AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m kidding!” Gwyn squeezes her knee, and then leans forward to hug her, to really hug her. “It is lovely to meet you, Maggie,” she says, right into her ear, so only Maggie hears her.
“You too,” Maggie says, and smiles.
Maggie makes decisions about people too quickly—she knows this—but she likes Gwyn, right away, partially because she sees what she might have missed if Gwyn hadn’t bent to greet her: a sweetness in her eyes. A real sweetness. For a second, it makes her think of all that Nate had growing up. These two loving parents, this home. Even if his parents are splitting up now, it doesn’t explain why in the last year and a half he has always seemed less than eager to come back here.
She tries to shake off her questioning as Gwyn gets up and goes to sit down on the floor beside Georgia, taking Thomas’s glass from him and taking a sip, one swift motion, as she plops down on the floor, her dress wrapping her legs—scooting in as close as she can get to her daughter.
“So what did I miss?” Gwyn says. “Did you have an easy trip out here?”
“Fairly easy,” Nate says. “Until we got to the driveway.”
“What happened in the driveway?”
“Nothing,” Nate says, and shakes his head, as if remembering they weren’t going to bring it up. “My sister just got out of the car, while I was still driving, to answer a phone call.”
“You’re telling on me?” Georgia says. “What are you, nine?”
Nate smiles, proud of himself. “I just turned ten,” he says.
But then Thomas interrupts them. “You weren’t using my phone, by chance, were you, Georgia? For the phone call? I can’t find it.”
“Why would I be using your phone?”
“You wouldn’t,” Gwyn says, putting her hand on Georgia’s shoulder, rubbing it. Then she turns to look up at Nate’s dad. “Let it go, Thomas. It’s gone.”
And Maggie is startled by it—startled by it on the heels of thinking that they are so lovely, even in the midst of all of this— what she hears in Gwyn’s voice: anger. Latent, maybe, but there nevertheless.
But she looks over at Nate, who seems not to have noticed, and so Maggie decides she has imagined it.
“Hey, the caterer was here, by the way,” Georgia says, pointing toward the front of the house, toward the driveway. “And she told Nate and Maggie that there are two hundred people coming tonight. That’s a mistake, right?”
“You guys met the caterer?” Gwyn asks, taking her hand off Georgia’s shoulder. “Thomas, did you meet the caterer too?”
“Mom, that’s kind of beside the point, wouldn’t you say? Why are there two hundred people coming to the house? There are supposed to be, like . . . seven,” Georgia says.
“We never said seven,” Gwyn says.
“You said, small parting ceremony.”
“And that equals the number seven?” Gwyn says. “Since when?”
Georgia gives her a look. “Why didn’t you give us any warning about this? Because you thought Nate wouldn’t come?”
“We did tell Nate,” Thomas says.
They did? Maggie looks at Nate. You knew?
But Nate doesn’t meet her eyes. He is looking down at his own hands, as if this were a stranger’s too-loud conversation in a dentist’s office, as if he just wants it to be over. He looks up at his sister. “We’ve been so crazed with the move and the restaurant,” he says. “I guess I wasn’t taking it in.”
“That’s shocking. I’ve never known you to avoid addressing things that you don’t want to deal with,” Georgia says.
Maggie almost asks aloud, what does that mean? But Georgia is turning back to her mom. “Why didn’t you tell me the scale of tonight?”
“We didn’t want to overwhelm you while you were pregnant,” Thomas says.
“I’m still pregnant.”
“Well, we didn’t want to overwhelm you while you were less pregnant,” Gwyn says. “But there’s no need to be upset anyway. Tonight is going to be really lovely. Just a little more involved than you thought.”
