Winter Garden

“Congratulations,” she said woodenly.

“Marry me,” he said, and the earnestness in his blue eyes made her want to cry. She thought, absurdly, I should have taken more pictures of him.

“If I said yes,” she said, touching his face, feeling the unfamiliar smoothness of his cheek, “would you forget CNN and stay in Africa with me? Or maybe go to the Middle East, or Malaysia? Could I say on Friday, I need good Thai food, and we’d hop on a plane?”

“We’ve done all that, love. ”

“And what would I do in Atlanta? Learn to make the perfect peach pie and welcome you home with a glass of scotch?”

“Come on, Neens. I know who you are. ”

“Do you?” Nina felt as if she were falling suddenly. Her stomach ached, her eyes stung. How could she say yes . . . how could she say no? She loved this man. Of that she was sure. But the rest of it? Settling down? A house in the city or a place in the suburbs? A permanent address? How could she handle that? The only life she’d ever wanted was the one she now had. She simply couldn’t plant roots—that was for men like her father and women like her sister, who liked the ground to be level where they stood. And if Danny really loved Nina, he’d know that.

“Just come back to Atlanta with me for the weekend. We’ll talk to people, see what’s available for you. You’re a world-famous photojournalist, for fuck’s sake. They’d be crawlin’ all over themselves to give you a job. Come on, love, give us a chance. ”

“I’m going to Alaska with Mom and Meredith. ”

“I’ll have you back in time. I swear it. ”

“But . . . the fairy tale . . . I have more research to do. I can’t just leave the story. Maybe in two weeks, when we’re done. . . . ”

Danny pulled away from her. “There will always be another story to follow, won’t there, Neens?”

“That’s not fair. This is my family history, the promise I made to my dad. You can’t ask me to give that up. ”

“Is that what I asked?”

“You know what I mean. ”

“ ’Cause I thought I proposed marriage and didn’t get an answer. ”

“Give me more time. ”

He leaned down and kissed her; this time it was slow and soft and sad. And when he took her in his arms and made love to her again, she learned something new, something she hadn’t known before: sex could mean many things; one of them was good-bye.

Meredith hadn’t been on a vacation without Jeff and the girls in years. As she packed and repacked her suitcase, she found her enthusiasm for the trip growing by leaps and bounds. She had always wanted to go to Alaska.

So why had she never gone?

The question, when it occurred to her, made her pause in her packing. She stared down at the open suitcase on her bed, but instead of seeing the neatly folded white sweater, she saw the blank landscape of her own life.

By and large, she’d been the one who planned family vacations, and she’d always let someone else choose the destination. Jillian had wanted to see the Grand Canyon, so they’d gone camping in the summer; Maddy had always been the Tiki-Girl, and two family vacations in Hawaii had cemented that nickname; and Jeff loved to ski, so they went to Sun Valley every year.

But never had they headed north to Alaska.

Why was that? Why had Meredith been so ready to bypass her own happiness? She’d thought there would be time to unwind those choices, that if she put her children first for nineteen years, she could then shift course and be the one who mattered. As easy as changing lanes while driving. But it hadn’t been like that, not for her anyway. She’d lost too much of herself in parenthood to simply go back to who she’d been before.

As she looked around her room, there were mementos everywhere, bits and pieces of the life she’d lived—photographs of the family, art projects the girls had made over the years, souvenirs she and Jeff had bought together. There, right by the bed, was a photograph she’d looked at every day of her life and yet not really seen in years. In it, she and Jeff were young—kids, really—a pair of newlyweds with a bald, bright-eyed little girl cradled between them. Jeff’s hair was long and wheat-blond, blown by the wind across his sunburned cheeks. And the smile on his face was breathtaking in its honesty.

She’s us, he’d said to Meredith on that day, all those years ago, when they’d held their daughter, Jillian, between them. The best of us.

And suddenly the thought of losing him was more than she could bear. She grabbed her car keys and drove to his office, but once there, when she looked up at him, she realized she was equally afraid of losing herself.

“I wanted to remind you that we’re leaving tomorrow,” she said after what had to be the longest silence in the world.

“I know that. ”

“You’re staying at the house, right? The girls are going to be calling you every day, I think. They’re sure you can’t live without me. ”