“Are you guys having a good time?” Fiona asked. Her eyes remained directed toward Elsa, as though looking at Carmella was akin to looking at the sun.
“We are. Haven’t been here long,” Elsa said. Elsa was the queen of small talk — something Carmella had never mastered nor understood. Cody knew this about her. He seemed not to care so much right then.
But even now, he still refused to make eye contact with her. He continued to look back toward Fiona. Had they rekindled their romance? Had they decided to try again?
Carmella considered turning out from the crowd and marching directly into the sea just for the slightest moment, but then came back to reality.
Gretchen tugged at her father’s hand with excitement. Fiona laughed in that beautiful way of hers, a way Carmella had always been jealous of, and said, “You know what it’s like with a toddler. We have to go where she wants to go. At least until we can convince her to go to sleep for the night.”
We! They would be there, together, to put her to sleep for the night! Carmella felt shattered. She forced another smile and said, “Enjoy the festival.” They then swept around Elsa and Carmella as her knees clacked together and her legs threatened to take her to the pavement below.
Elsa waited a moment before she drudged up the words.
“What the heck was that?”
Carmella shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Did you and Cody have a falling out?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Um. What?”
Carmella heaved a sigh. Bruce appeared before them and dotted a kiss on Elsa’s cheek in greeting. All the while, Elsa’s eyes remained on Carmella’s.
“He’ll get over it. Whatever it is,” Elsa said.
“Who will get over what?” Bruce asked.
Elsa’s hand spread across Bruce’s chest. Her lip puckered out with sorrow. “I’m just so sorry, Carmella.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carmella sounded defeated. “Really. Let’s just enjoy the festival.”
But Elsa’s face remained stern. It was the face of an older sister who’d just learned someone was hurting her baby sister. Regardless of what had happened between them, that face would always make a reappearance. It was just the way things were, as expected as the blue sky above.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Just before Carmella and Elsa planned to leave the Lodge to head to their first joint therapy session, there was a knock at the door of Carmella’s office. Carmella assumed it was Elsa and called, “Come in! I’ll be done in a second!” as she busied herself with a to-do list at her desk.
But the woman who appeared in the crack of the doorway wore a dark hood, thick sunglasses, and thigh-high boots. Her hair was tucked behind the hood, and the sunglasses were so enormous that it took Carmella a long moment to fully comprehend who had come to see her.
“Helen!”
Helen ducked into the office and clipped the door closed. “My bodyguard wants to kill me for making him come back over here. He had the car waiting and everything. But I felt I couldn’t leave this place without saying goodbye to you.”
Carmella’s heart swelled. She rushed toward this woman — this acclaimed actress with more money than God, and flung her arms around her as though they were just kids on a playground. Helen’s laugh was one of surprise. She patted Carmella’s shoulder gently, then stepped the slightest bit back as she tilted her sunglasses toward the tip of her nose.
“It was so wonderful to live in the silence of myself down there by the waters of the Katama Bay for a while,” she admitted. “Your sisters and stepmother were a tremendous help. But now that I think about it— when I looked in your eyes that day we went sailing, I finally understood the sadness within myself that I hadn’t been able to fully see before. And maybe that’s all life is. Figuring out our problems and having the courage to face them head-on. I don’t know.”
“I’m so happy for you, Helen. What’s next for you?” Carmella asked.
“I’ll fly to Los Angeles this evening,” Helen said. “I have a house there. Wes Anderson wants to meet next week to discuss his next project. Quirky stuff, you know. Maybe that would suit me right now, something more soft and beautiful. I can’t imagine sinking my teeth into something dramatic and emotional right now. All the pain from the miscarriage and the divorce will have to wait to be fit into my artistic side of things. Maybe I have to live in it for a bit longer.”
Carmella gripped Helen’s hand. It was difficult for her to imagine the next time she would see her. She bet it would on the cinema screen, blown up to ten times her real height. How strange that their paths had crossed in this way.
