Okay, obviously I do need to talk to Lauren.
I pick up my phone to ask where she is, and see a missed FaceTime call from my mother. She’s the last person I could ever talk to about this, but given how depressed she’s been, I don’t like to keep her waiting when she reaches out. I go to the balcony to call her back.
“Hello, dear,” she says in greeting. She’s outside in the garden of the cottage. The sun is streaming against her auburn hair, making her glow. She looks beautiful. And maybe it’s just the light, but she looks less tired than usual. Peaceful.
“Oh, you’re at the cottage already,” I say. “I thought it was Dad’s week.”
“It is, but there are some decisions we need to make together, so I came up early. The weather is beautiful.”
It’s odd to think of them sharing a house, however briefly. I haven’t seen them in the same place in over a year. The sadness of the situation overtakes me, but my mom seems upbeat—rare these days—and I don’t want to bring down her mood.
“I wish I was there,” I say.
“No! You’re somewhere far more exotic. Tell me all about your adventure!”
It’s all I can do to paste on a smile.
“I’m having a surprisingly good time,” I say. Because until today, I have been.
She laughs. “Imagine that, a free Caribbean vacation being enjoyable.”
“You like anything free.” My mother is famously cheap. She buys all her clothes secondhand, reuses tea bags, and still clips actual paper coupons out of the local newspaper.
“So what have you been getting up to on this trip of yours?” she asks.
“Well, let’s see. I learned how to cook Antiguan food. I saw a shockingly good Elvis impersonator. And today I failed to learn to surf.”
I obviously don’t tell her about Gabe.
“Sounds eventful,” she says. “How’s our Lauren?”
“She’s dating everyone on the boat, of course.”
“Oh no. Are you lonely?”
I debate telling her about Felix. But I want to talk tosomeoneabout him.
“Well, actually…” I say, “I met a boy.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Oh?” she says neutrally.
“He’s British. A chef. Very nice. Here with his family. You’d like him.”
Her expression could be charitably called “unconvinced.”
“How long have you been on this boat?” she asks. “A week?”
“Five days.”
“That’s awfully quick.”
“I didn’t say I’m going to marry him, Mother. And didn’t you fall in love with Dad in a week?”
Their love story is legendary family lore. They met at the college bookstore the first day of their freshman year, bought overpriced textbooks for a statistics class they both ended up dropping, and never looked back.
“Best money I ever spent,” Dad always says.
Said.
