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“Georgia is our miracle baby,” Carmella said. “I love her so much that I sometimes think my heart will break. But she’s driving us insane!”
Elsa laughed. “Kids do that. You think it’s bad now, then just wait until she’s in her teens.”
“You should have warned me,” Carmella joked.
“I’m pretty sure all of pop culture already warned you,” Elsa said.
After their baths, Carmella and Elsa donned soft white robes and slippers and walked downstairs for their massages. There, two young women who’d just begun to work at the Lodge that winter since Carmella’s absence massaged them with powerful hands, ones that didn’t seem to belong to their slight frames. Carmella lost herself in the feeling of her muscles loosening, the kinks falling away.
“Would you have ever followed a boy to Martha’s Vineyard?” Elsa asked thoughtfully, midway through the massage.
Carmella’s eyes opened part-ways. She knew her sister was still thinking about Aria. “You mean, if I’d met him in the Caribbean?”
“I guess.”
“I don’t know. Probably not, but not because I didn’t want to,” Carmella said. “I lived so far from my feelings for so long, and I guess that’s how I was able to watch Cody marry and have a baby with someone else.” Carmella shivered at the memories, during which she’d cried at home alone at night, even as she’d told herself how happy she was for Cody.
“I just hope Aria didn’t abandon something else that was important to her,” Elsa said. “No matter how much power women have in this new generation, it’s still easy to doubt ourselves, our powers, and make mistakes.”
“Do you honestly think Cole would be a mistake for Aria?”
Elsa laughed gently. “I think anyone can be a mistake to the wrong person. Even my wonderful son.”
After massages, Carmella and Elsa went to the beautiful eating area of the Lodge, with its floor-to-ceiling windows that featured a gorgeous view of Katama Bay. It was a chilly yet gorgeous winter day, one wherein the sun shone brightly through the frigid branches of the surrounding trees. Carmella and Elsa feasted on the nutritious food the Lodge had to offer. Salads with walnuts, goat cheese, dried cranberries, a ginger carrot soup, and a beautiful slab of pink salmon seemed to open Carmella’s eyes wider than they’d been since her baby was born.
“I have a gift for you,” Elsa said, leaning over her steaming soup with a mysterious expression on her face.
“Oh? Is it the ultimate tip to get my baby to sleep? Because I think I’m on tip forty-five with no luck.”
Elsa laughed gently and squeezed Carmella’s wrist over the table. “Unfortunately, I’m not a miracle worker.” She dropped down to fish a dark brown book from her ledger, which she placed between their bowls of soup.
Carmella lifted the old leather book, which seemed in every way a journal, somebody’s long-past record of time. When she opened the first page, she read aloud: “The Diary of Tina Remington.” A shiver raced up Carmella’s spine. “My gosh. Where did you find this?”
Elsa’s eyes shimmered with excitement. “I had a few boxes at the old house hidden in a closet somewhere. They were filled with Mom’s journals and photo albums. I thought this one, in particular, would be of interest to you because…” She trailed off, her smile widening. “Well, it’s the journal Mom kept when she was pregnant with you and then for about a year after you were born.”
Carmella’s jaw dropped. For a moment, she stared at her sister, genuinely shocked. She wanted to protest, at first, to remind Elsa that their mother hadn’t loved Carmella in the slightest, that, after their brother Colton’s death at a young age, Tina had hardly looked at Carmella in the eyes.
“Carmella,” Elsa said sternly, as though she could read her mind, “You know all that love you’re feeling for Georgia right now? That huge, insurmountable, powerful love?”
Carmella nodded dumbly.
“Mom felt that for you, too,” Elsa continued.
“Have you read the journal?”
“I read the first couple of pages,” Elsa said. “Just to make sure it was the right time period. An early entry talks about the names she and Dad were considering for you. One of them is Hildy. Can you imagine if your name was Hildy?”
Carmella flipped two pages in to find the list, then burst into laughter. “I dodged a bullet there.”
“You really did,” Elsa said.
As Elsa drove Carmella back home, she pressed the journal against her chest, terrified and very pleased to have this fresh window into her mother’s life. Throughout the early weeks of Georgia’s life, Carmella had been overwhelmed with thoughts of Tina, about what she had been thinking immediately after Carmella’s birth, and about the bond she’d surely built with Carmella during those early days. It was bizarre never to speak to her mother about the strange yet beautiful moments of early motherhood. Now, it was like Tina could whisper through time and space and share everything that had been on her mind.
“I wish you would have had her journals when you were a young mother,” Carmella said as Elsa braked the car in Carmella’s driveway.
Elsa waved her hand. “I had Dad. He was such a help back then, telling me stories about when I was a baby and how young and foolish he and Mom felt at the time.”
Carmella’s heart lifted slightly. She’d always felt that their father, Neal, had loved Elsa much more than he’d loved Carmella. This was something she supposed she would never get over, even so many years after Neal’s death.
