Nineteen The appointment with the divorce attorney has been made. I wonder if this is how Charlotte felt when she made that first marriage counseling appointment. That first official, bring-in-the-third-party step of attempting to repair a damaged relationship. Things suddenly become so much more real. As if everything that preceded the appointment—the separation, the anguish, all that waiting—weren’t enough. While Charlotte and Marco are on their way to marital reconciliation, Adam and I are on our way to what Marian’s lovingly coined individual identity reconciliation. I get what she implies—Adam and I don’t hate or resent each other; we’re not angrily pulling the plug on our marriage, vengefully calling it quits, fighting over assets and finding ways to apply pressure, get in the last word and final dig to the side. We’re reconciling with each other on an individual level. He’s to find himself, and I’m to find myself. Adding the appointment with the divorce attorney—my last entry fo
Epilogue TWO YEARS LATER It’s that time of year again. That time when the winds get gustier, the nights get dark earlier, the street lamps are bedecked with red-ribboned wreaths. It’s that time of year when you show your gratitude for those important in your life, when you look back on the year and recall its fond memories, when you say to yourself, Boy, time flies as you rip open the new calendar and prepare to hang it on the wall—a fresh set of days, weeks, and months, brimming with possibility and opportunity. I drop my cell phone into my Gucci tote, a gift that represents one of the most significant and also most trying Christmases of my life better than it represents wealth, class, and sophistication. I check twice to make sure my keys are also inside my tote. I don’t have a roommate I can count on to open the door when she gets off work in the event that I forget them. (Although Marian does have a key to my place—my home is always hers, hers mine.) Marian and I live across town f
Acknowledgments Where do I start? I suppose with the woman who made Everything the Heart Wants happen sooner rather than later, Kelli Martin—editor extraordinaire, warm heart, kind soul, and my drink of no-freakout-water. Kelli, I’m still pinching myself that you found that bright cherry-red cover out of nowhere, read and fell in love with Gracie and Juliette’s story, and decided little ol’ me needed to join the Lake Union family. You have opened wide the doors and did the impossible: you made writing even more fun. Thank you for believing in me and, of course, for keeping in check my freakouts. Many thanks to my wonderful developmental editor, Lindsay. We were peas in a pod on this novel. I had so much fun shaping this story with you. Let’s do it again! Thank you to Sadie, Stacy, and the entire editing team. It’s tough work sifting through one word after another, but your efforts have helped make this a novel one of which I am so very proud. (Look, no annoying preposition ending!) Hea
About the Author Savannah Page is the author of Everything the Heart Wants, A Sister’s Place, and the When Girlfriends series. Sprinkled with drama and humor, her women’s fiction celebrates friendship, love, and life. A native Southern Californian, Savannah lives in Berlin, Germany, with her husband, their goldendoodle, and her collection of books. Readers can visit her at www.SavannahPage.com.
Also by Savannah Page
A Sister’s Place
Bumped to Berlin
When Girlfriends Series
When Girlfriends Break Hearts
When Girlfriends Step Up
When Girlfriends Make Choices
When Girlfriends Chase Dreams
When Girlfriends Take Chances
When Girlfriends Let Go
When Girlfriends Find Love
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Savannah Page
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542046039
ISBN-10: 1542046033
Cover design by Michael Rehder
To every woman, wherever her path may lead, whatever her heart may choose, whomever she may love, however she may fly.
Contents
Start Reading
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Home is the nicest word there is.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder
The real things haven’t changed.
It is still best to be honest and truthful;
to make the most of what we have;
to be happy with simple pleasures;
and have courage when things go wrong.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder
One
We had a plan.
No one in the history of the world has ever said, “If you work hard enough and believe deeply enough, life will turn out exactly as you planned. You’ll have everything you could ever want and then some.” No one. Ever.
But still. We had a plan. And I expected that plan to go . . . according to plan.
I’ve never been especially fabulous at making decisions, nor particularly confident in the ones I do manage to make, but there are two things of which I am absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, 100 percent certain. And never in a million years did I imagine that these two ironclad decisions would be at odds with each other. That in what would be the great big novel of Halley Brennan’s life, they were the choices that would make the novel both move forward and come to a screeching halt.
Adam Brennan and I had a plan, and it all started when we first met fifteen years ago during my sophomore year in college, when my good friend Nina invited me to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Nina’s sophisticated, older, and very attractive brother Adam was there, home for the holidays while studying for his MBA. As soon as I laid eyes on the tall, dark-haired, brown-eyed sweetheart with the wide smile that creased his eyes, butterflies were set loose in my stomach. When I watched him set up the new TiVo for his father, and when I saw how he kissed his mother’s cheek hello and goodbye—warm and appreciative gestures I’m sure all mothers wish for from their grown sons—serious crush mode set in.
