Cal hadn’t listened, and I hadn’t wanted to expose myself to more hurt by revealing just how much I cared about him—how much I had been pining after him all this time. Instead I’d played it off, as if sleeping with him was just a lark. As if I had chosen him to be my first because of how handsome he was, and his sexual experience, and that no deeper feelings had been involved.
He hadn’t deserved to know that he was crushing my dreams. Nobody deserved to know that unless I wanted them to. They were my dreams, after all. And since Fern’s father hadn’t been all that keen on the sex that had created her in the first place, I was certain he wouldn’t have been too keen on the pregnancy that had followed. I couldn’t bear the idea that Cal would reject our child, so I had chosen to raise Fern alone. I stood by that opinion.
“Pumpkin pie?” Fern asked, trying to get up onto the counter.
“No, no pie, not until after dinner.” I picked her up instead and played with her soft brown hair. It was lighter than Cal’s but darker than my own blonde hair, a perfect in-between. “Hey, Mom, what should I wear for dinner tonight?”
I was trying to find out if she was going to be inviting anyone else over—namely, Cal.
“Oh, just whatever, honey, it’s only the four of us.” Mom checked on the turkey that Dad had lovingly defrosted, basted, and put in the oven. Taped to the fridge was a note from him, to Mom: forgot cranberries, ran to the store. Touch nothing but the microwave.
Once when I was five, Mom had set the kitchen on fire. I felt that was a pretty good example of how well she did with cooking. It was like she had a talent for turning a meal into as much of a disaster as possible.
“That’s why we’re only doing one pie,” Mom went on.
“Just one? Mom, c’mon. One’s not enough, I could eat a whole one on my own and so could Dad.”
Mom laughed. Fern squirmed and I set her down, just in time for my mom to swoop in and give me a hug. “What’s this for?” I asked.
“Just… I’m so glad you could come and see us this year, honey, that’s all.” Mom squeezed me tightly.
I hugged her back, listening to my daughter dancing around the kitchen singing about how much she was going to love her pie. All of my nerves was worth this moment, getting to be with both my parents and my daughter. Maybe all my worrying had been for nothing after all
3
Cal
Ah, Thanksgiving. The day had arrived. I waited until after the insane morning rush to go to the grocery store—I had no interest in dealing with a bunch of people grabbing the last-minute ingredient they’d forgotten. Sure enough by the time I got there at two pm the place was empty, and a sign by the front doors said that they would be closing in two hours.
Worked for me. I was just going to be buying some basic TV dinners to go with the football game, and then I planned on seeing if the blank canvas would speak to me. Thinking about Maggie had put me in a funk, and when I was in a funk, art was the way out.
“Cal!”
I turned, dinners in hand, to see Mark striding towards me with a grin on his face. “Hey, feels like forever since I saw you. How’d the opening go last night?”
“Great, already sold a couple paintings. Jordan’s hoping for big sales tomorrow with Black Friday and all that.”
“Excellent.”
“What brings you here?” Normally Mark was slaving away in the kitchen.
Mark held up a bag of cranberries. “Violet and I both forgot to get cranberries for the sauce, so I thought I’d stop by. And you? Got any big plans for dinner tonight?”
“Oh yeah, definitely, you know me.” I held up my frozen dinners.
Mark looked appalled, like I’d just suggested I was going to go diving around in dumpsters for my dinner. “Cal, c’mon, you can’t do that. That’s basically a crime. You should c’mon over and join us like you used to.”
“Ah, I don’t know, Mark…” I was panicking, there was no doubt about that. Definitely panicking. My heart felt like it was going to keel over and die any second. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“It wouldn’t be intruding.” Mark laughed. “I insist. You can just follow me back to the house now, spend the day with the family.”
There were a million reasons why this was a bad idea, number one of them being Maggie. But I also… dammit, I wanted to see her. I had thought that being with her was a mistake, and in a way I still did, but I also couldn’t put her out of my mind. Five years and she had been haunting me. Maybe getting to see her again would be a good thing. Maybe…