She looked over at Oliver and lifted her eyebrows in question. Another road trip on the horizon?
“I’m pretty sure the natural history museum on the Mall has dinosaurs and fossils. And other cool stuff,” Oliver said.
Good point, she thought. Washington, DC was much closer than New York. Still, a part of her wanted to show “her city” to the boys.
Oliver glanced at the watch on his wrist. “If we’re going to make the space movie, we should head over there.”
She let the weight of Cam’s body slide from her arms as Mason fell into step beside his father. As soon as Cam’s sneakers hit the polished concrete floor, he ran to catch up.
Serena took one last look back at the Concorde. She and her brother, Peter, had been privileged to get to fly on it. Privileged to go to Paris as kids. She was ten years old the first time she went; she remembered the Seine, the ornate buildings, the croissants that were better than any she’d ever tasted in the States. Mason and Cam wouldn’t be jetting off to Paris as children. She and Oliver certainly couldn’t afford that.
She turned away from the plane and hurried to catch up to the boys.
Oliver sat down on the pool’s edge next to Serena. Mason and Cam were already in the water. Both boys had fallen asleep halfway through the space movie and now, after dinner at the hotel, were catching a second wind of energy.
“You’re not getting in?” she asked, kicking her right leg lazily through the water.
“Maybe later.” He ran a finger along the bare skin of her thigh. “I’m bushed, you know? Mom and dad used to take the three of us to the zoo in Washington every summer.” He shook his head, laughing softly. “They must have been out of their minds. Three boys?” He laughed again, this time a little louder. “I do remember they had their hearts set on Jack being a girl. Didn’t happen.”
“You remember your mom being pregnant with Jack?”
“I do. Not with Mattie, but I was five when Jack was born. Between starting school and another baby in the house, it was a lot of change. That’s what I remember. All the change in our lives.”
“You don’t do well with change.”
“I know.”
She laid her hand on his to stop his finger tickling her thigh.
“I think I might know where I was going the day I had the accident,” she said.
“You do? You remember?”
“Well, I don’t remember, really. But there’s only one scenario that makes any sense. I was probably going to the hospital to see your mom. And I left the boys with Charlotte because we agreed that we didn’t want them to see her there.”
He mulled over this idea for a moment. “But why wouldn’t you have told me you were going?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing. Maybe she called me? You can’t always be reached when you’re at the station. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”
It did make sense, in a way. Serena had always been the daughter his mother never had. The daughter Jack was supposed to be. He bit back a tiny smile. So yes, the idea of Serena going to visit her in the hospital did make sense. In fact, the idea had already occurred to him.
But.
Jack was at the hospital visiting mom when the accident happened. Why would Serena be headed there at the same time?
You’re letting your imagination run away with you.
He knew that. He’d never had any reason to question his wife’s fidelity to him. So probably the simplest answer was the most likely one. He looked at the boys splashing and swimming in the pool, like little energy-making machines.
“Or maybe you just needed a break from the boys,” he said.
Chapter 18
“Hey guys. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Oliver was helping Serena up onto a bar stool. He looked up to see Becca standing behind the bar, her reddish-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Thought you weren’t working here anymore.” He and Serena were at Skipjack’s to have a quick drink before heading over to the Inn’s fancier restaurant, Evangeline’s, for dinner.
“Just for tonight. Mike needed someone to fill in. Jack’s at the station, so it’s not like I have a date for Valentine’s Day.”
“Welcome to life with a firefighter,” Serena said as Becca laid two square cocktail napkins in front of them.
“What can I get you?”
“White wine?” Serena asked. “What do you recommend?”
Oliver smiled inwardly. At least that hadn’t changed about his wife. When they first started dating, he was surprised that she wasn’t more knowledgeable about wine and drinks. Given her background, he expected her to be worldly and cosmopolitan in everything. Then he learned about her father’s drinking and it made more sense.
“Mike has a new sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, if you’d like to try that. I thought it was excellent.”
“Sure. I’ll give it a go.”
“I’ll have whatever IPA you have on draft tonight.” Oliver let his fingers graze his wife’s hair, let one of her dark curls swirl softly around his thumb.
It was Valentine’s Day. He was out with his wife for a nice dinner and then an evening of hotel sex—he even booked the same room she stayed in the night they met. He was certain she would remember that little detail. So yeah, it was going to be a good night. They’d made it this far, despite everything that had happened since Valentine’s Day last year. Things are going to be okay.
Becca returned with their drinks. “Where are the kiddos tonight?”
“They’re at home. Ashley is babysitting,” Serena answered.
“By babysitting, we mean spending hours and hours playing with Legos,” he joked.
Serena looked over at him with a smile. “We’d better make the most of tonight. She may not do this for us ever again.”
“You know you can always ask me and Jack to babysit,” Becca offered before leaving to tend to another couple at the other end of the bar.
“It’s busy tonight,” Serena remarked.
Oliver scanned the restaurant. Every table sported an arrangement of red roses. Serena’s roses were already up in the room, along with a box of chocolates he ordered special from a tiny artisan chocolatier in Pennsylvania. The Inn’s owner, Sterling Matthew, had put the flowers and candy in the room himself. Oliver had responded to enough false fire alarms at the Inn over the years—the man owed him.
