But I needed to be at a family foundation meeting that afternoon. I had some pet projects that I wanted to be funded this quarter, and they wouldn’t get done if I wasn’t there.
Even though I’m usually levelheaded, I could feel myself begin to panic, mostly because my phone was the keeper of everything. What if all my numbers weren’t backed up on the Cloud? What if I lost pictures and messages? What if someone found my phone, hacked into it, and stole my identity? I was about to say, I’m so sorry. I’m going to have to run, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around and there was a man standing over me, the light from the plate-glass window streaming behind him, making his handsome face radiant and otherworldly. He was tall but not too tall, with sandy blond hair that was tousled but not sloppy. Blue eyes twinkling, he smiled at me with the straightest, whitest row of teeth.
I stood up, though I’m not sure why, and he said, “I think this might belong to you,” in the most swoon-worthy Southern drawl I’d ever heard.
I was so relieved I threw my arms around his neck and said something super cheesy and embarrassing like, “Chivalry is not dead! Knights in shining armor do exist.”
He smiled, showing off this adorable cleft in his chin and saying that his mother raised him right.
“She did,” I whispered, forgetting that I was in a restaurant, that I was supposed to be talking about a book. “Wait, how did you find me?” I asked. This was great but also probably some sort of major security breach I couldn’t let happen again.
“Your dad called, I answered, and he told me where you were.” He grinned again. “Nice guy.”
“Let me buy you a drink to thank you,” I said impulsively, suddenly feeling something I never felt: shy.
He shook his head. “How about I buy you dinner to thank you?”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For leaving your phone in that cab so I’d have to come find you.”
His name is Parker Thaysden. He is from North Carolina, which my mother will absolutely despise. He went to Princeton, and he’s brilliant, but he doesn’t know it. He’s in marketing, which my father will love. Now I’m looking at my watch every five minutes waiting for him to call. I can’t even think straight. And I’m dreading getting on that plane back to Palm Beach tomorrow because Parker isn’t in Palm Beach. I’m already figuring out how I can work in New York more and he can take long weekends in Florida. And, just like that, maybe I have time to date after all.
Amelia
RIPTIDE
AFTER THAT SOFTBALL GAME, I couldn’t have eaten dinner if my life depended on it. And not because I ate too many lemon squares.
I made certain my sister-in-law, Trina, was sitting beside me at family dinner, where I had to break the news about Thad and Chase. I loved Trina. She was pretty and sweet and the most involved mother I knew. Bless her precious, manicured, highlighted heart, no matter what storm was brewing in our family, she was as steady as the tide.
I hoped she wouldn’t be worried for me, that she would just give me that sweet smile of hers and say something optimistic. Because this was going to be ugly. I felt so sick I hadn’t even touched the pimento cheese and crackers Mom put out before dinner, which was really saying something because her pimento cheese was the best in the world. I swallowed a sip of chardonnay from a crystal goblet, which I also worried contained lead, for courage. If I didn’t get this over with, I was going to be too sick for dessert, too. And that would really be bad.
“Mom, Dad, Aunt Tilley, I have something to say.”
“Oh my Lord, you are finally pregnant!” Aunt Tilley exclaimed.
Trina gasped excitedly beside me, but a quick shake of my head told her that this wasn’t good news. She made a pouty face and took my hand. I instantly felt better. This was why I loved Trina.
“Tilley, you know she can’t get pregnant,” Daddy had scolded.
“I know you don’t want to imagine all that, but just because her daddy doesn’t think she can doesn’t mean a girl can’t get pregnant.”
“Oh, good Lord, Tilley,” Daddy replied.
I had taken a deep breath and said, “It’s okay, Daddy.”
Mom interjected, “Why didn’t Thad come with you, anyway? Darlin’, that article you wrote about him…” She clutched her napkin to her chest, and I noticed a small hole in it. Certainly a hole in a hundred-year-old napkin was to be expected, but it bothered me that Mom hadn’t noticed it. “It was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.”
“And the New York Times,” Tilley said proudly. “Girly, you have made it.”
“Well, that’s sort of what I need to talk to you about.”
Trina hit Robby with her napkin. “Why don’t you write things like that about me? Does Amelia love Thad more than you love me?”
She stuck her lower lip out, and Tilley said, “She doesn’t love Robby more than I do.”
Mom rolled her eyes. Tilley’s boyfriend, who had died in a freak farming accident, had been named Robert. “Why in the world would you name your child Robby, Mother? It’s too confusing for her,” I’d scolded years ago.
“He’s my son, I named him after my father, and I can call him whatever the hell I want,” she’d retorted.
I had never heard my mother say “hell,” so, suffice it to say, I never brought it up again.
As I was readying myself to get this ship back on course, though, my nephews came tearing into the dining room, one of them hollering, “I did not take the last chicken leg!”
“Did too!”
“Did not!”
As Momma was saying, “Now, boys,” and Trina was saying, “William James, did you hide chicken legs in your pockets again so your brother couldn’t have any?” I decided I couldn’t take it a minute longer.
I cleared my throat and shouted, “I’m getting a divorce!”
The room was suddenly silent. Even the little boys knew this was more important than chicken. They ran back into the kitchen, the door between the two rooms swinging behind them.
“A divorce?” my mother said in a high, raised, outraged voice. I loved her, but she had this propensity to act so damn scandalized by every little thing. I mean, people got divorced. Constantly. Half the time. She acted like this was the first time she had ever heard the word. “A divorce?”
It was out now, and I couldn’t take it back. I almost took joy in saying, “Yes, Mom. Turns out Thad is a little more interested in men.”
Her jaw dropped, and Daddy slammed his napkin down on the table. “No one disrespects my little girl,” he said. “I am outraged by this.”
Aunt Tilley was uncharacteristically silent. Then she almost whispered, “So what now, darlin’?”
Robby mouthed Sorry to me across the table, as well he should have. He had been giving me so much crap earlier about registering to vote in Florida. But I’d lived there for thirteen years. It was a little impractical to fly home to vote. But he planned on running for mayor, and now mine was one less vote he would get. I wanted to point out that it didn’t much matter. He was a Saxton. He would win the election.