She smiled. “You’d do anything for Mason and Cam.”
“I would.”
“Let’s just be happy, Ollie. For them, at least. I know you want answers and I want them, too. Maybe we’ll find them someday. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy what we have. We have a lot.”
She was right. They did have a lot. And other people had it worse than they did. Ashley Wardman, to be sure. To be a widow at her age? Oliver still had the life he wanted. Every day, he went to a job he loved. And every day, he came home to his beautiful wife and handsome boys in their comfortable home. They were going to drive back to the car dealership and buy this new minivan, something not every family could afford. But they could.
He leaned over and kissed her. “You’re right, babe. Let’s go buy these new wheels for you, then grab some lunch before school lets out.”
Chapter 16
“Boys?” Serena called into the living room, where Mason and Cam were adding to their latest Lego masterpiece. “Homework time!” She rolled her eyes at the faint sounds of grumbling.
“They get homework at this age?” Ashley carried two cups of strong, dark coffee to the dining room table.
“Yeah, it’s surprising. Well, Cam doesn’t get much. A worksheet once or twice a week.” She pulled out a chair and collapsed into it, took a sip of coffee and giggled. “He said something really funny the other day. He said, ‘Mom, why do I have to color in the worksheet, then cut up the worksheet, and then glue the worksheet back together again? Why can’t I just move on to the next worksheet?’”
Ashley clapped a hand over her nose to keep from snorting hot coffee. “Out of the mouths of babes. What did you tell him?”
“I gave him a brief explanation of learning styles, that it helps reinforce the material for some kids if they have to do the additional steps.”
“You sound just like Ben. Theories of Teaching 101.”
“He was still making kids cut up worksheets in high school?” Serena winked at her friend.
“I think he would have, if he thought they’d actually do it.”
“Mom!” Mason’s voice sounded from the other room. “We’re trying to do homework in here!”
“Sorry, sweetie! We’ll keep our voices down.”
“Indoor voices!” Cam added, in a voice that wasn’t exactly “indoors.”
“Your boys are so adorable,” Ashley said, in a quieter “indoor” voice.
“Exhausting, but adorable.”
“You do look tired tonight.”
Serena took a giant sip of coffee. “Oliver wanted to buy a new car today so we can drive it to Virginia this weekend.”
“Romantic weekend away?”
Serena shook her head. “No, we’re taking the boys to the Air and Space Museum. Family weekend away.”
“That sounds like fun. Exhausting, but fun.”
“We need to get out of town for a couple days. Really, it’s more for Oliver than for the boys.”
“Why so?”
Serena lowered her voice further to make sure the boys couldn’t hear. “He needs a distraction. He’s obsessed with me getting my memory back. But honestly, there are some things I don’t want to remember. Like the accident.”
“Good heavens, no. That would be awful.” Ashley drained the rest of her coffee. “Sometimes I wish I had no memories. It hurts too much to remember Ben.”
Cam took that moment to carom into the room, a worksheet clutched in his hand.
“Done! Before Mason!” He drew out the last syllable of his brother’s name into one long victory cry.
“Let me check it over,” Serena said as Ashley returned to the kitchen for more coffee. “Okay, looks good. Put this in your backpack. Then why don’t you go up and get your pj’s on, then come down for a bedtime snack.”
Cam hurtled himself into the mudroom to deposit his homework in the backpack, then raced upstairs.
“Where do they get the energy?” Ashley set the mugs of fresh coffee on the table.
“The air, I think. Oxygen seems to be a stimulant.” She took a sip. “Can I ask you something?” She hesitated, then forged tentatively ahead. “You can decline to answer, if you want.”
“Ask away.”
Serena looked at her friend, dressed as she often was these days—in jeans and an oversized wool sweater that had to have belonged to Ben. Maybe she shouldn’t ask this of her. After all, what Ash had gone through was far worse than her own life. But the question nagged at her as much as it did Oliver.
“When we were test driving the car today, I ended up driving to where the accident happened. Not on purpose.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Apparently, when I dropped the boys off with Charlotte Trevor, I said I had an appointment and would be back in a couple hours.”
Ashley shrugged. “I can’t imagine taking those tornadoes of energy to a doctor’s appointment.”
“But the doctor told Ollie that I didn’t have an appointment scheduled for that day.” She hesitated another moment. Ashley might know where she was headed that day. But Serena was beginning to worry that she might not like the answer—when she tried to imagine an answer that made sense, she came up empty every time.
She took a deep breath. She had to ask anyway. “Do you know where I was going that day? Did I tell you anything about an appointment?”
“No. If I knew, I would have said something by now.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd? That I wouldn’t have said something to a close friend?”
Ashley shrugged. “Honestly—and please don’t take offense at this—but you were always a very private person. I know everyone sees you as the more extroverted half of your marriage, but you still play things close to the vest.” Ashley took a hurried sip of coffee. “Actually, you’re much more open now.”
“So I’m kind of a different person now?”
Ashley shrugged again and nodded. “Yes. But not in a bad way. It’s not like you’re totally different or anything. It’s you, but more of you. If you know what I mean.” She smiled in an attempt to soften her words. “I mean, I like it! It’s a good thing.”
