Chapter One

“I have an early morning.”

“Oh?” Barbara forces herself to the surface. She pulls the sheet tighter across her bare breasts, annoyed at herself for drifting.

“Don’t get up.” He turns his back to her and pulls on his shirt. From this angle, she can see the bald patch at the back of his head. When they were both standing, he was so much taller. Stewart.

        And when they were lying down, well she wouldn’t have seen it then either, would she? Something about it makes her feel sentimental toward him, suddenly, like he’s let her in on a secret.  She has an impulse to reach out and touch his broad shoulders with her fingertips, but he stands, shifting his weight as he shuffles into his shoes. Fast. Practiced. He’s worn his loafers.

        Barbara sighs. Stewart turns and smiles for her. “You look lovely like that. Just stay. I can let myself out.”

        She smiles back. She can’t possibly look lovely – her hair somehow both wild and flat, her face smudged on the pillow –- but she appreciates the lie. “You’re sure?”

        “Oh, yes.” And she’s grateful he leaves it at that. She tells herself she’s grateful. She waits until she hears the bang of the front door, relieved that she doesn’t have to get up in front of him. She’s been spared the indignity of exposure as she tries to wrap all her sagging parts in a quick bathrobe apology.

        She can’t go back to sleep, though. This is her daughter’s room, anyway. She still thinks of it as that, though it has been years since the children left. There was no need to redecorate, hardly any reason to come upstairs at all. And she’s always liked the delicate glass baubles Jenna had hung by the window.

        Barbara walks naked to the bathroom at the top of the stairs, happily invisible, without an audience. She can’t bring a man into her bedroom, the room she shared with Bill. It’s been seventeen years since he died. A lifetime, longer than they’d been married.

        Not longer than they’d loved each other, though. The years they’d lost during life are more heartbreaking than the ones lost to death. She figures she has no power over death, but in life there’s no one but herself to blame.

        Barbara flushes the toilet, stands at the sink and forces herself to look. Her mascara runs halfway down her cheek. Lovely, indeed. She wonders, as she often does, what Bill would think of her like this. The pretty young thing he’d met on a beach. What she’s become.

        She used to lie about her age, claiming to be older. First, to get into the clubs, to meet the kind of men worth going with. She’d even had a fake ID someone’s older brother had procured. The photo looked nothing like her but the bouncer never seemed to mind. It was with use of that ID that she met her first husband, the first Bill. They ran off and got married the day after her eighteenth birthday. Moved to Ohio and welcomed Billy to the world before she turned nineteen. Then the lie was for the rest of the PTA moms, so they wouldn’t think she was a child, to seem respectable.

        People used to say how young she looked, an innocent compliment. Sometimes, lies didn’t hurt anyone.

        Her second husband, the real, beloved Bill, had been twenty years her senior. They’d been married to other people when they fell in love. It had been complicated. Divorce seemed a big enough scandal. So, she chose not to correct the record. It got so she forgot which number she’d told people. Eventually they stopped asking; it was impolite.

        Except the children, sometimes. She hedged. Once, Billy called her vain. She’d laughed with Bill about it later. The idea that she pretended to be older out of vanity.

        It had come out in the end, though, after Bill died. It was just one of the smaller truths that fell into the light of his absence along with everything else. It hardly mattered then.

        If Barbara were the sort of woman to get her lover’s name tattooed on her body, she could claim there had been only one man in her life. Besides having the same name, the two men were nothing alike. The first Bill had controlled, demaded and shamed. The second had loved, honored and cherished.

        Barbara leaves her blouse and slacks on the floor in Jenna’s room. She’ll get them tomorrow. She descends the stairs, puts on her comfortable pajamas and climb into the big bed, alone.

***

Barbara’s had the same hairdresser since the summer after Bill died. She’d needed a change and didn’t want to go to anyone who’d known her before, who’d look at her with pity. Her life was divided between before and after and she found it was easier to deal with people who only knew the after.

