Soaring (3 page)

So that was what I became.

And thus I buried the fact that sometimes I wanted just to go with the Amelia of the Day, whoever she might be, and grab whatever scent that defined her that day.

Then the next, I could be something different.

Whatever I wanted to be.

Not what
she
wanted me to be. Not what
they
demanded I be.

I glanced in the mirror but immediately looked away and walked out, through the bedroom, down the hall, the steps. I turned right into the large, open kitchen that looked down to the sunken living room, across to the cozy landing, all with views to the frothy sea. Calmly, I tore open boxes until I found them.

My dishes. Stoneware that was very pretty but cost forty dollars a plate.

My mother had picked it. She did it in a way that seemed she was encouraging me to pick it. But in reality,
she
picked it.

Suddenly, I had the nearly overwhelming urge to scoot the entire box out to the deck and, piece by piece, throw it into the sea.

I didn’t.

That would be a waste and those dishes could be put to good use.

I was starting anew. I didn’t need to do it being wasteful.

I was going to do something else with those plates.

I was going to do something else with all my stuff.

I was going to make it worth something. Something
real
.

Because that was what I was going to be. I was going to stop being what I was, the Felicia Hathaway mini-me all grown up.

I was going to be me.

I had absolutely no idea what that me would turn out to be.

I just knew whoever she was, for the first time in her life, she’d be real.

Chapter One

They’d See

By that weekend, the weekend the kids would normally fly out to California to spend a day and a half with me, they were instead coming to their new home.

I’d been in Magdalene for three days.

In that time, thankfully, I had not seen Mickey.

In that time, I’d also been through every box, mostly repacking things and lugging them to walls, stacking them up.

I had a plan.

But first, I had to start reparation work with my children.

I could say that due to my activities since Conrad and I separated—when joint custody turned to every other weekend, which then turned to the judge awarding Conrad custody of the children as he moved across the country, allowing me one weekend a month—along the way the visitations with my kids had deteriorated.

In the beginning I had cause. It was just. My neurosurgeon husband had cheated on me with a nurse at his hospital, a woman fifteen years younger than me. He then left our family in order to divorce me so they could be married.

Conrad and I signed our divorce papers on a Wednesday.

Conrad and Martine had a massive beach wedding that next Saturday, where my son was his father’s best man and my daughter was a junior bridesmaid.

Then, as the months passed into years, the extremity of my antics increasing, my cause was no longer just.

No, and not only because the extremity of my antics was extreme, but because I’d done what no mother should do.

I’d dragged my children right along with me.

I didn’t involve them, oh no. Never that.

But I didn’t hide it from them.

Therefore, that first Friday in Magdalene with the kids imminently arriving, I was a nervous wreck.

Auden, my sixteen-year-old son, drove. A month after his sixteenth birthday, his father and stepmother bought him a car. It was used. It was okay, not great. Through stilted reports from my boy, I learned what it was and knew that it ran (which was all he needed) and was relatively trendy (which was all he wanted).

I would have bought him his heart’s desire, even if that were a Porsche or a Mercedes.

Conrad would have attempted to educate me about the fact that if we gave everything to our children, they would become spoiled and wouldn’t know how to work for things themselves.

Conrad would have been right.

I still would have bought Auden the car he wanted, brand new with all the bells and whistles. And if Conrad and I had still been married, I’d have done it without thought, without discussion, giving it to Auden so Conrad would have had two choices: be the bad guy and take it away or give in and let him have it.

Now that I didn’t have that say in my son’s life, at three thirty on that Friday, that car drove up and parked in my drive.

A red Honda Civic.

I stood in my open front door and watched my children alight from it.

They didn’t look at the house. They didn’t look at me.

Auden and Olympia Moss just grabbed small bags from the trunk of the car and trudged up to the house like they were walking into a classroom at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning to take their SATs.

I watched them approach me.

Auden looked like his dad, tall with a straight nose, light brown eyes and rich brown hair that had a subtle reddish cast to it. My son was bulkier than his father, maybe an inch or two shorter, but he was still growing.

As if our lives were golden and the fates shined their smiles on us and gave us the perfect family, Auden got his looks from his father, but Olympia was just like me, petite but slightly curvy (or in Pippa’s case, her curves were filling out). Brunette hair that was several shades darker than her brother’s and father’s, with no reddish cast, but it had a natural shine that said someone up there liked my baby girl and me. She also had my hazel eyes that popped due to the darkness of our hair.

My boy was already handsome, like Conrad.

My girl was far, far prettier than me.

When they got close, my throat feeling clogged, I forced out, “Hey, honeys.”

Auden looked up. My beautiful boy who got all I loved from his dad (and then some), his eyes on me emotionless, my throat completely closed.

My fourteen-year-old daughter, Pippa, flinched at the sound of my voice.

That slashed through me.

I took that cut and it sliced deep as I moved out of their way and they walked by me, Auden averting his eyes, Pippa never even looking at me.

I followed them in and closed the door, seeing they’d stopped and were taking in the view.

Hoping they liked what they were seeing, I moved to their sides, wanting to hug them, touch them, kiss their cheeks, draw in their scents. I hadn’t seen them in weeks.

But I’d learned affection from me was not wanted.

Not anymore.

So I didn’t do this.

I stood not far, not close, and said, “This is it, kiddos. Our new place.”

Auden had a curl in his lip.

Olympia looked bored.

That cut deep as well but I forged ahead.

The new me.

The new
us
.

No matter the wounds they inflicted, I had to keep going. Never fall back. Never retreat. I couldn’t allow any of my weaknesses to delay me in restarting my family.