Adam and I didn’t have our first date until my senior year two years later, but you can be certain that if a plan wasn’t already in the works for our future when we first laid eyes on each other fifteen Thanksgivings ago, there most definitely was one as soon as we broke apart from our first magical kiss on our first magical date.
Finding Adam was like finding a part of myself. It might sound corny or clichéd, but everything about finding Adam felt right. He turned out to be exactly what I’d been looking for, hoping for, planning for. He was the One.
During our first date, Adam and I reminisced about our backpacking trips to Europe—I’d recently returned from a summer abroad in London; he’d also studied abroad as an undergrad, in Edinburgh. On our overseas adventures we’d both kissed the Blarney Stone, taken the Berlin Underworlds air raid shelter tour, spent not one entire day but two in the Louvre, and opted to save a gondola ride in Venice for the next time we’d visit the romantic city, when we wouldn’t be single.
I was an
English lit major who had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and an A in an elective introductory business class I’d taken to break up the Fitzgerald-Whitman-and-Shelley routine. Adam had studied business and marketing as an undergrad, and he devoured anything by John Irving and was unashamedly open about his love for the Little House books. “They make me feel like I’m coming home,” he said.
I hadn’t known I could love something coming out of someone’s mouth as much as I loved that ridiculously endearing comment. That is, until Adam told me those three little words. When he told me he’d found his match, that I was his One.
I was the girl who loved sushi and couldn’t handle hard liquor . . . often making really poor choices under the influence. He was the guy who knew how to make sushi and steered clear of anything harder than beer, wine, or champagne . . . because of an alcoholic uncle.
I was the girl who loved to jog and was intimidated by driving any and all LA freeways, despite having grown up in Pasadena. He was the guy who needed a jogging partner and had helped pay for college by couriering—he knew LA like the back of his hand and loved getting behind the wheel.
I was the girl who was interested in serious relationship material, wanted to call LA, or at least Southern California, my home, my Little House, forever, and had aspirations of traveling to Beijing, learning French, and writing a novel. He was the guy who had never been into dating around, had been born and raised in Glendale and had no plans to leave sunny SoCal, and aspired to a life filled with travel, delicious food, and an abundance of love . . . and he liked my novel-writing idea.
As if it were written in the stars, Adam and I were a perfect match. A perfect complement to each other, filling each other’s gaps, each being positive when the other was negative, fitting each other like that proverbial glove.
As soon as I graduated from college, Adam and I moved in together, and our routines and lives melded together effortlessly. Our first place was a small one-bedroom first-floor apartment in a shabbier part of otherwise lovely Pasadena, complete with unreliable water pressure and a chronic ant problem. We shared Adam’s barely-hanging-on Acura he’d had since before there was a we, and we were happy. Blissfully happy. He’d pour me a bowl of cereal while I battled with the showerhead; I’d stick to his travel coffee mug a Post-it with an XO or You sexy thing sentiment scrawled on it while he fought the classic start-the-car battle. It was a beautiful and uncomplicated and true love. In every way possible.
Upon completing his MBA, Adam landed a position at Disney, and after two years he finally began to see the benefits of his long hours and dedication. He was promoted to marketing department team manager. I couldn’t have been more proud. We jetted off for a short but memorable weekend in Sonoma to celebrate.
“You make me feel like home,” I told Adam on the night we returned after our brief getaway up north. We’d come home, left our luggage by the door, opened one of our souvenir bottles of Zinfandel, headed straight for our bedroom, and made love.
“I love you so much, Adam Brennan,” I whispered against his lips, the sheet taut against our entwined legs. “So very much.”
Adam had that charming sparkle in his dark eyes when he said, “You are my home, Miss Halley West.” He kissed the top of my bare shoulder. “I love you. To the moon and back.”
His fingers found their way to the base of my left shoulder blade, where he lightly traced my lone tattoo. My best friend, Marian Kroeber, and I had gotten them during spring break in Florida one year in college. While her rainbow tattoo, also on her left shoulder blade, was the result of an inebriated liking for something “colorful and cute” (not to mention it was on the first page of the parlor’s portfolio), mine carried a bit of significance. It was a comet, and one with which I shared my name—Halley’s Comet.
“Or, rather, to the edge of our solar system and back,” Adam corrected, still tracing my tattoo. He kissed my shoulder once more. “My Halley.”