        Monique’s catered to black clientele, something Barbara hadn’t realized for the first several minutes all those years ago. It had dawned on her slowly; being the only white person in the room was not a common experience in New Hampshire. But once she’d sat down, she couldn’t very well leave and no one ever made her feel anything but welcome. That first haircut had been so stylish, shorter than she’d been used to, and it needed regular upkeep. Before then, Barbara had never had a regular hairdresser.

        She spoke to Monique once every two weeks: deep, personal conversations, more intimate than the way she spoke to nearly anyone else in her life. It began to feel like friendship. Eventually, she admitted being a widow, but she could be vague enough about the timing that she’d never needed to be treated with kid gloves.

        Monique meets her at her station and drapes a black cape around her. “Just a regular trim?” she asks, snapping it into place.

        “Sounds good.” Barbara sets her glasses on the counter in front of her, pleased when her reflection becomes a blur.

        “You know, we could do something different,” Monique says, running her fingers through Barbara’s sharp bob, giving it a tussle. “Something softer?”

Barbara squints at the mirror. She hasn’t had long hair since she was pregnant with the twins. She had cut it herself, crying in a bathroom mirror in Ohio, the kitchen scissors sawing through angry fistfuls. She’d looked like a mental patient. Her first husband had chocked it up to hormones. These days, she keeps her hairstyle current, blunt, professional. It stops at her jawline and only needs a touch with a flat-iron at the tips. She’s not sure she’s ready for softer. 

“Just a trim,” she says.

        “You keeping busy?” Monique reaches for a purple spray bottle and spritzes Barbara’s hair flat against her head. She knows better than to suggest a shampoo in the back. Who has time for such luxuries?

        Barbara sighs. “Keeping busy is what old people do.”

        Monique shakes her head, insisting she’d meant no such thing. “I just know you. How long has it been since the retirement?”

        “Six months.” And three weeks, Barbara thinks. Monique had been at the celebration dinner in January. It had been Jenna’s idea, held at the Back Room with Sam and the kids. Julie had come down from Maine. Even Billy flew in after not being able to make it for Christmas. Monique had been the only guest that wasn’t family.

        “Does it drive you nuts to have so much free time?”

        Barbara shrugs. Work had defined her for so long. When the kids were young, it had been a necessity she derived no joy from. But after Bill’s retirement, he helped her buy a small company where she could be her own boss. She sold air filtration systems for commercial spaces. She made presentations and managed sales people and wore smart suits with heels. She loved the travel. Now she was free to wear pajamas past noon. No one to notice.

        “Ruby and I have been taking a yoga class this summer,” she says, not really answering the question.

        “Oh, that’s sweet. I love one on one time with the grandbabies.” Monique is at least ten years younger, but already has seven grandchildren. Barbara only has two. Will is eleven and Ruby is five. Jenna had had such trouble conceiving the second time that it’s unlikely there will be more. Julie divorced without ever having any. Billy’s in his late forties and seems in no rush to settle down. When Barbara asks him about dating, he says he has no time, but all the doctors Barbara knows have managed to find wives.

“Ruby starts kindergarten in the fall and I’ll get her after school so her mom can work.” Jenna runs her family therapy sessions from her home office. Barbara doesn’t think it’s safe letting her patients know where she lives, but Jenna swears she doesn’t serve a high-risk demographic. Barbara thinks everyone is a risk.

        “What about Will?”

        “He thinks he’s too old for a babysitter. He’s starting junior high.”

        “Where does the time go?” The women shake their heads in unison, debate whether to wait until next time touch up her roots.

In the end, Barbara agrees to come in next week for the coloring. She hasn’t planned on it and doesn’t have time today. She’s been packing her schedule full since January and she only has an hour before the next appointment. She just has time to go home, make a sandwich, and eat it standing over the kitchen sink to spare herself cleaning up crumbs later. She has a vision test at 1:00. She’s trying to fit in all those annual appointments she never had time for: teeth cleanings and mammograms. Basic maintenance of the human body is an endless chore that only gets worse as you age.

