissed the top of her head, grateful she was still a bit shorter than me. Miles kept walking. “One sec,” I said as I thumb-tapped my home screen and then swiped away another text from Simon.

  I slid my hand back into Shay’s. “I’m hungry.”

  “Here we are,” Miles said.

  Bistro tables and chairs with primary-colored umbrellas had been arranged within a low white picket fence. Pots of drought-tolerant geraniums sat in the middle of each table. A few strollers crowded one corner, with toddlers sucking on straws and sippy cups and women I didn’t recognize sipping from oversized mugs. A mister was blowing a fine breeze. As if my hair wasn’t frizzy enough. I looked away, feeling like an intruder, yet wanting to capture this moment I never imagined, never could have imagined. It would be creepy if I started taking pictures so I could remember the Americana. At work, no one questioned the constant clicks and snaps, because my name tag said TEDDI LERNER, HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER. That title made me laugh and cringe, as if I walked around taking pictures of houses.

  I held up my camera anyway. Click click. The colorful umbrellas against the light blue and cotton puff sky. Flower petals. Wheels. Cracks in the sidewalk—the only thing I recognized. Shay tugged at me and mouthed, See?

  “Take a picture of me and Daddy!” Shay stepped in front of the camera and smashed her cheek against Miles’s. He smiled. He’d done this before—posed with his daughter for an impromptu photo session. It was the thing to do. It just wasn’t something I’d ever done.

  Click.

  “Now let me take one of you and Daddy.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “I know. I want to.”

  I stepped next to Miles and folded my hands over my camera. He put his arm around me, tipped his head toward mine, and smiled. Perhaps Miles had forgotten I couldn’t vote in Union County.

  “Look at me, Aunt Tee.” I did. Shay lifted her phone and tapped. “Done.”

  Everyone’s a photographer these days.

  I opened the door as Shay and Miles walked inside. I followed, and let the door close so close behind me that it tapped my behind and moved me forward. With that one step I felt as if I’d entered a hotel suite in a city I’d never been to, only to find it smelled of familiar perfume.

  The space had been renovated from bland bakery to intentional vintage with mismatched chairs and patterned booths, checkered curtains and stainless steel countertops.

  “Ta-dah,” Shay said. “See why I wanted to come?”

  “Yes, I love it!” I never thought I’d be able to get a smoothie with wheatgrass in Chance. I loved being wrong. I could also order egg-white quiche. And a gluten-free carrot muffin, if I went gluten free in the next week.

  “No, look!” Shay pointed. “I designed the logo for Dad’s campaign. There are signs in a lot of the store windows, too.”

  Attached to the front of the counter was a red, white, and blue banner draped with a COOPER FOR COUNTY COMMISSIONER logo. C-C-C. Shay dipped her head and looked up at me. I winked.

  Shay blushed and then a smile spread across her face. Celia’s smile. Wide and slightly open-mouthed. Genuine, unmistakable, infectious.

  “Sculpture, collage, graphic design. What’s next?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Miles glanced at his phone. “Shay, I’ve got to go. Walk home and Vi will drive you to class this afternoon, okay?”

  “Fine,” Shay said.

  Miles looked at me. “I promised Vi I’d go over the seating chart with her. Again.” He chuckled.

  “Stupid,” Shay whispered. She looked at Miles and said, “Sorry.”

  “I’ll see you this afternoon, right, Teddi? Around two?” Miles asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  Shay tugged away as Miles kissed her on the head. She turned to me and shrugged.

  “Let’s sit and order something,” I said. “I’m starved.”

  Shay and I ordered, and waited, and ate. I still hadn’t seen anyone I knew. Maybe I’d imagined my entire existence here. Maybe Chance had always been a beehive of small-town abundance and I somehow missed it, or worse, ignored it.

  “So, I was thinking about the contest,” I said with my mouthful of muffin.

  “Uncle Beck said I have to apologize for that. For bugging you. That it’s not your thing and I have to respect that. So you don’t have to do it. You shouldn’t do it. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “Maybe I want to do it.”

  “I promised Uncle Beck I’d apologize, and if you enter the contest he’ll think I guilted you into it.”

  “No he won’t.”

  “Yes he will.”

  “I’m a grown-up. If I want to enter that contest, I can. I just haven’t decided whether I want to.”

  “I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  “Oh my God, Shay, it’s not like you could’ve forced me against my will.” But she totally could have. I should have been relieved, but I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do. Or not do—especially not Beck.

  Shay sipped on the straw of her oversized chocolate milk and then blew into it, creating a crown of light brown bubbles. I didn’t tell her to stop.