“Even this early,” she added.
It was only five o’clock, but most of the tables were full. When he and Serena discussed timing, they decided to make an early dinner reservation—just in case the boys ended up being too much for Ashley. Starting the evening early guaranteed them at least a few hours together, even if the date had to be cut short.
A few minutes later, they watched as Becca reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her phone. She glanced at the caller ID, then held it up to her ear. Within seconds, her face blanched white. She leaned on the bar’s glossy wood, just listening. When she set down the phone, she turned to Oliver and Serena, her face stricken.
“There’s been a shooting in Boston. Cassidy’s in the hospital.”
“What’s she doing in Boston?” Oliver asked, trying to process what Becca had just said. Cassidy Trevor shot?
“She’s there for a business conference.” Becca’s voice broke and she pressed her fist against her mouth. “She was supposed to come home tomorrow.”
Sterling Matthew appeared out of nowhere, slipping behind the bar.
“You. Go,” he said to Becca. “I’ll take over here.”
While Becca ripped off her apron and hurried from the bar, Oliver pulled out his phone to call his brother, Jack.
“I need you to come in,” were the first words out of his brother’s mouth. “Cassidy’s been shot and Mattie’s heading up to Boston.”
“Why’s he going?”
“He and Cassidy have been seeing each other.”
“They have? Since when?”
“I don�
��t know. Couple months, I think. Hey, I’ve gotta go. I need you to come in and cover for Matt.”
“All right.” He turned to Serena.
“It’s okay,” she said before the words were even out of his mouth.
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” He leaned in and kissed her.
The first thing Serena noticed when she opened the front door to the house was the spicy scent of pizza. Ashley had the boys’ number. Pizza was their current number one favorite meal. The more pepperoni, the better.
The second thing she noticed as she picked her way across the Lego-strewn floor of the living room was an expensive-looking camera sitting in the middle of the sea of plastic. She shifted the roses and box of candy to one arm so she could pick up the camera. She carefully set it on the coffee table that was semi-permanently pushed aside to make room for feats of Lego engineering.
The boys’ heads snapped up the instant she entered the dining room.
“Mom! Mom! We’re having pepperoni pizza!” Cam exclaimed.
“Mom! Mom! Miss Ashley is helping us take pictures of our Legos!” Mason belatedly realized he was speaking with his mouth full, and hurriedly gulped down what he was chewing.
She shot Ashley a look of sympathy. Ashley might not want kids after an evening with the pure adrenaline that was Mason and Cam.
“Where’s dad?” Mason asked, in a calmer voice.
“He had to go into the station.”
Ashley’s face fell in sympathy. “Oh. Sorry,” she mouthed.
Serena shrugged.
“That’s life with a firefighter. Keep that in mind, boys. If you ever marry a firefighter, half your dates will end this way.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Girls aren’t firefighters.”
“Yes, they are! Amy at the station—hello?”
Serena bit back a laugh at the indignant tone in Cam’s voice. Mason’s days of having an unquestioning, adoring younger brother were numbered.
“Okay, one,” Mason allowed.
“Hey guys, I need to speak with Ashley for a moment. Save me a slice, okay?”
Ashley followed her to the kitchen. “Those flowers are gorgeous.”
Serena held out the roses for her friend to sniff, then laid them on the counter. She set the box of candy next to them.
“So Oliver got called in? I didn’t hear any sirens or anything.”
“He had to relieve Matt. There’s been a shooting in Boston. At the hotel where Cassidy Trevor was staying.”
“Oh god. Don’t tell me …”
Serena nodded. “Cassidy was injured. Matt is headed up there. Apparently, the two of them are dating.”
“They are? Well, I’m not surprised, I guess. They co-chaired the winter festival. They struck me as being pretty good friends.”
“More than friends now.” Serena opened a cupboard and retrieved two bags of microwave popcorn. “Want to stay and watch a movie with us?” The relief on Ashley’s face pierced her heart. Her friend had been dreading going home to an empty house on Valentine’s Day. “I’ve got expensive candy,” she threw in for good measure.
“Far be it from me to turn down chocolate.”
An hour later, the carpeted floor of the basement TV room was littered with an empty pizza box, two nearly empty bowls of popcorn, and a half dozen deflated juice boxes. Serena and Ashley were stretched out on opposite ends of the corduroy sectional, her Valentine’s Day candy open on the sofa between them. On the floor, Mason and Cam were sprawled on pillows. An animated movie about space aliens played on the television.
Cam will be lucky if he stays awake to the end.
Serena was hit with a sudden memory of this exact same scene, only with Angie on the sofa instead of Ashley. The boys had adored their grandmother. And their grandmother had adored them.
They are pretty damn adorable.
Angie’s death had left a gaping hole in Mason and Cam’s lives, a hole no one else would ever be able to fill. Even if they learned to swear from her.
Oh, they were picking up some of it from Mattie, too.