***

Barbara’s cellphone rings as she’s getting into the car. She doesn’t recognize the number and considers letting it ring and ring and go to voicemail. That’s what Jenna would do. But Barbara’s curious. If it’s a telemarketer, she’ll just tell them to take her off their list. She gets a little charge out of that. Lately, it’s the only chance she has to feel authoritative.

        “Hello?”

        “Mrs. Shaw?”

        “Yes, who’s this?”

        “My name is Lisa. I work for the emergency call service and I’m sorry to inform you that your mother has been taken to the hospital.”

        “My mother?”

        “Yes, ma’am. Judy Flynn?”

        “She asked you to call me?”

        “Actually, your number is listed as an emergency contact. I wasn’t able to speak to her before the ambulance arrived.”

        “What happened?”

        “I’m not exactly sure. She seems to have fallen. The call button has fall detection so we were alerted, but, as I said, I was unable to speak to her. Would you like the information for the hospital she was taken to?”

        Barbara knows there’s a correct answer to that question, that – in fact – she probably should have asked for it before it was offered. But, something else is nagging.  “She has me listed as her emergency contact?”

        “One of them.”

        Ah. Barbara hates giving strangers personal information, but she sees no way around it. “Look, my mother and I don’t really speak. I don’t think she’d want me showing up at the hospital. You should probably call someone else on the list.”

        “I see.” There’s a long pause. Barbara imagines there isn’t a call center script for this. Poor Lisa. “The thing is, ma’am, I tried all the other numbers and nobody answered.”

        And then Barbara remembers: Jenna and Sam took the kids camping. It’s the last week before school starts and they couldn’t afford to take them on a real vacation. Barbara offered to give them the money, but Jenna refused. Pretended camping was something she liked.

        Who knew where Julie was. Nothing new there.

        Barbara fumbles in her bag for something to write with.

***

It’s strange, Barbara supposes, but the phone call doesn’t alarm her right away. Her mother is too formidable to worry over. But she gets caught in beach traffic on the drive from New Hampshire to Maine, and has plenty of time to think about what this fall could mean. Her mother is in her eighties now, by all accounts still sharp, but that didn’t protect from a heart attack or broken hip. And something the operator said comes back to her: I was unable to speak to her. What does that mean? Had she been unconscious? Barbara hadn’t thought to ask then and she can’t ask now.

Barbara calls Julie’s number the whole trip, but it goes straight to voicemail every time. Julie’s been living with her grandmother for the last few years, since her divorce. The least responsible of Barbara’s children, Julie’s Jenna’s twin, born second. They’d both been so tiny, but Julie was smaller, got held back in school and Barbara always thinks of her as the baby of the family. It’s hard to imagine her looking after her grandmother, easier to think of it the other way around.

        Case in point: where is she now?

         It’s probably time to start thinking of putting her mother in a home, selling the house, not that it’s Barbara’s job to decide such things. Barbara hasn’t been to Boothbay in more than thirty years. She wasn’t invited back to the house after her father’s funeral. She’d stood next to her mother at the cemetery, the two women locked in their own pain, not touching, not a word exchanged between them.

        In the years since, they’ve spoken only when they had to, a forced civility, for the sake of the children.

        But the children are grown now.

***

“Mrs. Flynn, your daughter’s here!” The nurse announces this sunnily, entering the room.

        Barbara stands back, sheepish in the doorway.  Her mother turns her head to look at her, eyes wide. A figure who looms large in memory, she seems smaller in the hospital bed, older.  Barbara tries to remember when they saw each other last. Was it Will’s hockey game or Ruby’s dance recital? Sitting far apart to avoid forced interaction. “The girls didn’t answer their phones,” Barbara says in response to the obvious question that hasn’t been asked.

        The nurse looks back and forth between them, clearly taking note of the distance. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Flynn?” she asks, loudly, pulling her chart from the foot of the bed.

        “Fine, dear, much better. I’d just like to get back home.”