“Your rooms are that way.” I pointed to the opposite end of the living area from where the kitchen was. “I had the movers put your furniture in the two rooms that had sea views. If you want different—”

“Whatever,” Auden muttered, talking over me and starting the way I indicated. “It’ll work.”

Olympia followed him silently.

I did the same, not silently, instead calling, “I haven’t unpacked your stuff. I had an idea. I thought…new house, fresh start. You two might want to have a look at your things. Decide what you want to keep. What you don’t. We can get rid of what you don’t, go out and get you new. You can decora—”

“Only got two years with this crap, not worth the bother,” Auden cut me off to say.

Pippa said nothing. She just followed Auden around the lip of the sunken living room and into the hall that, opposite to the one on the other side of the house, had stretches of straight and steps that led down the cliff rather than up.

I chose the front sea view room for Pippa and thinking Auden, as a boy, would want more privacy, the back room for him.

I considered putting him in the room that ran the length of the far end, which was large and could be anything, a den, a family room, an office. I decided against it because the two front rooms had their own baths and the back room only had a half-bath.

The two bedrooms opposite shared a Jack and Jill. I wanted my kids to see the ocean, to have access to the deck right from their rooms. But I also thought they were too old to share a Jack and Jill.

I stood at the mouth of the hall as they moved down it and said, “You can drop your bags in your room. Then I’ll give you a full tour.”

“We can look around,” Auden replied as he stopped and looked into the first room then kept going and disappeared in the second.

Pippa looked in the first room and walked in, out of sight.

I stood there, waiting, thinking this wasn’t going well but knowing it wouldn’t.

Patience.

Perseverance.

This was going to take time and I had to put in the time. Take my licks. Endure the cuts. Bleed inside. Give them what they needed to take it out on me because I deserved it.

Then I’d show them this was different. This time it was a promise I wouldn’t break. This time we really were going to rebuild our family.

And they’d come to me. They were my babies. We’d once been close. We’d once been affectionate.

We’d once been happy.

They’d come to me.

At that moment, they didn’t come to me.

Auden came out of his room mere seconds after he entered it and he called, “Pippa!”

Immediately she came out of hers.

They both moved along the hall, toward me then past me and right to the front door.

“Pip’s curfew is eleven o’clock on weekends,” Auden stated as they walked. “I’m dropping her off at her friend’s. Leave a key under the mat or something. She’ll be home then.”

I stared, my insides frozen, my throat burning from the chill.

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

Auden opened the door and Pippa walked right through, never looking at me.

But my son looked at me.

Or through me.

Though, his words were directed at me.

“Goin’ out with the guys. My curfew is midnight. Pip’ll leave the key somewhere for me. Later.”

With that, he went through the door and closed it behind him.

I stood immobile, allowing the vicious feel of the fact my children had walked into their new home they would be sharing with me (not often, but they’d be doing it), dropped their bags and walked out. They didn’t greet me. They didn’t look around. They barely looked at me. My daughter didn’t even speak to me.

And then they were gone.

I stared at the door and whispered, “I deserved that. I deserved it. Take it. Bury it. Move on. Move on, Amelia.”

I didn’t know how I did it but I forced my body to move. I went to the kitchen counter and grabbed the keys I’d had made for them. I found some notepaper. I wrote their names on two sheets. Under that, on each sheet, I wrote, “Welcome home. These are yours to keep
.
”

I went to the front door and lifted the mat, put the papers down side by side, laid the keys on top and dropped the mat.

Then I closed the door, took in a deep breath and decided against dinner that night. I had the groceries to make one of the few dishes that was a favorite of both my children.

Maybe I’d get to make it the next night.

* * * * *

I stayed up but I did it in my room with the door open.

I heard them both come home, safe and sound.

Even though the light was on in my room and down the hallway, neither of them came to say goodnight to me.

* * * * *

The next morning, late, I stood in the kitchen sipping coffee out of a twenty dollar mug that I would soon be replacing, when my daughter came out.

I did not take it as a good sign that she was dressed to face the day.

“Hey, sweetheart, you want some breakfast?” I called.

She skirted the living room toward the door.

And the first words my daughter said to me in our new home were, “Polly’s here with her mom. We’re going to the mall and to a movie. Then pizza tonight. I’ll be home by curfew.”

She was out the door before I could say another word.

I hurried to the door, opened it and looked out just in time to see a Chevy SUV, the woman in the front seat looking my way, smiling, giving me a wave, but reversing out of my drive then rolling away.

I endured that and decided on what was next, knowing from experience that Auden was not an early riser on weekends.

So I chanced a shower.

It was a bad decision.

I came out to a note on the kitchen counter that simply said, “Out. Be back later
.
”

Even though I knew I had no right, the mother in me boiled inside that my teenage son (and incidentally, daughter) felt they could take off giving me very limited information as to where they were going and who they were with. Heck, Pippa’s friend’s mother should have gotten out, walked up to my house and introduced herself to me.

But I had to suffer the boil. Let it cool. Give them what they needed. Take it and move on.

So I did.

Through that day.

And through the next, where they didn’t leave their rooms except to go and raid the fridge with nary a word to me.

Until it was five o’clock. Time to leave and go back to their father’s.

Auden said, “Later,” on his way out the door.

Pippa said nothing.

I died inside and hoped to God I had the strength to revive myself because I had long weeks yawning ahead of me of nothing. They wouldn’t return calls. They wouldn’t return texts. They wouldn’t do anything.

And I determined I’d use those weeks to show them things were different.

I would not go to their father’s and stepmother’s work and cause a scene. I would not go to their home and get into it with Martine. I would not go to their school activities and embarrass them, aiming my acid publically at their dad and stepmom (though it was summer, but
when
they had school activities, I wouldn’t do this).