“I feel kind of different. I think. It’s hard to say when I don’t remember a lot from before. But, like, I look in my closet and I think, ‘Why on earth did I buy that?’ There are things I clearly did that I can’t even imagine myself doing now.”
“I probably also wasn’t the greatest friend last summer, with Ben being sick. It all happened so fast.” Ashley wiped a finger beneath her teary eye. “I thought I’d have more time.”
Mason appeared, as if out of nowhere. His dark hair was ruffled, like he’d been worrying pieces of it around his fingers. He laid a small stack of papers on the table, then touched Ashley’s forearm. “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Ashley.” He glanced over at his mom, then added, “I wanted to be coached by Coach Wardman someday.”
Ashley leaned down and hugged him. “Thank you, Mason. I like to think his spirit will always be hanging around the soccer field. That was his happy place.”
“Hey bud,” Serena said. “Why don’t you go put on your pajamas and bring your brother down for a snack? He seems to have gotten sidetracked up there.”
Mason gave her a thumbs-up and she leaned back into the chair, massaging her temples.
“Maybe you just needed a break that day,” Ashley ventured. “You were pregnant. Your mother-in-law—whom you were extremely close to—was in the hospital. You have two energetic kids. Who wouldn’t need a couple hours to themselves? Or maybe you were going to the hospital to see Oliver’s mom?”
“If I were going to the hospital, that’s the way I would go.”
“See? If I had to guess, I’d say that’s where you were headed. Because you wouldn’t have taken the boys with you to the hospital.”
“No. Never. Ollie and I discussed how to handle Angie’s illness, where the boys were concerned … wait, I just remembered that! Oliver and I talked about what to tell the boys. I recall that
very clearly.”
“See?”
“And I might have just told Charlotte that I had an appointment so the boys wouldn’t accidentally find out that I was really going to the hospital.”
“Right! That has to be it.”
Serena nodded, as much to herself as to Ashley. That had to be it. She was on her way to see Angie when the accident happened.
Chapter 17
“Look at that plane!” Cam shouted. “It’s going to crash!”
Serena watched through the windshield of the new minivan as an airliner flew over the highway ahead of them, its long white body heavy and at an alarmingly low altitude.
“The wheels are down!” Cam’s arm shot into the space between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.
“Sit back, sweetie,” Serena said, not taking her eyes off the lumbering plane. “Is your seatbelt still on?”
“I think we’re close to the airport, boys. That plane is going to be landing in a few minutes.”
“Freaky wow!” Mason finally chimed in.
“I want to see the plane land!” Cam added.
“Well, according to the museum’s web site—and we all know the internet doesn’t lie—there is an observation tower where you have a great view of the planes landing and taking off,” Oliver said. He was in full dad mode behind the wheel of the new minivan, carefully piloting them to their destination—the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. It was part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
“We can see them take off, too?”
“Cammy, dear, I need you to sit back in the seat. We’re almost there.” She shot Oliver a questioning look. They had to be close, right? A plane had practically landed on the highway.
Oliver gave her a quick nod. “Hey guys, before we do get there, let’s review some ground rules. Okay? This is going to be a big place, with a lot of people. So no running off by yourself. Understood?”
Serena twisted around in her seat to look at the boys. “And indoor voices only, please.”
“In space no one can hear you scream,” Mason said.
“Yeah well, we’re not going to be in outer space. We’re going to a museum here on planet earth,” Oliver replied, rolling his eyes.
“Uncle Mattie said there’s a space shuttle at the museum.”
“Your Uncle Mattie is occasionally right.”
The boys rode out the rest of the drive in agitated silence. Oliver pulled the car into the parking lot, cut the ignition, and checked his watch. “We made pretty good time, even hitting rush hour traffic around Annapolis. Why don’t we check out the observation tower first, have lunch, and then do the rest of the museum?” He looked over at Serena for her agreement.
She nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” Then quieter, “Give everyone a chance to calm down a bit.”
After thirty minutes of watching planes take off and land, they hit the fast food restaurant. Serena munched on french fries and tuned out the boys’ excited chatter. She couldn’t think when she had last flown in a plane. She and Oliver flew to Hawaii for their honeymoon but that was over seven years ago now. That was Oliver’s second time on a plane. His first was to a fire training academy in Texas. It was possible they hadn’t flown since, what with the boys and all. It was possible Oliver had only ever flown twice.
How many times had she been on a plane? She was certain her first time was before she could walk. Her family had taken multiple vacations every year—summer, spring break, winter break. When she and her brother were teenagers, they’d gotten shipped off to internships with family friends or her father’s business colleagues. Those had been of more use to her brother than to her. She ended up getting married a year out of college and becoming a stay-at-home mother.
Her parents were of the opinion that they had wasted a lot of money on her education.
She held tightly onto Cam’s hand when at last they made their way to the main part of the museum, a cavernous hangar filled with every imaginable kind of flying vehicle. The boys’ eyes grew as wide as flying saucers, and no wonder. There were aircraft on the floor. Aircraft hanging, suspended, from the soaring white ceiling. Aircraft everywhere. She heard Oliver take a long, deep inhale.
