This Time Is Different Read online

  Caught up in my own head, I hadn’t realized that Thomas had stepped out the kitchen door. I could see him through the windows. Pacing the driveway and periodically bending to pinch a leaf or pull a weed that he then flung onto the pavement. Yeah. It was time for me to go. Whatever that conversation was, it wasn’t a happy one.

  I bent down, petted Sirius and thanked her for welcoming me into her home, collected my clothes and dressed. I rinsed my dishes and mug and placed them in the dishwasher as the door opened and Thomas stepped back inside.

  “Sorry about that. Cassie needed to talk.”

  “Of course. Everything okay?”

  “It is as it always is with her. Cassie is a little bit of a drama queen whereas Claire is much more chill. Probably explains why I’m always having to buy a new dress for some party or another while I’m convinced that half of Claire’s allowance goes up in smoke. Literal pot smoke.”

  “As long as Grady doesn’t knock anyone up before he graduates college, I will buy him as many dresses and as much pot as he wants. Okay, that sounds terrible.”

  “No. It sounds like the truth. You need to go home?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve got patients starting at ten. Since Thursday is my late night, I start the day later, but I still need to get a move on.”

  He drove me home and accepted a quick peck on the cheek, as we exchanged promises of getting together later in the week and making plans for New Orleans. But I knew those plans were hollow.

  I didn’t know just how hollow they were until I opened my front door and heard the musical intro theme of SportsCenter from the den. A rumpled sundress. Frumpy stripper shoes that I abandoned in the foyer. If this didn’t scream the morning after, I wasn’t sure what did. I made it to my room and dressed for the day. Blue scrubs. I usually wore cute clothes to work with a lab coat on top but today was scrubs. I didn’t have the energy for anything else.

  “Mom?” I heard him call as I pulled my hair into a bun.

  “What, sweetheart?” I asked, stepping into the den.

  “I don’t like him,” he said, flinging a remote control into a chair across the room.

  “Don’t like who?” Maybe if I played dumb, this would pass.

  “That guy you’re seeing. And I’m not asking where you were last night, but I don’t like him.” His eyes were trained on me, assessing me.

  “Where I was last night? Where were you last night?”

  “I was here.”

  “Alone? Why weren’t you at your dad’s? Wednesday nights you are at your dad’s,” I said firmly. “We have a schedule.”

  “So you get to be a slut?”

  Blinding heat filled my vision and embarrassment twisted in my chest. Two steps toward him and my hand crashed across his cheek. I slapped him. I’d never hit him before. Not even as a child. We’d been about corners and time outs and reasoned discussions. And now I’d hurt the person in my life I loved most of all. I’d hit my child in anger. And my eyes filled with tears from my overwhelming shame. “Graden Forsythe. You better think very carefully about what your next words are.” The harsh whisper escaped from my tight throat.

  This silence between us was heavy. I’d fought with Grady over stupid stuff before. Typical stuff. Curfew. Whether he really needed yet another pair of sneakers. How Bert and I didn’t care that he wanted an Audi for his birthday, he was getting a Honda and if he didn’t stop complaining he wasn’t going to be getting any car. I knew how those scripts went. I’d said the lines he now spoke two decades before.

  But this wasn’t a script I knew. My dad hadn’t remarried after my mom died. If he dated, I didn’t know. And I never caught him having spent the night out. I didn’t know how this was supposed to go. And now I’d hit him.

  “I’ll be at Dad’s tonight,” he said without showing any emotion, walking out of the room and as soon as I heard his car pull out of the driveway, I collapsed on the sofa in sobs.

  20

  Thomas

  “Listen, Cas. Cas. Cas. Cassandra Marie.” My snap of her first and middle names broke through her rant. She’d worked herself up to a state of near hyperventilation and was spewing nonsense.

  When I’d taken her call that morning, I thought it was going to be her tweeting good morning to me before she went to her dream internship. Laurie always said Cassie woke up seeing rainbows and butterflies and that’s what I expected when I answered the phone. But that wasn’t what I got.