Serena suspected that. Mason and Cam adored their uncle, as well. She offered up a silent prayer for Cassidy. The Wolfe family just could not catch a break these days. She hoped Oliver could set aside his obvious dismay at the idea of Matt and Cassidy dating, and offer his brother some comfort and sympathy. He was the one person who knew exactly what Matt was going through right now.
Her phone vibrated on the sofa next to her. She picked it up and swiped away the lockscreen. It was a text from Oliver.
Bored. Wish I was with you.
She texted him back. Wish that too. Any word from Boston?
Matt managed to get a flight out of Baltimore. Cassidy just went into surgery.
How serious is it?
Dunno. A minute passed before his next message. How are the boys?
She pointed her phone at Mason and Cam and snapped a quick photo. The boys were too engrossed in the movie to even notice. She texted it to Oliver, then added, I love you.
I love you too, babe.
Chapter 19
The next morning Serena put the boys on the school bus, waved goodbye to Oliver as he headed to the gym, and then did what she did most mornings—wander aimlessly through the house. On the days she volunteered at the elementary school, she woke up feeling a sense of purpose and direction. On the days she didn’t, she … did laundry and vacuumed and wrote out grocery lists and made dentist’s appointments for the boys and discovered socks and underwear beneath beds and searched the internet for new ways to serve vegetables that the boys would tolerate and … collapse into a chair in the den, wondering what the point of it all was.
Growing up, she had looked down on her mother for hiring out the mundane, rote details of running a household in favor of serving on nonprofit boards and raising money for playgrounds and arts programs. She was starting to rethink that attitude. Sure, sometimes folding and putting away laundry gave her the warm, rosy feeling that she was taking care of the people she loved the most. Other times … wasn’t I just doing this fifteen minutes ago?
It wasn’t just that she couldn’t remember the recent years of her life. She was having trouble imagining this as her life.
She leaned forward in the den’s office chair and flipped open her laptop on the desk. She was still working her way through the thousands of emails that had accumulated while she was in the hospital. It was a Sisyphean task—as soon as she deleted a hundred, another fifty appeared. Clearly I was a big online shopper. Of course, one didn’t have much choice, living in St. Caroline. There wasn’t even a Walmart nearby. Most people drove to Annapolis or to the outlets on route 50 for any serious shopping. She wondered where Oliver had taken Mason and Cam for back-to-school shopping last year.
She deleted emails until her knuckles began to ache and stiffen. Then she dragged a cardboard box from beneath the desk. Apparently Oliver was just tossing junk mail and catalogs into it, rather than putting it out for recycling. She didn’t bother to wonder why—he’d had enough on his plate while she was in the hospital. She flipped through it absentmindedly. There was an alarming volume of mail from Talbot College. The boys were way too young to be getting brochures from colleges. She definitely wasn’t ready for that yet.
She spent a few more minutes sorting through the box, just to make sure there was nothing important in there. A brightly colored postcard caught her eye. From the college, of course. She flipped it over and scanned the text. It was for an open house for the teacher certification program. If you had a bachelor’s degree already, you could get certification in less than two years. Interesting. She glanced at the date. The open house was last November. Oh well. She tossed the card back into the box.
After lunch, she cleaned the boys’ bathroom, then hoisted onto her bed a large plastic box filled to the brim with quilting fabric. Angie had left it for her. Tears pricked at Serena’s eyes. She never had the opportunity to thank Angie, or say goodbye—or tell her how
much her friendship had meant to her. She felt motherless now, too.
She unsnapped the plastic latches on both ends of the box and lifted away the lid, wondering how Angie had decided which fabrics to give her. She remembered her mother-in-law’s huge stash of fabric, practically enough to open a fabric store of her own. She lifted lengths of material from the box and laid them out on the bed around her. From the quilting class with Becca she was gradually learning what everything was called—fat quarters, jelly rolls, calicoes, reproduction fabrics. And the colors—cheddar, turkey red, double pink.
She wanted to make her string quilt from class larger. Becca told her that Angie had always liked batik fabrics. It turned out that Serena was drawn to those also, and she dug through the box looking for anything that looked hand-dyed, marbled, or stamped with images of leaves or flowers. She unfolded a length of turquoise fabric covered with tiny, pale palm fronds. The color and design made her think of Hawaii, and their honeymoon. She set it aside and looked for more in the box.
Oliver joked the other evening that she had been bitten by the quilting bug. She laughed along with him, until it occurred to her that he might not want to see her quilting, that it might remind him too much of Angie. He denied it, but of course Oliver would. He prided himself on being level-headed, rational, calm under pressure. A firefighter had to be all of those things, but sometimes she wondered whether he really had emotions underneath it all. He said “I love you” to her every single day, but did he mean it—or was he just saying what a good husband was supposed to say to his wife?
Ollie’s desire to be a good, stable husband and father was part of his appeal, initially. And he was those things—the things her own father hadn’t been quite so good at. Her father had been more interested in the appearance of an attractive family—beautiful wife, accomplished kids—than in the reality of one.
She set aside several more folded lengths of fabric. Ollie seemed different lately. Distant, more closed off than usual. She tried to talk to him about it, but he merely agreed with everything she said. Yes, we have a great life. Yes, I love you. Yes, everything’s okay.
This Reminds Me of Us Page 13
