“How did the weekend go?” Ada asked, hoping her daughter would open up.
Hannah shrugged. “Fine. It was cool not to play tennis for a few days.”
“Do you not like it?” Ada felt stricken. Had they forced Hannah into a sport she didn’t care about, just for “college applications”?
“I like it,” Hannah said. “But it’s not like I’m going to play it professionally.”
Ada remembered how Peter had mentioned Hannah wanting to go to dental school. Delicately, she asked, “Do you know what you want to do? Maybe? In the future?”
Hannah scoffed. “It feels like everyone is asking me that right now. It’s intense.”
Ada stared down at her shoes, scuffing through sand and grass. “You don’t have to know anything right now. During that first year of college, you should explore everything you might be interested in. You’ll probably be surprised at what you end up with.”
Hannah was quiet. A seagull cawed overhead, and Kade and Olivia were a quarter of a mile in the distance, as though they’d forgotten about them.
Sometimes Ada wondered if she was actually a good therapist, since she wasn’t always very good at understanding her own children. But she asked questions. She tried.
“I don’t want to graduate,” Hannah said softly. “I mean, I do. I don’t want to go to school anymore. But I don’t really want what’s coming next either.”
Ada reached for her daughter’s hand, then thought better of it and held her own hand. Hannah was eighteen and far too old to want to hold her mother’s hand. Probably.
What could Ada tell her daughter to make growing up seem less scary? In all honesty, Ada was still frightened of growing up and getting older. She was forty-three and terrified of being fifty. What sorts of turmoil awaited her?
“We’ll come visit you,” Ada said. “Whenever you want us to.”
“I can’t be known as the girl on campus who misses her parents that much,” Hannah grumbled.
“Why not?” Ada joked, trying to laugh.
But Hannah gave her a dark look, and Ada's smile sagged.
“We love you so much, honey,” Ada said. “We want what’s best for you. We want you to be happy, comfortable, and open to change. But we know it’ll be hard.”
Suddenly, Kade and Olivia were sweeping back, their arms extended as though they were airplanes. Kade looked younger than fifteen, and Olivia looked older than thirteen, and suddenly, everything in Ada’s mind felt scrambled up. Her kids were young only briefly. Where had the time gone?
“It’ll be fine,” Hannah said stiffly. “Everything is always fine.”
Chapter Five
Hannah’s biggest and final tennis tournament of the season was on the following Saturday. The night before, during the especially stressful era of searching for Hannah’s tennis skirt and wrangling all the kids for dinner, Kathy surprised everyone by arriving with presents, candy, and plenty of bottles of wine. When she pulled into the driveway, Ada bit her tongue to keep from groaning, then hurried to let her mother in. “Look who’s here!” she announced.
“What kind of grandmother would I be if I missed my granddaughter’s final match?” Kathy declared.
Ada did not say, “You could be the kind who calls first!” Her mother looked radiant and entirely pleased with herself, wearing a shade of coral lipstick that reminded Ada of long-ago beach trips with her mother, after her father had left and made them a duo.
“It was sweet of you,” Ada said, half begrudgingly. “Thank you.”
Hannah, Kade, and Olivia ran into the foyer to hug their grandmother, while Peter emerged from his private den upstairs to say hello. His eyes were shadowed, proof of how tired a week’s worth of surgeries made him. After the kids, Ada, and Kathywere set up on the back porch with delivery pizza, three flavors plus garlic bread, Peter admitted that he had plans to watch a game with a buddy.
“I can cancel,” he said to Kathy. “I didn’t know you’d be in town.”
Kathy laughed. “Don’t cancel on my account! Go! Watch your game. We’ll see you at the tennis match tomorrow.”
Peter kissed Ada on the cheek and high-fived all of his children. “See you later,” he said before bolting for the door like his life depended on it.
Ada wished she could go with him. But here she sat with her mother, who performed the routine of a happy grandmother, asking her grandkids about school and their friends. Kathy ate delicately, using a fork and knife, which prompted Ada to reconsider her eating habits as well. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to accuse her of being sloppy in front of her children.
After the kids were stuffed, Hannah went upstairs to hang out alone, presumably with music, and Kade and Olivia ran up and down the beach, chasing seagulls and throwing rocks into the sea. Ada put the rest of the pizza in the fridge and poured a glass of wine for herself and her mother. Orange, purple, and pink played over the waves, but the first of the stars twinkled in the sky above. It was a radiant evening, the first Friday in May.