  Shay rested her elbows on either side of her plate of challah French toast.

  “They’re going to make me move, you know. They think I don’t know, but I heard them talking about selling the house. They can do what they want with the house but I’m not leaving.”

  I stabbed a piece of my omelet and chewed as many times as was possible, which wasn’t very many.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear right. If you were moving, surely someone would have told you.”

  “I guess.”

  “Is there a For Sale sign in the yard? People coming through and looking at the house?”

  “No.”

  “Did your dad make you clean out your closet?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not for sale.”r />
  “Not yet.”

  “Right, so don’t worry about it yet. What do you want to do today?”

  “I have to go home for a stupid dress fitting before art class.”

  “Nothing stupid about a dress fitting! I love dresses. Want me to come?”

  “Daddy said you can’t.”

  Really? I could fly across the country to take the pictures at the wedding but I couldn’t watch Shay have her dress hemmed. “But I’ll see you later, right? When I come over to talk about the wedding pictures?”

  “Don’t go back to Nettie’s on Lark, Aunt Tee! Stay with us! Dad’s always saying it’s a shame that there’s no nice hotel around here. Our house is better than a hotel anyway! You can stay in my room.”

  I would not, could not, sleep in Celia’s house.

  “I’ll text him!”

  “Shay! Stop!” I grabbed her phone. “Your dad and Violet need their privacy.”

  “They don’t live alone. I live there too. And why shouldn’t you be there, you were Mom’s best friend.”

  “You’re right, but it just wouldn’t be comfortable.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because things are different now.”

  “Obvi.”

  “Shay—”

  “I just wanted you to be close since you’re usually not around at all.”

  Called out by a twelve-year-old. Again. “I’ll be around all week. We’ll have lots of time together. How about we hit that mall you love? Tomorrow after art class, okay?”

  Shay smirked. “Fine.”

  The door opened to a blast of giggles, and a group of girls walked in, no discernible space between them. I recognized only the idea of them. At that age, Celia and I had always wanted, needed, to be close enough to whisper and be heard.

  I hoped Shay knew these girls. I wanted to meet her best friend, to see flashes of my and Celia’s past in their private jokes and feel hope for the future in their rays of laughter. I wanted Shay to know, really know, how twelve-year-old promises could last a lifetime, to one day look back and know that twelve-year-old jokes could always be funny. Or that remembering them could be funny. I wanted to tell her that these friendships, the ones she had today, mattered in the scheme of her big, long life. Especially her best friendship. The simultaneous need and independence of a lifelong best top-tier friendship was unparalleled and irreplaceable. That was both the blessing and the curse. I couldn’t tell if these girls knew Shay. She’d never mentioned a best friend before. I hadn’t asked. Shay stared at her food, and I stared at her.

  I focused my attention on the chattering of the girls, the pitch and cadence of their giggles, snaps, and foot taps. They read the chalkboard menus aloud, as if for the first time.

  “That’s a hideous banner,” one girl said, pointing at the banner Shay had designed for Miles. “Stupid thing to hang in here.”

  “Hey…” I said.

  The girls swiveled their bodies toward us, then back to the counter.

  “Don’t, Aunt Tee!” Shay whispered and shook her head.

  “Do you know them?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  One girl surreptitiously pressed her foot on the banner, leaving the dusty print of a flip-flop.

  “Holy—”

  “Shit?” Shay whispered. “I know.”

  I should have said no, that holy moly was what I was going to say. I might not have been a perfect faux aunt, but I wasn’t a liar. “Yes. Holy shit. Shouldn’t we do something? Call the manager?”

  Shay just shook her head.

  The girls stood near the counter, collected bags and cups, and floated toward the door without a glance our way. I watched until each of them was outside and the door shut.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Leave it alone.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Can’t we talk about something else?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Let it go, please!” Shay wasn’t demanding, she was pleading.

  “Fine.” How was I supposed to follow what had just happened? Talk about the weather? “Chloe and Rebecca from last night seem nice.”

  “They are.”

  “Are they your best friends?”

  “I just met them. In art class. Not everybody has to have a best friend, you know.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Who’s your best friend now?”

  I swallowed. Celia had been the only person I’d ever called my best friend.

  “See? You don’t have one. Why should I?”

  “Well … when your mom and I were your age we were inseparable.”

  “Well,” Shay said. “I’m not my mother.”