  Miller had felt his sisters out about me seeing someone and Cassie was not having it. She could give lessons to grandmothers at the nearest synagogue and cathedral on how to layer on the guilt. From me moving to Memphis and selling their childhood home to me being old to me not loving Laurie enough to me not loving them enough to me not well, I’d had to tune it out. She piled on that shit so high that I’d eventually hung up on her when I saw Amy ready to go and trapped in my house since I’d driven last night.

  After dropping Amy at her place, I went to the office and called Cassie back and proceeded to apologize for hanging up on her but not apologize for seeing someone. No, Amy wasn’t a gold digger. No, I wasn’t giving Laurie’s ring to another woman. No, I wasn’t getting married. No, Amy was not too young for me. No, I still loved Laurie and would for my entire life. It was fucking exhausting and by the time our call ended, Cassie was in a better place but I felt like I’d just gone three rounds with Mike Tyson. Fucking brutal.

  And it was only half over.

  I called Claire’s phone and she grumbled her greeting. “Morning, Daddy.”

  “Morning, Claire Bear. Listen, I know it’s early for you, but I think Miller called you last night and I wanted to check on you. To see how you’re doing and if you have any questions.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “Well, about me maybe starting to see someone.”

  “No. I mean, I’m not really looking for a new mom so this shouldn’t be about me.”

  My wise child.

  “Are you going to get married?” I heard the trepidation in her voice as she transformed from a rational adult into the anxious teenager she’d only recently stopped being.

  Miller hadn’t asked, preferring to stick to the facts of the present. Cassie’s histrionics made it easy for me to pass over the questions in a soothing tone with vague reassurances that I wasn’t going to remarry. This time I went with the simple truth—“No.”

  “Good,” she said on a breath, the concern leaving her. “I worry about you being all alone in Memphis and so as long as she’s a nice person, sounds good to me.”

  “She’s a really nice person.”

  “So, tell me about her.”

  “Well, she’s been divorced a few years.” And I told Claire about Amy. Everything I thought she’d want to know and some stuff she probably didn’t want to know. I even broke the news that Sirius was cheating on her with Amy.

  “That seals it, Dad.”

  “What seals it?”

  “If Sirius approves, then I do. And don’t worry about Cassie. She’s always been worried that we’ll somehow get stuck with a Disney cartoon of a stepmom. That’s not happening.”

  “I honestly don’t think you need to worry about that, Claire Bear. I’m talking about having dinner with her,” I fudged. It was more than dinner, but none of my kids wanted to hear that.

  “Sure, sure. But I can hear your happiness and that makes me happy.”

  We ended the call and I looked at my watch. I hadn’t intended to play hooky today, but I’d burned away the morning with Amy and then the girls. It was time to go to work, but I had too much energy to focus.

  “Ava,” I called for my assistant, my gym bag over my shoulder. “I’m going to go down to the fitness center for a bit. Be back in an hour, but you know where to find me.”

  “Rowing machine nearest the windows. Better you than me,” she replied.

  Dressed out in my ratty mesh shorts and faded Northwestern T-shirt, I sat down on the machine’s seat, strapped in my
feet, grasped the handle and set into my stroke and found my rhythm. Back and forth on the rail, closing my eyes at times to remember the sounds and feel of the Schuylkill River where I’d learned to row under the tutelage of my Main Line-bred first year roommate who couldn’t believe that a tall, strong guy like me didn’t row crew.

  As I felt the sweat trickle down my back, a memory overwhelmed me. A memory of when Laurie and I were dating. I hadn’t asked her to marry me yet, but it was only a matter of time. I wanted a job offer in my hand before I asked for hers.

  She was working overnights in labor and delivery at the hospital where we’d met and where I’d interned. And our schedules didn’t match up at all. The best we got was a few hours before she went to sleep in my bed for the day, claiming my bedroom was darker than hers, and I left for my classes. Our routine was simple. She’d come home, wake me, and we’d fuck or I’d listen to her glow about happy newborns or cry about difficult births, then we’d eat brinner together. Our name for the meal that was my breakfast and her dinner.