        “I know, honey, but the doctor explained earlier that he wants to keep you overnight.”

        “I remember that,” the old woman snaps. “I’m just not happy about it.”

        “Noted.”

        “Nothing wrong with my memory.”

        “Also noted. You bumped your head when you fell, so that’s very good to hear.” The nurse slides the chart back into place, her smile constant. “I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”

        Barbara steps into the room so that the nurse can get past her.

        “I’ve left messages for Julie so once she gets here, I’ll get out of your hair.”

        “I’m sorry you had to make the long drive.”

        “It’s fine.”

        A long silence swells in the space between them.

        “I’ll probably sleep a bit,” her mother says, finally.

        Barbara nods. “I’ll leave you to it. Back later.”

There are blue arrows on walls leading to the cafeteria, so Barbara doesn’t have to speak to anyone for the next several hours. She grabs a table in the back corner and checks her email on her phone, calling Julie’s cell every twenty minutes. She memorizes the cheerful message. She reschedules the eye appointment for next week, apologizing for the emergency.

She watches strangers wandering in by themselves or in groups, looking confused or shell-shocked or unconcerned, selecting their egg salad sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, making polite conversation with the bored cashier, laughing or staring into space, lost in thought.

When Bill was sick, Barbara got used to spending time in hospitals. She can tell which people are here to visit a friend who just gave birth versus a spouse who’s had a heart attack or a child who’s crashed a car and been in a coma for weeks. The joy or terror or resigned numbness is written all over their faces.

Barbara keeps to herself, eating a dinner she buys from the vending machine, looking too busy to be drawn into conversation or asked for directions. By the time she heads back to her mother’s room, close to eight, the cafeteria is empty.

Her mother is sitting up in bed, watching the news. She mutes the television when Barbara enters the room.

“I haven’t been able to locate Julie.”

Her mother frowns. “She left before I got up this morning. They’re working on a new house.” Julie still works with her ex-husband, flipping houses. She swears they get along better now than when they were married.

“Do they usually work this late?”

“Sometimes. Or go out with friends. I called the house too.”

         Barbara sits on the edge of a chair, as though to lean back would be too much of a commitment, presumptuous.

        “Well, I’m fine, as you can see. You needn’t stay.”

        “I’ll leave when Julie gets here.”

        “Don’t be silly. You have a long drive. I’m sure she’s—"

“I’m not going to leave until Julie gets here.” Barbara says it more firmly the second time. “They’re keeping you overnight. Do you plan on taking a cab home in the morning?”

Her mother shifts in the bed, pulling the sheets tighter across her lap, sitting up straight. She sets her jaw and seems to consider whether this is the argument worth having. “Well you might as well sleep at the house then. They put my pocketbook in that cabinet there. You can get the keys out.”

Barbara remembers the thrill she felt as a girl whenever she was allowed in her mother’s large pocketbook. The keys are on the top, fastened together with a gaudy plastic butterfly. She’s surprised there are so many of them and has to get instructions on which is the house key. She considers making a joke about her mother moonlighting as the high school janitor, but ends up thinking better of it.

***

Thirty years and she could still drive the back roads blindfolded and find her way. It’s too dark to see the ocean, but she can smell it and she can hear it. Even the sound of her tires in the gravel driveway has a crushing familiarity. The house is exactly the same: white with black shutters, all dark wood floors and porcelain bath fixtures and large patterned wallpaper from the sixties.

        Barbara never thought much of the cramped Victorian while she was growing up here, but it really is beautiful, built a hundred years ago by men who took time with details, nothing like the mass-produced saltboxes she’s lived in since. It wasn’t fancy – just one bathroom on the first floor, no air conditioner or dishwasher, three small bedrooms on the second floor. All that set the master apart from the others was the view of the ocean out the window.

