Ada fell to the floor of the music room and wrapped her arms around her knees. She remembered what Peter had said about Quinn, about how selfish she was. It was obviously true. Butwhat Quinn said—about people like Peter using her up—had an air of truth to it.
Although it was late on a Saturday, Ada considered texting Natalie and even wrote it out on her phone: Hi! I hope your weekend is going great. I wanted to let you know that there has been a change. I’d like to take Katrina Petri off my roster. Could you please call her as soon as possible and refer her to someone else? Thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing you on Monday!
But could she really send it? With her heart pounding, Ada read and reread the message, thinking of poor Katrina, who hardly had anyone, and considering her own aching heart. Beyond anything, Ada knew she was acting insane, giving power to a hunch that probably had no bearing in reality. Instantly, she deleted the message before she sent it, and all the tension spilled from her shoulders. Peter was downstairs, laughing with their children. Everything would go on the way it always had.
Chapter Ten
The last two weeks of Hannah’s high school career were a whirlwind. Now that her finals were over, Hannah floated in and out of the house without a care in the world and even started meeting up with a few friends from tennis—friends she’d apparently gotten closer with since having the hot tub pizza party after their last matches. Ada was overjoyed to find community, even if it was so soon after the end of her time in Nantucket. Building friendships took skill, Ada knew. At least, it was something she’d once known.
Sometimes Ada woke up in the middle of the night, heavy with sweat, panicked about Hannah’s upcoming time at Vassar. What if she was lonely? What if she couldn’t admit that to her parents? What if she was frightened every single day of her life?
However, in the lead-up to graduation, Ada was overwhelmed with clients, graduation party preparations, senior dinners, and life's other responsibilities. To make matters worse, Olivia crashed her bicycle and needed to go to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a minor concussion and told to wear a helmet. Ada bit her tongue to keep from yelling at Olivia for not wearing the helmet she had hanging in the garage, because she was so grateful that Olivia was all right. When shecalled her mother from the hospital, Kathy said, “You never wore a helmet when you were a teenager, Ada. Kids make mistakes.” Hearing this made nothing better, but Ada was still grateful that her mother had come to the phone. Despite everything, her mother’s voice soothed her.
Every time Katrina’s sessions came up in the calendar, Ada found herself finding reasons to cancel: a doctor’s appointment, a bad stomach, stress over Hannah’s graduation party. Natalie didn’t put up a fuss and rescheduled Katrina to the following week. And now, each morning when Ada entered her office and prepared for the day ahead, she watched her memories of Katrina and Katrina’s problems, and Katrina’s fears trickle out of her mind. Maybe Katrina hadn’t done anything wrong. But the act of asking Katrina about it terrified Ada so completely that she’d decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe it was time to recommend Katrina to another therapist.
Ada’s life with Peter and the kids was the only one she had ever known. She refused to let anything taint it.
Sometimes in the back of her mind, she caught herself thinking just because you didn’t look at the wound, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. But she shook it out of her head.
On the morning of Hannah’s graduation, Ada woke up at the crack of dawn and went to the kitchen to make coffee and check her to-do list. A family party would follow the ceremony, featuring food, pool time, and beach activities. She needed to pick up hamburger and hot dog buns before the stores were overcrowded with tourists and graduation revelers. Hilariously, at the grocery store, she ran into several other mothers of graduates, all of whom were picking up their own graduation party items: watermelons, twelve-packs of beer for incoming family members, and cakes with their children’s names written on them in icing.
“I can’t believe it’s happening!” one of the mothers cried when she spotted Ada. “Think of all the errands we’ve run for them over the years. Think of all the silly things we’ve thought of, and worried about, and kept ourselves up over.”
“It’s almost over,” Ada said softly, her stomach lurching.
“You still have two at home. Count your blessings,” the mother reminded her, because she needed to win the “feel sorry for me” game they were playing.
Ada returned to the house to find Kathy already parked in the driveway and drinking a cup of coffee with Peter at the breakfast table. Kade was watching television with a piece of peanut butter toast, and Olivia moseyed down the steps, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Where’s Hannah?” Ada asked, removing hot dog buns from her linen grocery bag.
“I’ll go get her!” Kade cried, leaping up and hustling upstairs to wake his sister.
Ada, Peter, Kathy, and Olivia froze, listening intently as Kade rapped on Hannah’s door. “Get up, graduate!” he called. “It’s time to walk across the stage!”
Next came the sound of Hannah’s door opening and Hannah saying, “Cut it out.” But there was a smile in her voice, proof that their family was going to have a beautiful day together.
A few minutes later, Hannah was at the breakfast table, scraping butter over a waffle. Her hair was wild and curly and needed to be tamed for the ceremony later. Lately, she’d been wearing too much makeup, and some of it was smudged around her eyes. Ada bit her tongue to keep from telling her daughter how important it was to wash your face before you went to bed.
“I can’t believe my baby girl’s all grown up and graduating,” Peter said. “I still remember the first day of school! Mom, don’t you?”
Ada sat down with another cup of coffee and let herself fold back through the years. Hannah had been five when she’d first gone to kindergarten, with a little pink backpack and a pair of enormous glasses that she’d later replaced with contacts. Both Ada and Peter had taken Hannah to school that first morning and walked her into her classroom, where they’d shaken hands with the teacher and watched Hannah get settled in. Both Ada and Peter had cried in the parking lot.
That wasn’t the kind of man who cheated on his wife, Ada told herself now.
“How could I forget it? You were so organized. You had five different folders, each in a different color, one for each subject. Once you got into organizing, you wanted to organize everything in the house. You wanted to put the dishes somewhere else; you wanted to rearrange the towels in the bathroom,” Ada said to Hannah, laughing.
“You used to get things done!” Kade teased Hannah.
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Sounds like I was an obsessive little freak.”
“Hey!” Peter and Ada cried in unison.
“That’s my eldest daughter you’re talking about,” Peter said, shoving Hannah lightly.
Hannah grinned, her eyes bright, as though she were holding tightly onto tears.
The graduation ceremony was set to begin at one thirty that afternoon. Hannah had to be at the football field at twelve thirty for attendance and rehearsal, which left Ada and the rest of the family a bit of time to set up for the graduation party and get ready themselves. Ada tried three shades of lipstick beforeshe decided on a light pink one. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t decide if she looked old for her age or young.
