When my face was smooth, I tapped my American Airlines app and checked in for my nine a.m. flight. I hadn’t been home in months, but now had seemed like a good time. I had all those points piled up, waiting. But who wants to take a vacation alone? I didn’t. All being on the beach would do was remind me that Greer wasn’t lying beside me. When I was at her office, I could be surrounded by her: her employees, her things, her energy. That’s why I had gone there almost every day since her death. Even more than our house, that office had become home.
Tomorrow, I would be in Cape Carolina, where I was defined by my baseball stats, not my marriage to a deceased heiress. Where I was the guy who made orangeades at the soda fountain after school, not the one running his dead wife’s company.
I walked into my bedroom. Even after three years, it still smelled like Greer. I pulled the green lattice comforter, which matched the wallpaper, up over the sheets so the bed was sort of made. I threw three shirts, three pairs of khakis, and three pairs of boxers in my roller bag.
As I walked out the door, heading to work, turning to put my key into the lock, it occurred to me, for the first time, that what Amelia had to say might be good news.
Greer
FEBRUARY 16, 2015
IT’S WEIRD HOW SOMETHING YOU’VE never considered can suddenly become all you can think about. Like the minute they came in and told me that I had ovarian cancer, all I thought about was my babies. The babies I didn’t have. The babies that, after three years of marriage, Parker and I had just started talking about. In some ways, I still feel too young to be a mother. None of my friends have kids yet. But the biological reality at thirty-one is that, whether our New York to Palm Beach lifestyles and our workaholism allow for it or not, eventually our biological clocks are going to start ticking loudly.
So, as Parker was asking the doctor how early she thought it was and about treatment options and heredity, all I asked was, “Can you save my eggs?”
Parker was near hysterics. “Your eggs? Are you serious right now, Greer? Who gives a shit about your eggs? All I care about is you.”
I just looked back at the doctor, who said, “I don’t see any obvious signs of cancer on your right ovary. I would suggest removing it to be safe, but we can retrieve your eggs from it.”
I told her I’d like to freeze embryos because I hear they have a better success rate than that of eggs frozen unfertilized.
Parker looked truly astounded. But I didn’t know how he didn’t know that. Articles about it were everywhere.
He kind of freaked out and said something like, “How about we discuss the major surgery you’re having tomorrow? Would that be okay with you?”
Parker is usually very calm. But that man loves me. He loves me hard. And I know his panic was from considering a world without me in it. To be honest, I can’t even consider a world without me in it, so I am, instead, considering what I will do after I am declared cancer-free.
What I will do is IVF.
I know what I am up against. I watched my mother go up against it, too. I watched her lose a swift but painful battle with what proved to be the only adversary that had ever beaten Karen McCann. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to focus on calling my dad or my sister or on my surgery or my chemo or what they might find inside me.
So instead, I will focus on making my poor, shell-shocked husband deposit his sperm on the way to my surgery. Because I will beat this. I will win. And when I do, we will be so happy to have these beautiful embryos waiting to become babies, ready for us to hold them in our arms.
Amelia
GLORY DAYS
I DIDN’T CONSIDER MYSELF THE kind of girl who runs home to her mother, but as soon as I left that doctor’s office, I wasn’t able to control my urge to buy a plane ticket home. Maybe I needed something familiar to anchor me back to earth, or maybe I wanted to get the unpleasantness of telling my family over with.
After a sleepless night in a hotel that was quite luxurious but left me feeling even lonelier, I boarded a plane home that early morning, sunglasses over my eyes, which were swollen and blurry from crying and lack of sleep. As I shoved my carry-on into the overhead compartment, a simple ding on my phone—a reminder of Martin’s birthday party—sent me back into sobs, prompting the woman in front of me to look at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. Thad and I loved Martin’s birthday parties. And Martin was my friend. I got to keep him in the divorce.
I wanted to tell Martin so, but I couldn’t risk anyone knowing what was going on until I told my parents. They were going to be outraged and devastated; the last thing I needed was for them to hear the news from someone else first.
I sat down in my window seat in the very last row of the plane, the only seat available so last-minute. I pulled out my phone and texted Nanette, my editor. So sorry, N. I can’t make it in today. Major emergency. Flying home to Cape Carolina. I will fill you in on all when I get back.
Typing bubbles appeared immediately, followed by Nanette’s response: Oh no, babe. You okay? Can I help? Anything you need. Take as much time as you want. I’m here for you.
I knew she was. I also knew she was panicking because we were supposed to be putting the December issue of Clematis to bed today, and while Nanette had the technical skills and know-how to do it herself, she depended on me, her managing editor, the deputy to her sheriff, for far more than I thought she even realized.
I tapped my thumb on the group text my oldest friends, Sarah, Jennifer, and Madison, kept going at all times. We had grown up together, and the three of them had returned to Cape Carolina. I was the only outlier who had moved away for good. I wanted to tell them. I needed to tell them—at least that I was coming home, if not the reason why. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet.
As I leaned my head against the plane window, watching Palm Beach become smaller and smaller and then fade to white, I couldn’t think about next steps. All I could think about was how to tell my mother. My mother loved me more than anything, but she also had ideas about how my life was going to turn out. I thought she would be disappointed in me. My divorce was a mark on her sterling reputation.
But then I had a thought that neither consoled me nor made me feel worse: Thad had never really been mine. I had been a part of a life he was trying to live, a pawn in a game that he had tried to play and lost. A tiny part of me pitied him, felt sad he had spent years living a life that must have felt like it was the wrong size and color. But I think what worried me most of all was that I really, truly hadn’t known.
In fact, I used to feel sorry for my friends. Their marriages were so boring. Thad and I went dancing, we took art classes, we traveled on a whim, we laughed all the time. I couldn’t reconcile how the man who told me how beautiful I was, who looked at me with pure admiration, was the one who had betrayed me.
Thad had called and texted me no fewer than twenty-five times. I didn’t want to read his texts, but I couldn’t help it. The last one was a gut punch. Amelia, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.
It was a relief. I hadn’t been that stupid. Thad and I did have real love. It was just the lust part that was missing. I’ll admit that we hadn’t had a hot and steamy sex life. Maybe it wasn’t as good as our conversations over coffee about the art opening we’d gone to the night before or our long, rambling walks through Palm Beach’s elite neighborhoods, where Thad would have me in stitches over his renditions of the secret lives behind those bougainvillea walls.