  While she cleaned up dishes and showered, I’d row. Clean and happy with a bathrobe tied around her waist and a towel turbaned around her long blond hair, she’d have a beer. Sit on the floor next to me while I sweated away and listen to me huff through my workout and complain about whatever idiot in whatever group project was driving me nuts.

  This wasn’t the first time that I’d felt her near me when I rowed. In fact, I’d damn near worn out a machine after she died. So I could go back to that sweet second year of business school in my mind where there was nothing but happiness around us and promises of more happiness for the future. I turned my thirty minute rows into an hour and eventually two and by the time I hit bottom, three. Beating my body and brain into mush so that I didn’t have the energy to hurt any more. A big glass of Scotch and then a hard, dreamless sleep.

  But it had been years since I’d been able to get back there. I screwed my eyes shut tight, willing my body to go back to that time more than twenty-five years ago when I was happy. And I couldn’t get there. Couldn’t get to the tiny apartment with its white walls and sagging green sofa. And I wanted back there so badly. I thought of the way the elevator always rattled a bit as it passed the third floor each evening on my way home from school. Of the scrape of my key in the door and how I had to hold the knob just right for the lock to give way. Of how sweet she looked curled up in my messy nest of a bed. Of how she’d sing Billy Joel songs off key in the shower while I rowed. The smooth glide of my stroke stuttered as I remembered her bouncy take on “Uptown Girl.”

  At first, I’d heard her all the time, and heard her laugh most of all. But that had faded. It was bits and pieces that would strike me without warning, filling my heart and head with a bittersweet memory. And that’s what it was, I realized, righting myself and digging deep into my stroke. A memory.

  I was a doer by nature. My college friends joked that it was my childhood farming that had shaped me into a man who rose shortly after dawn and worked, worked, worked until he reached his goal. But now the work was done in many ways and the past wasn’t something I could resurrect, as much as I’d have liked that.

  I’d taken Sirius’s affection for Amy as a welcome, a blessing, but I didn’t need a benediction. This life I had now was different. And it was mine. And if I wanted to spend time with Amy, only she could stop me.

  21

  Amy

  I kept my phone in my lab coat pocket all day. I wanted to hear from Grady. I wanted to hear from Thomas. I wanted some sign of life from either of them. Instead, I got a link to the latest silly mug that Diana had ordered. Mr. “Tea”—a cartoon teapot with a Mohawk and gold chains, saying “I pity the fool.” I snorted a laugh that earned me a look of concern from my pimply patient.

  After the lunchtime rush for my adult clients, I sat down at my desk and poked at my grilled chicken salad. Chocolate cake sounded great, but I didn’t have any. Instead I sought comfort in some cat videos. I didn’t even make it through the first one before I was cruising local animal shelter websites in search of a kitten. Bono may have said that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, and I didn’t need a man. But I wanted one. One who had a cat.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Timing was off. Grady was being an ass. Clearly something was up with Thomas’s daughter and since he’d taken that call outside, I was going to bet it was something to do with me based upon how withdrawn and quiet he’d been afterward.

  You know when you’re a teenager and you swear that your parents are out to ruin your life? They aren’t. But my teenager was out to ruin mine. Why was he being such an ass? It’s not like I expected him to want to go fishing with the guy. I just didn’t want any grief for the little bit of happiness that had stumbled into my office not even two weeks ago.

  I clicked on a picture of an orange tabby. A girl. A few months old. The shelter had named her Lula. Whatever, she was clearly Nancy Drew. And she was going to come live with me tomorrow. Unless she was an ass, too. I pulled my phone out and called the shelter, arranging to meet Nancy tomorrow morning to see how things went. I downloaded the adoption forms and began filling them out when the receptionist buzzed my office line with news that my son had arrived.

  A few second later, he flopped into my guest chair. I didn’t know why he was there, but I wanted to avoid all of the ickiness of the morning, so I just boxed it all away. My time with Thomas. Grady’s comment. My rage and slap. I even decided that I didn’t care to finish my spy novel. Gabriel Allon could get out of this scrape without me. The half-read book was going into the library drop box this evening. Like it all never happened.