“Okay, guys. Let’s start over here—” He consulted the paper map in his hands. “—with pre-1920 aviation. We’ll try and go chronologically.” He looked down at the boys’ eager, upturned faces. “That means oldest to newest.”
Serena hung back, reading the exhibit descriptions, as the boys circled each aircraft, gawking at the wings overhead and listening as their dad pointed out interesting features. He wisely glossed over the backstory to the Enola Gay. The boys were too young for that—and Cam, especially, was too sensitive. Cam couldn’t even bear to go fishing with his granddad; he didn’t want to hurt the fish.
After they oohed and aahed over the sleek, dark curves of the Blackbird reconnaissance plane, they deviated from chronological order. Mason had spotted the space shuttle in the back wing of the museum. Serena’s leg was starting to ache, so she waved Ollie and the boys on and found a bench to rest on. Oliver shot her a worried look.
“Go on,” she mouthed back. She tapped her thigh.
The boys were going to be exhausted tonight, she thought as she watched them join the crowd of people surrounding the shuttle. Going away for the weekend was a good idea. It was total sensory overload for Mason and Cam, but in a good way. As far as she knew, this was their first time in a museum. That was the downside of growing up in a small town. Serena had probably visited the Met in New York when she was still in a stroller. Not that she remembered it. Just like the boys probably wouldn’t remember this day. For a few years they would and then the day would fade in their memories, pushed back by the onslaught of days ahead.
She watched as Oliver lifted up Mason so he could get a better view over the heads of the crowd. Then he did the same for Cam. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t remember this day twenty years from now. Right now—today—they were having the best day of their lives. She sat with that thought for a minute, as Oliver and the boys disappeared around the back of the shuttle. Kids live in the present. Mason and Cam could bicker and squabble over who knocked over their latest Lego creation or who should get the last juice box in the one flavor that suddenly either of them will drink—and the next day act like it never happened. Each morning, their lives started all over again, fresh, a blank slate, nothing but potential as far as the eye could see.
She envied them that. Not having to worry about what happened a year ago. Or mistakes that were made and couldn’t be undone. Some offhand remark that someone else took the wrong way. Or realizing that what you thought you would want forever isn’t even what you want today. She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the noise and busyness of the museum. When she reopened them, Oliver and the boys were headed her way.
“The boys want to check out the Concorde in the other hangar,” Oliver said. “Then we thought maybe we should see one of the movies in the IMAX theater. The space one starts in about thirty minutes.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She accepted Oliver’s outstretched hand and allowed him to help her stand up.
“How’s your leg, mom?” Mason asked.
She smoothed an errant lock of dark hair on his head. “It’s better, thank you. It just needed a rest.”
The Concorde dominated the other side of the museum’s main hangar. The plane was long and sleek, its white body tapering to sharp points at each end. Large blue letters spelled out “AIR FRANCE” just behind the cockpit. Standing below it, the plane looked impossibly large—much larger than Serena remembered it.
Mason ran back from the information display, Cam on his heels.
“Mom! Mom! It’s a supersonic plane!”
“I know that.” She smiled over at Oliver.
“It makes a sonic boom when it flies,” Mason added.
“Did I ever tell you that I flew on the Concorde?”
The boys fell silent,
their expressions skeptical as if they were waiting for the punchline to a joke. It was Oliver who spoke first.
“You did?”
She nodded. “Twice, actually. When I was a kid. We flew it from New York to Paris.”
“You flew in this plane?” Mason pointed back at the Concorde.
“Well, maybe not that exact plane. But one of the Concordes. They had more than one.”
“Wow.” Oliver shook his head. “You never mentioned that.”
She shrugged. “Guess it never came up in conversation.”
Which it hadn’t—because Serena wasn’t in the habit of mentioning her childhood or her family to people in St. Caroline. Obviously, Oliver knew some of the details. But her parents had cut her off when it became clear that she was determined to marry him. She hadn’t been back to New York since. Oliver had never been to her parents’ homes—the Park Avenue mansion or the Connecticut weekend home. Nor even to her neighborhood.
Plenty of wealthy people owned mansions and estates in and around St. Caroline. The locals, even Oliver, believed they understood that world. But what passed for great wealth in St. Caroline … well, New York City was of an entirely different order. Serena was embarrassed to say she had grown up like that. The excess, the waste, the hubris.
Everyone in St. Caroline thought of her as “a girl from the city,” and their imaginations imputed a certain lifestyle to her past. But their imaginations fell well short of the reality, and she preferred to keep it that way. When she moved to the Eastern Shore, she had reinvented herself as what she considered to be a “normal” person. A person who liked a slower, less glitzy life, who clipped coupons for the supermarket and didn’t need a trendy new restaurant opening up every six minutes.
“Are there museums in New York?” Cam asked.
She reached down and hoisted him up onto her hip. “There sure are. Quite a few.”
“With dinosaurs?” Mason expanded the scope of his brother’s question. “Nevaeh at school said she went to a museum where they had dinosaurs and fossils.”
This Reminds Me of Us Page 12
