They’d talked about it all morning—why she wasn’t ready (she wasn’t sure); how her reticence had nothing to do with how much she loved him; how their life was just as beautiful as any she’d dreamed of, so why change it? They were more of a couple than any married couple they knew.
In the end, every last bite of their breakfast gone, and the dishes done, he’d told her. “When I ask again . . . if I ask again . . . I won’t ask a third time.” The words weren’t said cruelly, but with a soft kiss and the truth.
She’d be ready next time; she was quite sure.
She’d nodded in agreement and stood, walked over and slipped onto his lap, kissed him. “I love you. I hear you.” His kiss tasted like cheese and croissant, soft and buttery. They barely made it to his bed to make love, stumbling down the hallway and sloughing off their lounging Sunday sweatpants and T-shirts. They didn’t leave that bed until late afternoon and only for a long walk to the river.
Beatrice now stood in her kitchen and remembered it all with a flush of love. He would not ask again. That was clear.
So she would ask him. That’s what she’d do.
She searched the kitchen for her reading glasses, found them by the computer, and picked up her phone.
Nothing. He hadn’t answered.
She’d really done it this time. There she stood: hungover and ridiculous in her too-sunny unrelentingly cheery kitchen because the word “yes” wouldn’t fall out of her mouth.
She would seek him out today and tell him yes. Fear or no fear, this was absurd. She loved him. Her reluctance to marry had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the past, like echoes that wouldn’t end.
It was almost inconceivable that he hadn’t answered: to be ignored was an insult worse than rudeness. To be ignored—she’d felt it before: the memory of Tom’s abandonment that crawled across her skin in a cold sweat.
She poured her coffee and sat at the kitchen counter, and noticed she’d kept her laptop open to email where there blinked messages from the flock. She wondered, briefly, if something was wrong. Her heart hammered—the last time there were that many messages in a string had been twelve years ago when they’d lost their beloved Dani, their oystercatcher, their fragile and beautiful friend.
Her heart picked up a pace and she opened the string to make sure nothing was wrong.
I can do it!, wrote Rose.
I’m in. Booking flights now, wrote Victoria.
Absolutely. See you in four days in Savannah. Details?, wrote Daisy.
Then a barrage of questions—what time should they fly in? Daisy would drive—she was only two hours away. Had a house been found and booked?
It took Beatrice longer than it should have to stare at these messages, to wonder where they were all going and why.
Then the memory of her own proposal came rushing back. She’d invited and promised her “birds” a beach reunion, a house where they’d all meet; an all-expenses paid trip to help her decide whether to marry Lachlan.
What had she been thinking? Or more rightly, what had the champagne been thinking?
She didn’t need them to help her decide. She would go tell Lachlan “yes” today, and this trip would be null and void. She didn’t have that kind of cash and that kind of time. She didn’t . . . and yet it seemed she did.
Beatrice ran her hands through her hair and groaned. She’d done it this time. To back out would not only be embarrassing but also rude, and with Rose now alone in what had once been a very full nest, she had been the first to say yes. And Victoria booked her flights?
After pacing the house, putting away the art supplies in the hallway, and eating a plate full of scrambled eggs, Beatrice called Lachlan. This was fixable with a single call to him. She could reimburse Victoria her ticket, and they’d all laugh about her drunken night wandering Savannah. She’d tell Lachlan about it, too, about her drunk emailing with the flock.
He’d laugh softly and kiss her.
But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even answer the phone.
She knew he wasn’t teaching on Wednesdays and there was no reason to ignore her phone call, except to ignore her.
What the hell now? Okay, play a bit of the ridiculous hard-to-catch and then make it up to him? Send a gift? Show up? She had no idea what to do next. She paced; she checked her phone; she cleaned up the kitchen, and then she decided.
She would go to him. She would show up on his doorstep only a few blocks away and he would never turn her away. Even the thought of him turning her away made her dizzy. She pressed her hand over her stomach and waited for it to calm. She’d felt this blooming panic and fear before—when?
Ah, when after fifteen years of marriage Tom had told her he didn’t love her anymore. When Tom had told her and their two—then twelve-and fourteen-year-old—daughters, Paige and Emma, he needed to find his way in a new world. When she’d stood on the front steps of a shambled life and couldn’t catch her breath. When Tom had packed his suitcases and emptied half the bank account. That’s when.
That was the last time Beatrice had felt this way. But this time it was her fault. She had no one else to blame, and she would fix it. She rushed to the shower, thinking of Harry’s line to Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
After Beatrice uttered her own version of that line on Lachlan’s doorstep, then it would be off to bed to make love. They would, for the rest of their lives, talk about that moment.
She turned on the water and held her hand under the spray while waiting for it to heat up. An hour later, spruced up, she surveyed her image with care: yes, all was a bit haggard but okay. Her dark hair had been blown to its smooth shoulder-length swing, the blotches from a sleepless night covered with makeup and her blue eyes slightly less cloudy with the addition of coffee. She wasn’t the hottest fifty-five-year-old in the city, but that was never her goal. Hot had never been in her bag of tricks; classy and artsy yes, smokin’ no.
The hangover a dull memory that lived on as an ache behind her eyes, and as cotton padding around her thoughts, she picked up her cell to see that Lachlan had left a voicemail.
She smiled. Not so bad, after all. Really. She’d made the entire situation worse in her mind.
She clicked on the voicemail, putting it on speaker to listen while she brushed her eyelashes with mascara.
“Bea.” He paused. Beatrice smiled at herself in the mirror, at his soft voice using her nickname.
“I think we need to be apart for a while, take a breath. I don’t know what that means, really, but do not call or come over right now. Thank you.”
Silence.
My God. He had never before used that tone of voice. That kind of finality.
Beatrice’s stomach lurched and she bent over, heaving her breakfast, her hangover, and her heartache into the sink of her immaculate white bathroom.
“No!” she said out loud, and it came out more like a moan than a word. A breath or two as she leaned over her sink, and the nausea passed. She grabbed her toothbrush and squirted double the amount of toothpaste as it ran over the side of the brush; she scrubbed the taste of bile from her mouth and then set to cleaning her mess.
Respect his request? What the hell did that mean?
When the bathroom looked as pristine as it had before her emotions took over, and the towels had been dropped into the washing machine, Beatrice rushed to the kitchen and did the only thing her fizzled mind allowed her to do—finish what she’d started with her birds. This group of women who’d started as college roommates, become bridesmaids, and continued to be her dearest friends had once chosen a bird to represent each one of them. From that moment forward they’d become “the flock.” Now they would gather and reconnect—it had been too long, almost two years—chat about the old days and help Beatrice figure out her new days. She would draw birds, reconnect with her flock. Yes. This was a very good plan.