“I don’t know if I can ever thank you enough for what you did with the article,” Carmella finally said. She knew her words didn’t express enough of the gratitude she felt.
“It was the truth,” Helen returned softly. “What you and your family are doing here is remarkable and really needed. I plan on coming back sooner than later.”
Carmella gave her a sneaky smile. “I can’t wait. You’re one special lady, Helen.”
“Thank you. You as well, Carmella,” Helen affirmed. “Just know that saying something to support you was the easiest thing in the world for me. I’m glad I did it.”
Carmella watched Helen drop into the back of the limousine. It seemed that the paparazzi had cleared out already; there wasn’t any sign of them peeping out from behind the line of trees in the woods. Carmella wondered about Cal, where he’d ended up, and if he now terrorized some other family or star. “Don’t give in to that handsome smile,” she breathed to no one in particular — to the wind, to the sky, to the trees.
“You ready?” Elsa appeared behind her, latching up her cardigan’s buttons.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Carmella affirmed. “Just let me grab my purse.”
As was tradition, Elsa drove them. Carmella could hardly remember a single time in their lives when Carmella had been in the driver’s seat. Carmella dropped her head back and remained silent. Her thoughts toyed over what she might say at therapy and how she had to keep everything at a certain tone, a certain level, to ensure that Elsa’s feelings weren’t hurt.
As though Elsa could read Carmella’s mind, she gripped the steering wheel hard and whispered, “I just have no idea what to say at things like this.”
“She normally just says to speak from the heart.”
“But what if I don’t have one?” Elsa laughed.
“That’s about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Carmella returned. “You have three times the heart of anyone else I know.”
Carmella’s therapist, Hannah, awaited them in the foyer of the office and then led them into the small, shadowed room. There were two cushioned chairs in front of a wooden one, where Hannah perched now. She splayed her hand out and beckoned for the sisters to sit.
Elsa adjusted her purse on her lap and then seemed to think better of it and place it at the side, on the floor. Carmella crossed and uncrossed her leg as her nervousness shined through.
“Elsa, it’s good to finally meet you,” Hannah said. “Carmella has told me a great deal about you. But I would love to know more about you in your own words.”
All the color drained from Elsa’s cheeks. She flashed her eyes toward Carmella with confusion and then breathed, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Anywhere you’d like. There are no wrong answers here.”
Elsa cleared her throat. “Well, I guess, in a way, we’re here because of my little brother, Colton.” Her voice broke as she said his name.
Hannah nodded but didn’t speak.
“It was a horrible accident. I was a teenager. My two siblings, brother and sister, were younger than me and were best friends. Sometimes, I was jealous of their relationship. They were just so close. It was like they had their own secret relationship. But slowly, around that time, I noticed that Carmella was trying to copy me a lot.”
Carmella could ha
rdly believe her ears. Was Elsa really just laying it all out for the therapist to hear? These weren’t things Elsa had said to Carmella, ever. Here it was: finally, the truth. Could Carmella handle it?
“She wanted to be a teenager, like me and she wanted to wear makeup and try on my clothes and yada yada yada. It was sweet in a way, but I just wanted my own space.”
“That makes so much sense,” Hannah said. “Carmella, do you remember that?”
“Of course,” Carmella affirmed. ‘I thought you were the coolest girl in the entire world.”
Elsa’s eyes glowed with tears. “When Colton died, and I saw how much you blamed yourself and how Mom and Dad went so dark — I didn’t know what to do. And maybe, maybe I wasn’t so nice to you all the time, either. But I had my own issues that I was dealing with.”
Carmella nodded. “I know. It wasn’t easy on any of us.”
“You heard me telling Bruce about the nights when I found you. When you were still asleep but crying about Colton,” Elsa said.
Carmella nodded.