  “I think I’m going to get a cat tomorrow,” I said to him, not greeting him with my normal hug because I didn’t deserve to touch him, much less hug him again. “Want to come with me to pick out a cat?”

  “You’re getting a cat?” he asked, taking up the kitten-shaped olive branch I was extending.

  “Yeah. I miss Gal and you’re gone a lot and once you leave for college next year I don’t want to have to build my Catatorium from scratch, so I think I’ll start with a kitten.”

  “That’s cool,” he replied, his bouncing knees belying his nonplussed face.

  “So, you want to come with me in the morning? I’m meeting the kittens at nine. And it’s supposed to rain so you probably won’t have soccer.”

  “Yeah, I’ll come.”

  “If it’s just to make sure I do only come home with one, you don’t have to. I have some self-control.”

  “No, I’ll come. Got a name yet?” he asked, still giving me no indication as to why he was in my office.

  “I’m thinking Nancy Drew.”

  His knees stopped bouncing and he rolled his eyes in impatience. “Seriously? Nancy Drew is the best you can do? Can we at least stick with another Bond character? Maybe Vesper. Or Oddjob.” Whatever had brought him to my office was forgotten for a second because our decade long argument where we ranked Bond characters in order of awesomeness was on the table. He loved Oddjob. I was a Q kind of girl. Rockets hidden in a bagpipe were infinitely better than a stupid hat that could decapitate a statue.

  “My cat. My name.” I laid down the law. “But maybe Honey for Honey Rider. We’ll see what the cat tells us.”

  “The cat won’t tell us anything, Mom,” he said, with another roll of his eyes.

  “We’ll see about that. Now, Grady, what can I do for you this fine afternoon?” I propped my elbows up on my desk, laced my fingers together and leaned toward him. I felt like shit about this morning and I wasn’t ready to revisit it, especially in my office, but he was here and that had a meaning that I couldn’t ignore any more.

  “I was having lunch and I got you a cupcake.” He placed a small white cardboard box on my desk.

  Of all the things he could have said and done, I wasn’t expecting that. I leaned back into my chair from the surprise. Either he’d told his dad about this morning and had been instructed to apolog
ize and bring me dessert or he’d watched Bert pull this move so many times that it was ingrained in him. Either way, I accepted the apology carbs.

  “Thank you,” I said softly, opening the box to find a pink cupcake. “I’m sorry, too.” And it was perhaps the most honest apology I had ever made. The words could never be enough. I wanted to hug him, but I knew I’d be pushing my luck. He must have felt pretty shitty to have driven to my office to see me, much less get me a pink cupcake.

  “And I won’t be at Dad’s tonight. A bunch of us are going to stay at Peter’s house tonight. Before you ask, his parents will be home. The new Call of Duty came out and Peter’s got the best basement for video games. Cool with you?”

  “Yeah it’s cool with me. Think you’ll be awake in time to look at cats though?”

  “Text me the cat place address and I’ll set an alarm to meet you there, but I won’t come home tonight.” He pushed up from his chair but before he could take a step, I spoke.

  “Sit down.”

  He stared at me.

  “You’re not in trouble,” I assured him.

  He sank back into the chair, an ankle crossed over the opposite knee and more bouncing. The kid had endless energy.

  “It’s your house, too, okay?” I said. “It’s not even just your house, it’s your home. It’s our home. I don’t want you spending the next year at friend’s houses or at your dad’s just because you’re worried about seeing me on a date. That’s not fair to you.” I exhaled before I continued. “But it’s also not fair to me that I shouldn’t get to go on dates.”

  He went to speak, but I held up my hand and his mouth closed.

  “I’m not saying that you have to like him. I’m not saying that I’ll even see him again. But I am saying that you’re growing up. And if you want me to be respectful of —Julie? Julia? It’s Julia, isn’t it?” He nodded but didn’t speak, casting his eyes to the floor. “If you want me to be respectful of you and Julia, I’d like that you’d give me the same respect in return.”