I shook my head and took a breath. It hurt during the inhale. It hurt even worse when I exhaled. “I’m going to catch up with an old friend.”
“An old …” Her voice trailed off as she thought of who I was talking about. Once she figured it out, she laughed. It was a sound I needed to hear today. “Go enjoy yourself, Jesse.”
Without saying a word, just giving her a slight nod, I turned and walked away. I wasn’t more than a few paces from her when she spoke my name again.
As our eyes connected, she mouthed, “Thank you.”
I smiled, holding our stare for several seconds before I continued moving toward the back of the library, finally reaching my favorite shelf. These hardcovers had spines that were as dark and cracked and weathered as the ones I had at home. Time had changed the outside, but the inside was untouched and timeless.
That made me love them even more
I lifted Macbeth off the shelf, opened it somewhere in the middle, and inhaled. The musky scent of paper and dust and age filled my nose. Certain scents brought back so many memories, this one was of my father.
I carried the book over to one of the large leather chairs and took a seat, my eyes gradually falling onto the page.
I had four hours …
To escape.
***
I opened the garage to our house and drove in, turning off my car and going right inside. I only made it as far as the powder room before I heard voices.
They were sounds I loved more than anything in this world.
“Tommy,” my daughter, Viv, said to my son, “don’t you remember that in order to calculate the area inside the compound shape you have to …”
I didn’t stop walking until I reached a spot in the family room where I could see my two children sitting at the island in the kitchen. Tommy had several notebooks and books spread out in front of him. Viv held a pen and was pointing to something on one of the pages.
At first, I wasn’t sold on the idea of Viv helping Tommy with his math homework and I thought a private tutor should be brought in. My son was struggling with the subject and I quickly assumed a professional would be a better route. But Viv excelled in math and she had offered, and Tommy was comfortable with it. So far, the arrangement was working out perfectly.
My two kids couldn’t be any more different.
Viv, my seventeen-year-old, was fierce, independent, and extremely determined—the way I raised her to be. She wanted to be an architect, like her father, and was going to MIT next fall. She would join her dad’s firm once she graduated college. Boys were really starting to give my beautiful daughter attention and she was learning how to balance that, along with her senior year of high school, her friends, and her studies all while not caving from the expectations we set for her.
She had something to prove … and she would.
“Ughhh,” Tommy groaned, tapping his finger on the notebook. “I just don’t get it.”
My twelve-year-old was just like me. Creative, unable to wrap his head around an equation, preferring to make something with his hands or his words. We babied him a little more than Viv. He needed it. But where Viv’s drive came from her need to succeed, Tommy’s was led by emotion.
He was the one I worried about the most.
There was movement in the back of the kitchen and my eyes slowly connected with Emery’s. A smile bigger than I’d worn all day came across my face. Seventeen years. That was how long I’d been married to that man.
There was a sensation in my stomach, a fluttering on the inside of my navel. It happened every time I saw him.
Still.
I looked at my little family and in that moment, I knew I was doing the right thing.
They needed me.
And boy did I need them.
I finally stepped forward, Tommy calling out, “Hi, Mom,” when I approached him.
I pressed my lips to the top of his head. The scent of a twelve-year-old boy was about as stale as the gym clothes he always forgot to take home from school. It didn’t matter, I loved every bit of that kid.
“Hi, baby,” I said into his hair, and then I moved to Viv, kissing the side of her forehead, leaving my lips there so I could breathe her in. I could smell the orange she’d eaten when she’d gotten home from school and the new shampoo I’d picked up for her last week. “Thank you for helping your brother.”
“Sure, Mom.”
I turned and walked toward my husband, my arms wrapping around his neck, my body pressing against his. “How was your day?”
He bent his head down and gave me the softest kiss. “I got it.”
My entire body tensed until I pulled away and saw his expression confirmed what I thought. “Oh my God,” I said, throwing my arms around him once more. “Emery, you did it.”
A new high-rise was going to be built in the Back Bay of Boston and the builder had requested bids from architects located all over the world and my husband had been chosen.
This wasn’t just an honor. This was life-changing.
And it couldn’t have happened at a more perfect time.
I cuddled into his neck, clutching him with all my strength. “I’m so proud of you.”
“You know what this means …” His tone took away some of the excitement. “Two nights a week,” he added before I had a chance to respond. “Three max.”
Emery and I had met our freshman year at Northeastern and lived together in the city after we graduated. It was too expensive to start a business there, so when I opened Cinched, we relocated to Burlington. About five years ago, we purchased a brownstone in the Back Bay and we still took the kids there at least one weekend a month.
Boston wasn’t the issue. It was how much time he’d be spending away from his family.
It was my job to worry about things like this.
Not his.
I leaned back to show him my eyes, knowing he needed the reassurance. “Listen to me, it’s all going to work out perfectly.”
His stare didn’t lighten, even when he said, “This is a decision I want us to make together.”
I kept my voice low, so the kids wouldn’t hear, and clung to his leather belt. “We made it when you submitted your design. I knew back then what it would mean if you got the project.” I smiled. “My feelings haven’t changed, Emery. I’m so, so thrilled for you.”
He cupped my face and dragged me closer for a kiss. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
A few seconds after his lips left mine was when I finally opened my eyes, immediately getting greeted with the question, “How was your day, baby?”
My day.
An eruption of emotion happened all at once and I did everything I could to shove it away, making sure nothing showed on my face. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I needed a night—at least.
So, I stared into my husband’s honest, loyal, intoxicating gaze. I put on a smile. And I lied, “It was perfect.”