“All I wanted to do was tell you that everything would be okay, but back then, I didn’t really believe it. I only started to believe it when I met Aiden and had my babies. But it didn’t fully occur to me until recently that you were never allowed that reprieve. Gosh, Carmella, I just hope you know that I always wanted so much for you! I wanted the world for you! And I still do—“
Elsa reached out and gripped Carmella’s hand so hard that her bones crackled. Carmella let out a sob.
“Carmella. How does it feel to hear your sister say all of that?”
“Ridiculous,” Carmella finally said. “It feels ridiculous. Because I just never imagined that we would ever get to a point where we could say actual truths to one another. It’s the greatest thing in the world — and it feels like a fantasy.”
The conversation continued. Eventually, they shifted gears toward their mother and father, and then Karen, the demon herself.
“I just really thought you pushed her away from me because you didn’t want me to be happy,” Carmella confessed.
“Not at all. I saw what she was doing to us, to Dad, to our family, and I had to do something to stop it,” Elsa said. She then brushed a tear from her cheek and said, “I can’t believe you saw her in New Mexico. I would have fallen to the floor.”
“I almost did.”
“I Googled her recently,” Elsa said. “Read about her clinic in Wisconsin. And also about a drunk driving ticket in Denver and a little money scheme in Connecticut. It seems Karen has made the rounds over the years.”
“She really does take and take and take,” Carmella whispered. “I can’t believe I fell for it.”
“Again, ladies, you two were just teenagers at the time,” Hannah interjected. “You can’t be too hard on yourself. You were taking the information you had at the time and doing your best with it.”
“We were doing our best,” Carmella breathed.
“And I guess, in a way, we still are,” Elsa affirmed. “As difficult as that is to grasp sometimes.”
After the first therapy session was over, Hannah arranged for them to return the week after that. “We’ll keep this going a few more months at least,” she suggested and the girls agreed. “That’s what I would recommend. And Elsa, if you’re at all interested in personal therapy, please let me know. You can either work with one of my colleagues or me.”
Back in Elsa’s car, Elsa heaved a sigh and said, “Therapy. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“What did you think?”
“It’s not so bad. I think it will really help, although it’s difficult to say so soon out of the gate.”
“Yeah. I didn’t feel any real weight off my shoulders for a while. But it slowly feels like peeling layers from an onion or something. Eventually, I started to feel like myself again for the first time.”
Elsa sniffled, gripped a Kleenex, and then mopped herself up. “I think this calls for a glass of wine. Maybe at The Hesson House? They have such a beautiful view.”
“That’s a deal.”
Elsa drove them north of Edgartown, to the old mansion, with its long driveway lined with huge old oak trees. They parked in the drive and then walked around the westward side of the house, where a maître d’ welcomed them and then led them to a little table by the water. To Carmella and Elsa’s delight, Lola was seated along the sand with her daughter, Audrey. Audrey was in the midst of telling what seemed to be a raucous story — one so wild that a bit of lipstick had wound up on her chin.
“Hello, ladies!” Carmella greeted with a smile.
Lola grinned broadly, reached for a napkin, and smeared it across Audrey’s chin.
“Audrey just came back for a visit. She’s been back at Penn State for a week. And she has so many crazy stories,” Lola said.
Audrey gestured under the table, where her baby, Max Sheridan, was deep in sleep. “I just couldn’t bear to be away for much longer.”
Carmella and Elsa sat at a nearby table and ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio. They clinked glasses and studied one another in silence.
“What will it be like to be back to our healthy selves?” Elsa asked suddenly as a smile lifted across her cheeks.
“It should be a wild ride,” Carmella affirmed. “I guess we’ll know it when we get there.”
Elsa sniffled, then positioned herself far back in her chair. “Do you remember that song Colton used to sing all the time?”
Carmella clamped her eyes shut as memories flew through her mind. “Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen. Right?”