Straight out of college, with Adam destined to flourish in his career, I’d found myself working a number of odd jobs, unable to land my desired position at a magazine or newspaper in need of an aspiring writer. Once I settled in as a receptionist for an advertising firm, around the time Adam was really moving and shaking at Disney, our future started to look brighter. Things were still meager some months, but that’s nothing when you’re twentysomething and in love and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, promise on the horizon, and optimism packed in your pockets.
There was one thing my twenty-two-year-old self knew that Christmas season: I had a plan for my life, and Adam was unequivocally a part of it. So when he took me by surprise and got down on one knee in the middle of a Christmas tree lot, telling me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with the woman who made him smile, who made him love, who made him feel at home, too . . . and who made him stamp, twist, turn, and fluff every. Single. Tree. In the lot, I knew not only that I’d met my match but that I had never been more confident and eager than I was in making this perfectly right decision.
Adam. He was my wonderful, confident decision.
I knew Adam was my One not only because of the way he securely held me against his firm, warm chest when the nights were chilly, or the way he let his kisses linger, his lips kissing at the kiss he’d left on my still-parted lips, or the way he looked at me from across a crowded room, as if he wanted to steal me away for an hour or an eternity, any measure of time to tell me how right we were for each other. I knew that Adam was my perfect match because when I imagined my future he was simply in it. He was my partner, my very best friend, my forever.
And for all the ways we complemented each other, made each other feel, and knew in our heart of hearts that we had been destined to find each other, there was one very important piece to the puzzle that could have been a game changer, a real deal breaker. Sure though I was about my love for Adam Brennan, I was also sure about my decision not to become a mother. Not then. Not ten years down the road. Not now. Not ever. I have never remembered a time when I pictured myself carrying a diaper bag, pushing a stroller, raising a mini me.
I didn’t want to play mommy when other girls my age had baby dolls they pretended to nurse and sing to sleep. Sure, I had baby dolls. They were cute toys you could dress up, lay in a cradle, and read your storybooks to. And your friends always reached for their dolls during playtime, and you obviously didn’t want to be left out, the weirdo who preferred her collection of Hot Wheels cars, much to her friends’ chagrin. I did the proper little-girl thing and cared for my dolls. When I played house with my sister and our friends, I somehow found myself, by default, the single businesswoman without kids, or the married woman with a pet dog played by a little sister, or the woman who lived alone and spent her days brewing pretend tea and watering faux flowers.
It isn’t that I dislike children. They’re not my favorite of tiny creatures, but I don’t run from a public playground in fear of their sticky hands and toothless smiles. When my younger sister, Charlotte, had her first, second, and third children, I was overwhelmed with a familial love for them I wouldn’t trade for the world. I love being an aunt, and I adore her children (more when they’re well behaved and not running amok, but I digress). But when I look at Charlotte’s children, the ones I love more than any in the world, my heart does not long to have one of my own. My sister casually mentioned when her third, Leah, was born that she thought I’d get the baby bug. I was over thirty, at an age when the bug often came around, so I’d better beware.
Leah was a beautiful baby. Button nose, rosy cheeks, skin soft as could be and smelling like only a baby’s can, and she always slept like a rock in my arms. No hassle, no fuss . . . and yet no itch, no bug. Charlotte’s path was not—is not—for me. The millions of women who yearn for a swaddled bundle who’s half them, half their partner aren’t waving anything sparkly and shiny in the shop window that I long to have.
Do I lack that mothering gene, that maternal instinct? That hormone that “they” sa
y is supposed to kick in, if not during your late twenties then certainly in your thirties? Where is that supposedly ticking clock that reminds you to get to procreating? That most Darwinian of urges, to participate in sexual selection so as to contribute to the rich tapestry that is the circle of life?
Steadfast in my decision not to wear that honorable badge of motherhood someday, I would responsibly mention this tidbit to every single guy I dated, just in case. Usually I did so on the first date if I thought there would be a second. It might seem forward and unorthodox, but better safe than sorry. Procreation is nothing to take lightly. I didn’t want to risk falling in love with a man who could not accept my lacking the momma gene. I didn’t want to love hard and lose big. Better to know straightaway. If I were to someday meet a man, fall in love, and choose to spend the rest of my life with him, I wanted it to be filled with freedom, adventure, and the ability to live tethered only to each other. There would be no room for three or four or more in our coupled-ness. I wanted a life free of children, and he would need to want the same.
So it was on our very first date, at a coffeehouse near my college campus, that I posed the ultimate potential game changer to Adam.
Everything the Heart Wants Page 2
