Chapter 9 - The Reckoning on the Patio
The reunion did not take place at my house. It took place on Patrice’s brick patio on Friday afternoon, under the shade of an old wisteria arbor whose purple blooms were just beginning to drop their petals onto the slate paving.
Tori and Caleb had landed at Columbus at noon. They had driven straight to Oak Crest Lane, their luggage still in the trunk of their rental car.
Joyce had dropped me off at the end of the driveway forty minutes earlier.
My suitcase was sitting in Patrice’s front hall, beside her umbrella stand, with the yellow ribbon slightly frayed from its travels through four airports. I was wearing my blue linen tunic, my skin five shades browner than it had been ten days ago, my hair smelling faintly of Portuguese lavender soap.
We were all sitting around Patrice’s wrought-iron table.
There was a plate of cold sliced roast chicken, a bowl of German potato salad with whole-grain mustard, and a pitcher of iced tea with sprigs of fresh mint floating among the lemon wheels.
The children were in the yard.
Eli was showing Finn how to throw a horseshoe, their shouts of triumph ringing out every time an iron shoe hit the stake with a dull *clink*. Chloe was sitting on the grass with Patrice’s whippet, her fingers buried in the dog’s gray fur, while Maggie ran in circles through the sprinkler, her pink swimsuit flashing in the afternoon light.
Tori sat across from me.
She looked smaller. She had lost the sharp, brittle gloss that usually coated her like shellac. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and she was wearing a gray cotton sweatshirt that Caleb had bought her at the airport in Anchorage. Her hands were wrapped around her glass of tea, her thumbs tracing the fluted glass over and over.
Caleb sat beside her, his shoulders square, his eyes clear. He didn't look like the boy hiding behind the compost bin anymore. He looked like a man who had spent fourteen days looking at the ocean and had finally understood how wide it was.
"Myrna," Tori said.
The children's laughter floated over the wisteria arbor—Finn shouting that he had scored three points, Eli laughing and telling him it was only two.
"Yes, Tori?" I said.
Tori looked down at her hands. The ice in her glass shifted with a small, clear chime.
"I’m sorry," she said.
The words were not loud, but they were heavy. They didn't have the slippery quality of Caleb’s old apologies; they were solid, placed on the table between us like the cast-iron skillet I had set on the stove ten days ago.
"I was afraid," Tori whispered. "I felt like if I asked you, and you said no, then... then I was failing. At the firm, at being a mother, at everything. It felt like if I just assumed you’d do it, it was part of the plan. Like it was just something that was supposed to happen."
She looked up at me. Her eyes were red around the rims, but she didn't look away.
"It wasn't fair to you. And it wasn't fair to my mother. You aren't my staff. You’re Caleb’s mother."
"And your children's grandmother," I said gently.
Patrice reached across the table, took the platter of chicken, and set it directly in front of her daughter.
"Eat some protein, Victoria," Patrice said, her voice dry but without its old, bitter vinegar. "You look like a pencil. And then you are going to go into the kitchen and write down a schedule for the lawn care that does not involve your fourteen-year-old son having his time managed by an app."
Tori let out a wet, half-strangled laugh, wiping her cheek with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
Caleb reached over and laid his hand over mine on the wrought-iron table. His father’s knuckles. But the grip was different now—it wasn't clinging; it was an anchor.
"Mom," he said softly. "How were the tiles?"
May you like
"They were blue, Caleb," I said, looking at him with all the love I had carried for thirty-six years, but with none of the old, dragging duty that had weighed it down. "They were very, very blue."
***