Her mother had moved her bedroom downstairs years ago, but still hasn’t changed a thing in the upstairs bedroom she’d shared with Barbara’s father. Their matching oak dressers stand on either side of the double bed: hers squat with a mirror, his eight drawers tall, once over Barbara’s head. She’d had to stand on her toes to reach the surface. Her father kept a dish of small change there, whatever had collected in his pockets during the day. Sometimes she pilfered a shiny quarter, too young to have any real use for it, drawn in by the idea that it had a value. A mysterious lure.

Barbara decides to make up the bed in the spare room that had once been hers.

***

At daybreak, Barbara sits at the kitchen table and sees Julie coming up the drive. She eyes her mother’s car suspiciously. Does she recognize it? Perhaps she notices the New Hampshire plates and that it isn’t Jenna’s cranberry minivan. She picks up speed as she puts it together.

Pushing forty, Julie manages to make the walk of shame look good. Her long blond hair              is tussled just so, her jeans are ripped at the knee, she wears a white tank top with a yellow bikini top showing through and a sweater tied around her hips.

She throws the door open and finds her mother sitting incongruously in the kitchen. Her face is panic stricken, a wounded child. “Where’s Grammy?”

Barbara stands and goes to her, ready for Julie to fall in her arms, a fantasy. “She’s fine. Just a little fall. The hospital kept her overnight to be on the safe side.” She reaches out, touching Julie’s arm, instead, and waits for her daughter to recoil.

She doesn’t. Not physically. “Why are you here?”

“No one could reach you.”

“Where’s Jenna?”

“Camping. I’m not sure she gets reception.”

“And Mrs. McClure?”

Barbara returns a blank stare.

“Our neighbor.”

Barbara remembers a woman in pink pedal pushers and a white tennis visor, planting bulbs in her front yard. That would have been nearly forty years ago.

“Wow. I was last on a long list, eh?” Barbara means to be making light of it, but it comes out sounding bitter. She returns to her seat. “I haven’t heard from anyone.”

“I was just up the beach. Hooley had a bonfire. My battery died.”

Barbara nods.

Julie sits across from her and puts her elbows on the table, face in her hands. Her shoulders shake.

“She really is fine, dear. She may have bumped her head, so they wanted to keep her overnight, but she should be able to come home this morning. I was about to head over.”

“I’ll go get her,” Julie says, standing up.

“Alright, then.”

“Will you be here when we get back?”

“It’s probably best if I’m not. I think she had enough of me.”

Julie sighs. “Okay.” Barbara watches her go before finishing her coffee in one gulp and rinsing the cup in the sink. Out the window, she can see the waves out beyond the grassy dunes. She gathers her things and hurries outside to toss them in her car, eager to fit in a walk along the beach before her mother returns.

The sand is cool on her bare feet; Barbara remembers racing to the water’s edge to cool them during the summers of her youth. This morning is bright, but the chill reminds that fall will be here soon.

Barbara sits before she gets to the damp sand, not tempted to dip her toes in the frigid water. She knows that it will be a struggle to get up again. Her hips, her lower back, her knees. At least there is no one to see.

This is where she met Bill for the first time, all those years ago. She’d been sitting much like she is now, thinking she was alone when he walked out of the ocean toward her, his tan muscles dripping. It was disorienting. It caught her off guard and felt so immediately intimate. Their first conversation and they were alone and he was half naked. He told her he’d been working on his parents’ roof all day and the heat was making him crazy. She offered him lemonade and he stood on the back porch, refusing to come into the kitchen because his feet were caked in sand. He drank three tall glasses, tipping his head back and guzzling them down greedily, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

He’d been wearing a wedding ring, as had she, but neither of them spoke of their better halves, not then and not on the many other occasions they met that summer in various stages of undress.

***

Barbara hears her cell phone ringing as she’s walking back to the car. She has just managed to fish it from the pocket of her purse when it goes silent. She sits behind the wheel and it starts ringing again. She glances at the screen before answering. Julie.

“Hello?” Barbara tilts her head, pinching the phone to her shoulder as she puts the key in the ignition.

She can’t understand a single word Julie says, and also, she understands immediately.