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“Oh my gosh, Liam.” Calla squealed, both hands pressed to her cheeks in squished surprise. “Is this a grand gesture?”
I turned to my sister, head cocked to one side. I really did not have time to dissect her rambling. “Um…”
She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “You know what I mean. In romance novels, when the guy screws up, he has to do some kind of big gesture to show how much he truly loves her and to beg her for another chance. And then, you know, HEAs and all that.”
The more she went on, the louder she got. She stretched her arms to her sides as she blathered on. Then she pulled them in to her chest and hit me with a set of puppy dog eyes that looked way too much like the ones my boys were so good at.
To be fair, yeah, that sounded exactly like what I was doing. I had no idea what an HEA was, but I wanted it with Marigold. If it meant she’d give us another chance, then I was all for it.
I was ready to show her that things would be better this time. Marriage is not the absence of trouble, but how we handle the trouble. Together.
It was about time I proved that.
“If I say yes, will you help me?”
Calla pulled out her phone, smiling giddily. “Already on it.”
I loaded the salvageable materials into the back of my car, determined to fix this for Marigold. To show her that if we put effort, real effort, into this, we could make it better than before. Make us better than before.
Calla and I climbed into the car, both on our phones, calling my family to meet at Mom’s house ASAP.
For the first time in a long time, I was thankful that I had so many siblings.
Ihad never been more embarrassed by a poster board in my life. And one time, during my junior year of high school, I made a project comparing the plot of Lord of the Flies to the bad haircuts I’d had as a child. It was full of bowl cuts and poor decisions.
After my pathetic yet warranted pity party—which included making an entire pan of tiramisu, eating half of it, and then crying on the kitchen floor—I got a call from Mama B herself. She must have heard the news about the project, because she offered to pick the boys up from school. She also asked if I was in the mood for vegetable soup.
I instantly said yes…to both.
Maybe it was pathetic, but I couldn’t face the boys yet. I wasn’t ready to see the disappointment on their faces when they discovered that our project had been destroyed. There was no faking this and going about my merry way. I had never been able to disappoint them. Trying to convince them that the cherry-flavored cough syrup tasted good and that broccoli florets were just tiny trees was hard enough.
They’d never know how amazing our golf course had been. At least they wouldn’t have images of it to compare to this garbage piece of poster board. Still, it hurt to think about.
So I continued my pity party. This time, on my living room floor, flipping through old photo albums while eating enough vegetable soup to feed a small village. The pictures of Liam and me from high school got to me the most. Us hiking a trail down to a waterfall not far from here. We were standing below it, the cool mist spraying us and making my hair a frizzy mess, when he asked if I would be his girlfriend. I cried and screamed yes! Other hikers stared, probably wondering why he’d proposed without getting down on one knee and pulling out a ring. We were inseparable from then on. Family dinners and study sessions. Even when I picked up shifts as a cashier at a local pharmacy. Liam would take me to work and pick me up just so we could see each other. We were obsessed.
Next, I flipped through the wedding album. We were all done up in extravagant dresses and suits. His brothers and Calla looked like babies playing dress-up in their parents’ closets. We were so, so young. In one photo, Crew, who was only eleven at the time, had rocked a Hawaiian-print bow tie.
Liam and I had been all over each other in the stairwell of our venue center, hands reaching and mouths working. My grandmother stumbled upon us and clutched her pearls with an “oh my heavens” before scurrying away. I blamed her for constantly pestering us about giving her great-grandchildren.
I’d gone through a whole box of tissues by the time I reached the end of the album. It was full of so many beautiful memories that I had forced myself to forget over the years. After watching The Notebook twice—don’t judge me; I was mourning—I figured the best route moving forward from here was to pick myself up, dust myself off, and take a trip to Target.
Which was how I ended up at the school’s legendary spring festival with a poster board that said Don’t be a dum-dum. Grab a sucker.
I never claimed to be witty, all right? But I did what had to be done. I was a woman who had given up on the mundane things in life. As of today, I was a half-caring, lazy, dum-dum-carrying sack of sadness. Bags of candy in one arm, the poster in the other, I puffed my chest out and stepped out of the car.
Keep your head up. Do not even think about crying right now. Pretend you don’t see all the other incredible tables.
I’d simply wait until the very last minute to set up our table and avoid waving kids down as they passed. Maybe they would assume I was closing up shop early. Then maybe they wouldn’t come. I know, I had the mom-of-the-year award in the bag.
I broke the news to the boys on the way here. Holding firm to that mask of calm all moms are given the day they give birth, I told them that the game had been ruined and that, although it was an accident, it was my fault. I apologized fiercely and swore I’d take them to Hershey Park over summer break. In that moment, if they’d asked, I would have given one of them my left kidney.
And the sweet boys…you know what they did? They looked at each other, then turned back to me wearing the most placid smiles.
“It’s okay, Mom. We love you,” Miles had reassured me.
Dallas patted my shoulder over the car’s headrest.
In that moment, that mask almost slipped. I had to sniffle back the tears banging at the backs of my eyes, demanding to be released. Then I nodded and gave them the brightest smile I could muster. They wouldn’t be saying that if they had actually seen what we’d put together. If they’d seen how much Liam and I truly loved that collage of wood and paint. But they had nothing to compare it to, so to them, this really was fine.
