“Me,” Victoria said with a laugh. “The one who never married; the one whose star-twin must have been confused and ended up in another galaxy.”
Beatrice lifted her glass before taking another sip. “Exactly. Who is to know? So, there’s no real way to know.” She stood, began to pace the room. “Not a real way at all. I mean, I knew with Tom. I loved him so. Or thought I did. But now I know that I just wanted Tom to choose me. I wanted him. I wanted that life. I wanted to be safe and live in a nice house and have beautiful children, and damn, he was beautiful.” She paused and her forehead wrinkled with the thought. “I think I loved him.”
Victoria shook her head. “You can’t think you love someone. That’s not how it works.”
“And you know because?” asked Rose, still smarting from the Chip-teasing.
Victoria stood, her blue caftan billowing out. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve never . . . settled down. How do you know?”
“And that means I haven’t loved?” She leaned closer to Rose. “You know what else a swan represents?”
“Just everlasting love.”
“The swan maiden. Have you heard of that story? That myth? You’re the writer. Don’t you know?”
Rose shook her head, tears threatening in her eyes but her voice steady. “I’m the writer who doesn’t write. And you’re being mean. I forgot about that, how you can be mean.”
“No, I’m not.” Victoria sank again into the couch seats. “We’re here for Beatrice, not for you to poke at the fact that I never got married. Maybe—in case you ever wondered about my life—maybe it’s because the person I loved didn’t love me. Or because I fell in love with the wrong person or . . . do you think I’m incapable of love? You and your adorable husband and four kids and suburban house. How could you know?”
Beatrice cleared her throat. “Birds. Seriously? This is about love. Not about comparing love.”
“Comparing?” Daisy asked, laughter hidden in her voice. “We’ve never compared ourselves to each other, have we?”
Great laughter erupted.
Daisy exhaled. “Try dating with two college daughters visiting back and forth, and a dead husband whose pictures and ghost watch over everything you do.”
“I wouldn’t even try,” Victoria said.
“Exactly. But I am trying.”
Beatrice walked the few steps to the kitchen and opened a bag of chips, poured out the homemade salsa she’d bought at the farmer’s market just yesterday into a bowl, and brought it to Red’s coffee table covered in hunting and fishing magazines.
Victoria slipped her hand into her huge flowered bag and pulled out a small round speaker. She set it on the table and then used her phone to start some music—Van Morrison—softly singing about falling into the mystic. She turned it low while Rose leaned forward.
“Victoria, I want you to tell me the story of the swan maiden.”
Victoria picked up a chip. “I don’t think now is the best time.” She paused and held her chip aloft, turning to Beatrice. “How did you feel when you met him? Let’s start there.”
Beatrice closed her eyes and fell backward into time. “We met at the art museum.” She opened her eyes. “Of course it was the art museum. My paintings were part of an ‘art and nature’ exhibit. He was standing there in his faded jeans and gray sweater, his glasses on the edge of his nose, teaching a class. He was pointing at a Cézanne, the Jas de Bouffan—the study of trees—on loan from a museum in Paris, and talking in that deep voice about the history of impressionism and nature and . . .” Beatrice stopped, almost breathless and then, “I could not take my eyes off him, and when he turned to me and smiled, I felt as if I should hug him, as if I’d known him forever.”
“My God,” Rose said. “Are you making that up?”
“What?” Beatrice asked with an incredulous tone. “Make it up?”
“It’s almost too romantic to be real.”
Beatrice smiled, and in that smile hid the memory of the entire afternoon they’d spent together immediately after he let his class go early.
“It’s real,” she said.
“And after?”
“It has stayed just as real.”
Victoria sighed. “So, if that’s how it started—what’s the last thing Lachlan said to you?”
“To not contact him. To give him space. To . . . I don’t know really. I’ve listened to his message ten times. Twenty. And even his voice is different.”
“Do you believe him?” Victoria bit into her chip.
“I don’t really know.” Beatrice glanced at her best friends. “That’s the thing with heartbreak. You can’t think straight. Or sleep straight. Or eat straight. I feel so upside down and inside out. What’s true? What’s false?” Beatrice paced the room, wandering from window to window as the light slowly turned from bright yellow to soft twilight. “I’ve loved Lachlan for so long, and we have such an amazing life together. I just didn’t want anything to shift at all. I didn’t want to topple things over. I didn’t want to . . . change anything. We were happy.”
“When did things change with Tom?” Rose asked quietly. “Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“I never knew things changed with Tom until he announced things had changed. I never saw it coming.”
Rose shook her head. “Are you sure? Or did you not want to see the changes?”
“What are you asking?” Setting her hand over her heart, Beatrice continued staring out the window.
Rose plowed ahead. “I’m wondering if change is what frightens you—not marrying Lachlan, not shifting things up because the last time things changed . . . they ended. That’s all.”
Beatrice set her forehead on the glass window, watching clouds move quickly across the sky as they headed toward night with the rest of the day. A flock of white ibis flew by and settled in an oak tree to the right of the window. What Rose had just said—Beatrice had thought about it a million times. Was there a moment when things had changed with Tom and she’d been too busy to notice?
She’d been shuttling carpool with her daughters from school to dance to softball; she’d been shuttling herself from the studio to art shows to social engagements. She’d thought of her family as a team. But it’d ended up being more like a company with a CEO and a secretary who could be easily fired and replaced. But had there been a singular moment when Beatrice had known it was coming off the tracks? No, she couldn’t find it.
She turned back to her friends, who sat quietly eating the chips and salsa and watching her carefully, allowing space for her to answer. Her gaze passed over each and rested on Daisy, her starling, whose eyes wouldn’t catch hers. “What is it, Daisy?”
Beatrice knew her friends better than she sometimes knew herself, and Daisy had something to say. “What do you mean?” Daisy looked up and tried to smile.
“You know what a starling group is called?” Beatrice asked.
“Yes,” Daisy said. “Of course. A murmur.”