  “Oh, you’re just like her. You look like her, you even sound like her, and you’re talented like she was—crazy talented. That sculpture? That banner? I bet you could sew too if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t want to sew.” Shay looked away from me, at the wall, then the table, then back to the wall.

  “Well, that’s okay, I just meant you were a lot like your mom. That’s a good thing. A really good thing.”

  Shay shrugged, and tucked her hair behind her ears, but wisps of preteen insecurities remained.

  I wondered how Shay would have been different if Celia were alive. Or was this Shay—a little uncertain, sometimes bold, and both serious and whimsical—predestined from the start?

  It was irrelevant really, because Celia wasn’t here. But Shay was, and she was fabulous, even when she ignored my questions or snapped at her dad.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say you should want to be just like your mother. You’re your own person. And that’s exactly who you should be.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to be like her,” Shay said. “I’m just not.”

  Chapter 5

  I STAYED AT THE Fat Chance Café answering e-mails and writing next week’s to-do lists for an hour after Shay left. The waitress refilled my Royal Albert vintage teacup with hot water three times without being asked. I folded a ten-dollar bill and slid it all the way under the mismatched saucer before I left.

  I headed away from Main Street and the town square, away from Lark Street, and toward the oldest part of town with the biggest trees, the smallest houses, and the most space that hadn’t been filled in with something new. Here, the sidewalks rippled from overgrown roots. The houses were stone or brick, two- or three-bedroom family homes built when no one had en suite bathrooms or attached garages. The residents either stayed for decades or left for the newer east side of town when their second or third babies were born, aching for a little more space inside and a little more space outside between themselves and their neighbors. That’s where I grew up, even though my parents never had that second baby. And now, even that part of town wasn’t new anymore.

  I stood in the middle of the road and stared through the tunnel of arching oaks. The small stone cottage on the corner sat atop a hill. I’d always thought that house belonged in a fairy tale, or had been stolen from one. I crouched and looked up. The cottage looked like a mansion from this angle, pinned onto a bulletin board made from a cumulous sky.

  House photographer, indeed.

  A woman pushing a double stroller passed me and smiled, as if she always passed a woman in a dress squatting and holding a camera.

  “Good morning,” I said. Maybe I’d seen her yesterday at the art show, or earlier on Main Street. If I hadn’t, I’d probably see her tomorrow—so, win-win. The toddler twisted his body to look back at me. I baby-waved and he waved back.

  Then I saw my cousin, Maggie Myers, standing outside her one-story redbrick bungalow, with a bucket at her feet, dragging a squeegee across her first-floor windows. Or at least the bottom half of the windows. Maggie was my mother’s second cousin, but to me, she was always just Cousin Maggie. She had retired from her half century as head librarian at Chance Library, staying on even after the Union County Public Library had opened years before. She had e-mailed my mothe
r that the whole town had thrown a surprise retirement party and announced the closing of Chance Library that very same day. I’d been convinced the town council kept it open just for her.

  I turned my back to Maggie’s house, embarrassed that I hadn’t called her in years, guilty that I hadn’t yet stopped by or at least let her know I was coming. I’d come back later, or another day, to say hello and catch up on family gossip I’d already heard from my mother.

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  Step, slide. Step, slide. Step, slide.

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  I turned around. “Hi, Cousin Maggie.”

  “Can you help me?” she asked.

  “Sure.” I walked up Maggie’s steps and met her in front of the window.

  “Can’t reach that corner,” she said.

  I took the squeegee and maneuvered it into the upper right corner of the window. I twisted the handle and pulled, making it longer.

  “Oh, I knew I forgot something.”

  “How are you?” I asked. I waited to be scolded for something. Cousin Maggie had always been very kind to me but was also known for being no-nonsense.

  “I’m good now that I can reach the top of the window.” Maggie looked at the window and ignored me. Then she turned to me and startled, as if I’d appeared out of nowhere. “You’re here.”

  “I am. I’m…”

  “Going to the wedding.”

  Miles and Violet’s wedding was the event of the summer; everyone in town would know about it.

  “You look well, dear.”

  “Thank you, so do you.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I look about as well as my windows here, and they’re peeling and creaky and get stuck from the heat and then stuck from the cold.”

  My parents had always complained of the same thing.

  “What’s this I hear about you leaving?”

  “I left six years ago and moved to Chicago. But I live mostly in San Francisco now, when I’m not traveling for work, that is.”

  “How does someone live somewhere mostly? You either live somewhere or you don’t. And anyway, you and Lester have lived on Poppy Lane ever since the day you two got married. I don’t know why you are taking off in that contraption of yours.”

  She thought I was my mother.