“He was obsessed,” Elsa stated. “He ran around the living room, up and down the beach, singing at the top of his lungs. I thought he was the most annoying little boy the world had ever created. But now, whenever I hear that song, I can’t help but dance around, just like him, and smile to myself.”
“I had no idea you remembered that,” Carmella breathed.
Elsa nodded. “I remember all of it. And I loved every single minute. I plan to love the rest of it, too. If you’re game to create more memories with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
You had to take risks in life. Carmella had read this fact over and over again — yet never fully taken it to heart. Here, in her tiny apartment, as she arranged the silliest decoration across a chocolate cake, she wondered if this was the kind of “risk” they’d meant when they had said this now-famous phrase.
“I’M SORRY.” The words were scribed across the cake in Scrabble letters, another game she and Cody had frequently played throughout their teenage years, as they hadn’t had anyone else to hang with or anywhere else to go. The cake was homemade, specifically by Carmella herself. She had considered hiring out to the likes of Christine Sheridan or Jennifer Conrad, but she wanted this particular sweet treat to come straight from the heart. If it was lackluster, so be it. They could laugh about it while they tossed it in the trash and went for milkshakes.
At least, she hoped for that sort of laughter again. She ached for the sound of Cody’s laugh. It had been so long since she’d heard it.
Was it creepy to wait outside of his work for him to leave? Carmella wasn’t sure. It was certainly up there on the creepiness scale — maybe right behind stalking, although was it really stalking if you already knew the person so well that you understood their schedule to a T? She wasn’t sure about that, either. She hoped, when she outlined what she’d done later for her therapist, Hannah wouldn’t make a face and say, “Yes. Creepy. Don’t do that again,” and then jot another note on her notepad. But there was a chance, she supposed.
A benefit, too, of the cake was that she could eat it alone in the sadness of her house if Cody told her he really never wanted to see her again. If that happened, then she could find solace in sugar and sleep.
Carmella felt like an exposed nerve, there beneath the oak tree outside of Cody’s work. She held the cake aloft and nodded at random to the various colleagues Cody had introduced her to over the yea
rs. In fact, more than one of them had attempted to date her. She remembered it — Cody telling her, his eyes darkening, that he could match her with one of his co-workers if she wanted that. She had always declined. And maybe, just maybe, he’d always breathed a sigh of relief.
Gosh, she missed him. She missed him more than stars in the sky and droplets of water in the ocean.
“Carmella?”
Somehow, in all her wild daydreams, she had missed the fact that he’d exited the building. He now stood before her — all six-foot-three of him, broad shoulders, his thick hair disheveled and his eyes sparkling with kindness, even as his face was marred with confusion. She instinctively lifted the cake, feeling foolish at that moment, because she wanted to show him the Scrabble letters that read: “I’M SORRY.” And after all, she was really sorry. But just then, she couldn’t form the words.
“Huh.” He eyed the cake and then found her gaze. “I wish I could say it was beautiful.” There it was: that sneaky smile.
“No. But it has a lot of heart.”
“You’re saying that cakes are worth more than their beauty? That it’s more about what’s inside that counts?” he teased.
“Something like that.”
Carmella hadn’t envisioned this next part. In fact, in most scenarios in her head, she’d imagined Cody looking her way and then storming off. Yes, in most versions of her cake scenario, she was halfway through her second slice and preparing herself for a sugar overload.
“Maybe we could talk. And I can put this in my car.”
“Okay.”
Cody walked Carmella back to her car. He stood off to the side while she placed the cake on the passenger side. When she drew the door closed, her eyes met his, and then he dropped her gaze. Awkward was too weak of a word for what this was.
“Maybe we could walk by the water?” Carmella suggested.
Cody led them in that direction. Carmella found herself studying his profile — the elegant swoop of his nose, his luscious lips. Had she never noticed how handsome he was before, or had she just shoved these thoughts from her mind? It was a funny thing, the human mind. It could build up boundaries even without you knowing about them. How much control did anyone truly have over what they did, over who they loved?
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