I hated it; Marshall and I had both grown up way out in Hurd County, Georgia. His wife, Betsy, had lived across the street from me. She’d been my best friend since before I had concrete memory. She and Marshall dated for most of high school, but they’d broken up when Betsy and I moved into Atlanta to attend Georgia State. Betsy had always been wilder than me, bolder, both more reckless and more fun. By the end of freshman year, she lost her scholarship, and she wasn’t even sorry. She went home, got a job, got back with Marshall. They’d gone through the police academy together and gotten married.
Our lives had forked, but Betsy and I had stayed close. We’d been each other’s maids of honor, and we’d been pregnant together; Cara was born a month before Anna-Claire. I’d always liked Marshall, though in that best-friend’s-husband way that rendered him more Ken doll than man.
When Betsy died in the line of duty, five years back, he’d wanted to move to a safer job, for Cara’s sake. Trey had hired him as an investigator. The firm had been thrilled to get him. Marshall was excellent; he’d been one of the youngest cops ever to make detective in Atlanta.
Last year Cara’s public school lost its arts funding. No more chorus or drama club, and Cara was distraught. Trey put in a word at St. Alban’s, and they’d offered her a scholarship. I’d hoped she and Anna-Claire would bond, like a mini me-and-Betsy, because Anna-Claire was also hip-deep into musical theatre and choir. Instead they were competitors, always up for the same parts and solos.
I couldn’t make them love each other, but I could threaten my too-pretty, too-popular daughter with phoneless exile and unending extra chores if she did one single thing to make Cara feel picked on or unwelcome. Cara had quickly found her own friend set, and her grades were excellent, so I considered the transfer a success. For her.
I’d hoped it would finally give me a real friend at the school. I had more in common with Marshall than with any of the other snack moms. At thirty-eight we were a decade younger than the remaining first wives and a decade older than the stepmothers. Most of these women had grown up with ponies and summers in Provence, while Marshall and I had had secondhand bikes and vacation Bible school.
Instead he’d gotten cooler and cooler, until I worried that my daughter was stealth-hazing his. I’d snuck around, eavesdropping at rehearsals, only to find them working well together. Friendly if not friends.
Even so, Marshall got ever more polite, gravely asking me how my day was going in the same professional, cool tone he used on the pampered Gen Two baby-wives of some of the other lawyers at the firm, like the one divorcing Spence right now.
I hadn’t hired a full-time nanny and made a career out of yoga class and blowouts. I hadn’t gotten into an affair and busted up Trey’s first marriage either. He and Maura split up amicably a year before we met, mostly because he wanted children and she didn’t. Marshall knew all this. He knew me, knew my family.
It bothered me, and I guess it showed, because Anna-Claire caught my stiffness and added, sly, “You should bring those organic Bunny Fruit Snacks. So Mr. Chase knows not to perpetrate that crap.” My eldest had a nose for drama, even when she was offstage.
I shook my head. “All fruit snacks are just tarted-up candy.”
“Ho snack!” Anna-Claire said, laughing, “I should tell Cara that you said her dad brought a ho snack. The cheap kind!”
“If you do, rest assured I’ll be bringing nothing but bananas for the rest of the year.” She made a face. “Now, scoot. Car pool comes in twenty minutes.”
“I’m mostly ready.” She came all the way down to pet her brother’s head, peeping up at me. “Aw, you look sleepy. Want me to take Bumper so you can get a shower?”
“Robert,” I corrected, but I was smiling. Typical Anna-Claire. She’d torment her sister, push boundaries with me, then instaflip to thoughtful. Moments like these I knew she could grow into a lovely, kindhearted woman, as long as Trey and I kept the parenting tight. She was so beautiful that kids and adults alike catered to her in ways that weren’t good for her. It was hard to find the balance between pushing back on that while still being a hundred percent on her side. “You’re sweet, but I got it. Thank you.”
I kissed her and went to check Trey’s packing. He was so color-blind that left to himself he could end up looking like a Mardi Gras float. I narrowly averted a green/blue disaster, then got him out the door. The girls’ ride showed up soon after, and I fell into my day.
Just errands and emails, but I was operating on New Baby Time. Even the simplest things took four times longer than normal. The final bell was ringing as I pulled in to the parking lot by the new Performing Arts Center at St. Alban’s. Hordes of kids began streaming out of the buildings. I hurried as fast as I could while lugging Robert in his infant carrier, his diaper bag, and a reusable grocery bag full of snacks.
The PAC had a long, narrow greenroom between the chorus’s practice room and the orchestra’s, furnished in a hodgepodge of donated chairs and sofas. The whole back wall was windows, facing the parking lot. I saw Marshall already in there and broke into a trot. He was dressed for work in a blue suit that was older than Anna-Claire. I remembered Betsy buying it. It hung awkwardly on his long frame.
By the time I got inside, he’d already set up the table and was laying out fruit snacks and Capri Sun pouches for a steady stream of chattering kids.
“I’m here, sorry!” It came out chirpy and overbright.
“No problem.” He didn’t look up.
I set Robert’s carrier on a nearby sofa and started putting out milk boxes and Ziploc snack bags of baby carrots with hummus cups.
Marshall looked at my offering, his eyebrows lifting. “Does every bag have the exact same number of carrots?”
They did, actually. Ten. I felt a blush beginning, but I was saved from answering by Cara’s entrance. She looked so much like her mother that it hurt my heart every time.
“Hey, Sugar Peep,” Marshall said.
She shot him a mortified glare at the nickname and then said, “Hey, Auntie Bree,” overly loud and bright.
I said, “Break a leg today, kiddo,” and handed her a milk box.
She hurried out, and I gave Marshall a commiserating look. “Both my girls are in that same stage. Sweet to me at home, but in public I’m poison.”
He smiled, unworried. “I hear that in high school they stop pretending that they budded off of Rihanna and will admit to actually having parents.”
Just then Anna-Claire bounded through the door in full sunshine mode, her friend Greer in tow. She released Greer to hurl her arms around me. “Mom! Hummus! If you’d gotten pita chips, it would almost be a worthy snack!”
“Oh, yeah. I see how it is for you.” Marshall sounded good-humored, but not like Marshall. I couldn’t explain it, but I’d known him long enough to feel the difference.
Greer ignored the snacks. “Hi, Ms. Cabbat! Did you bring the baby?” As soon as she said it, she saw the car seat and dropped down to her knees in front of Robert. He was awake and beginning to make hungry noises. “Hi, Bumper! Oh, I love his feet! He’s so little. I can’t stand it!” She pinched his toes, distracting him, making him gurgle.
“We call him Robert,” I said.