My stomach hurts. Though I’ve thought this myself, though I’ve just recently said it aloud to Jase, I feel sad and guilty. “You told now, Mom. That’s strong. That’s good.”
She shrugs, brushing off the sympathy. “When I first met Clay this spring, I stalled on mentioning I had teenagers. The truth was just…inconvenient. That I was in my forties with nearly grown daughters.” She gives a little rueful laugh. “That seemed like a big issue then.”
“Does Tracy know?”
“She’ll be home tomorrow morning. I called her after I got home.”
I try to picture Tracy’s reaction. My sister, the future lawyer. Horrified at Mom? Devastated at having her summer interrupted? Or something else entirely. Something I can’t even picture? Oh Trace. I’ve missed her so much.
“What did Mrs. Garrett say? What happens now?”
She takes another big sip of wine. Not reassuring.
“I don’t want to think about that,” she says. “We’ll know soon enough.” She straightens her legs, stands up. “It’s late. You should be in bed.”
Her motherly, admonishing tone. After all this, it seems ridiculous. But when I see the slump of her shoulders as she reaches for the doorknob, I can only tell her another truth, however inconvenient.
“I love you, Mom.”
She inclines her head, acknowledging, then ushers me into the chill of the central air. Turning to lock the door firmly behind her, she sighs, “I just knew it.”
“Knew what?” I ask, turning.
“Knew no good would come of getting to know those people next door.”
Chapter Fifty-two
Contrary to Clay’s predictions, the Garretts don’t call a press conference the next day. Or go directly to the police. They do, after all, bring out the talking stick. There’s a family conference at the hospital, with all the children down to Duff. Alice and Joel want to report Mom immediately. Andy and Jase argue against it. Ultimately, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett decide to keep the matter private. Mom had offered to cover all the medical bills and the additional expenses of hiring someone to work at the store, Jase tells me, and his parents struggle with that. Mr. Garrett doesn’t want charity—or hush money.
For a week, they discuss it as a family. Mr. Garrett is moved from the ICU and Mom goes to visit.
Even Jase doesn’t know what passes between them, but the next day Mom resigns from the race.
Just as she said he would, Clay writes the speech for her. “Certain events in my family have convinced me that I must decline the honor of running for office once again in the hope of serving as your senator. Public servants are also private individuals, and as such I must do the right thing for the people closest to home, before I try to serve the wider world.”
There’s a lot of lurid speculation in the press—I guess there always is, when a politician resigns unexpectedly—but it dies down after a few weeks.
I expect her to take a cruise, that trip to Virgin Gorda, escape, but instead she spends a lot of time at our house, fixing up the garden she used to care about before she got so busy in politics. She makes dinner for the Garretts, and hands it to me to bring over until Duff gets as sick of sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and puff pastry as he’d ever been of pizza. She asks me how Mr. Garrett is doing, averting her eyes. When Jase offers to mow our lawn, she tells me to thank him, but “we have a service.”
You’d think, after all the years I’ve come to the B&T, all the Friday night hornpipe dinners, the holiday festivities, the hours logged in and by the pools, that I would have missed it more since I hung up my uniform and said good-bye to Mr. Lennox. But though Mom decides it’s the only possible place to go for a last family dinner before Tracy leaves for college, I don’t feel a rush of nostalgia as we open the heavy oak doors to the dining room, just surprise that it’s all exactly the same. The soft classical music played low enough to be nearly subliminal, the loud laughter from the bar, the chink of silverware. The smell of lemon oil and overstarched tablecloths and prime rib.
Tracy is leading the way, which is different. Mom follows. We get our usual maitre d’, but he doesn’t take us to the table that’s always been ours, below the sea of harpooned whales and unlucky sailors. Instead he leads us to a smaller corner table.
“I’m very sorry,” he tells Mom. “You haven’t been here in a while, and we’ve become accustomed to giving this table to Mr. Lamont—he comes in every Friday.”
Mom looks down at her hands, then abruptly back up at him. “Of course. Naturally. This is fine. Better. More privacy.”
She sinks into the chair that doesn’t face the rest of the room, shaking out her napkin.
“We were very sorry to hear that you won’t be representing us again, Senator Reed,” he adds gently.
“Ah. Well. Time to move on.” Mom reaches for the bread basket, and butters a roll with enormous concentration. Then she eats it as though it’s her last meal. Tracy raises her eyebrows at me. We do a lot of that these days. Our house is a quiet minefield. Trace can’t wait to escape to Middlebury, and I can’t blame her.
“Speaking of which,” Tracy says, “I’m changing up some college plans.”
Mom puts down the last bite of her roll. “No,” she says faintly.
Tracy just looks at her. Like Mom has lost her right to say no or yes to anything, which has pretty much been her stance since she returned from the Vineyard. And Mom looks away.
“Flip’s transferring up to Vermont. To be with me. He’s got a great job as a manny for some professors in the English department. We’re going to get an apartment together.”
Mom doesn’t seem to know where to start with this. Finally, she says, “A manny?”
“That’s right, Mom.” Tracy closes her menu. “And an apartment together.”
At first glance, you could mistake this for their old battle: Tracy reserving her right to rebel, and Mom refusing to let her. But these days my mother always blinks first. She looks down at the napkin in her lap now, takes a careful sip of water, then says, “Oh. Well. That is news.”
Pause while the waiter takes our orders. We are still too well bred or well trained to show visible emotion in front of the waitstaff. When he departs, though, Mom reaches for the silk cardigan sweater she’s draped over the back of her seat, fumbling in the pocket.
“I guess, then, it’s a good time to show you this.” She carefully unfolds a sheet of paper, smoothes it with her hand, and positions it between Tracy and me.
“For sale. Your house of dreams. Nestled on a quiet cul-de-sac in one of Connecticut’s most exclusive towns, this jewel of a home features the best of everything—top-of-the-line amenities, prime location near the boardwalk and beach, hardwood floors, everything of the highest quality. For price, please inquire of Postscript Realty.”
I’m staring, not really getting it, but Tracy does, immediately.
“You’re selling our house? We’re moving?”
“Samantha and I will be moving. You will already be gone,” Mom says, with a ghost of her old sharp tone.
It’s only then that I actually recognize our house in the picture, caught from a slant, a view I rarely see anymore—the opposite side from the Garretts.
“It makes sense,” Mom says briskly as the waiter soundlessly slides her plate of field greens in front of her. “Too much house for two people. Too much…” Her voice fades and she stabs at a piece of dried cranberry. “They give it a month to sell, tops,” she says.
“A month!” Tracy explodes. “In Samantha’s last year of high school? Where are you going to go?”