Author: Kristan Higgins

“Are you sure about this, Mom? I know you’ve been mad at Dad, but this seems a little…dramatic.”

“This isn’t about your father, Luke. It’s about Harry and me and my future.”

“Are we supposed to be happy for you, Ma?” Jack asks, an edge in his voice.

“You can be happy or not,” she says. “It won’t change anything.”

“What about Dad?” Mark asks. “What’s he supposed to do, Mom?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She sighs. “Listen, I know he’s going to be angry. He’ll need you kids.”

“When are you going to tell him?” Sarah asks.

“Tonight.” Mom looks grim. “He’s at a union meeting right now, but he’s coming over later.”

My voice isn’t working. And I think there’s something wrong with my heart, because it’s beating sickly in my chest, slow and too hard.

“Is that all?” Jack asks tightly.

“That’s all.” Mom sighs. “I know this is a bombshell, kids, but I think you should all go home. Call me tomorrow if you have anything else to say. Okay?” The boys rise obediently. “Chastity, honey, will you stay a little while?”

I nod wordlessly.

Like ghosts, my brothers and their spouses gather their kids and trickle out the door. It’s eerily quiet. I just sit on the couch in the fading light and stare at the rug. My mind is blank.

Mom comes in from waving to the last of her grandchildren and sits in her chair across from me. “I know this a surprise, Chastity,” she says.

A razor seems wedged in my vocal cords. “Mom,” I say in a rough whisper, “how can you do this? You love Daddy.”

She stares at me, then comes over and sits down next to me. “Honey, I did. For a long time, he was…” She sighs. “He was the love of my life.”

“So you can’t marry Harry, Mom! Not if you still love Daddy!” I sound like a ten-year-old, but I can’t help it. Buttercup comes over to me and puts her head on my lap.

“Love gets used up, Chastity,” Mom says gently, reaching up to smooth my hair. “If it’s not returned, it gets used up.”

“He loves you, Mom!” A tear drops on Buttercup’s nose, and she licks it away. “Of course Dad loves you.”

“Not in the same way, honey.” She leans back against the couch and fiddles with her bracelet. “Chastity, you can’t spend your life loving someone more than you’re loved. You know that, don’t you? It makes you feel small, no matter how tall you might be.” She gives a small, sad smile.

“What…what are you talking about?”

“Trevor.”

I suck in a breath. “I—I—I don’t—”

“Yes, you do, honey. You love Trevor. You’ve loved him since you were a kid.”

My face crumples, the tears coming faster now. “Okay, well, yes. But let’s talk about you and Daddy,” I whisper.

“Okay. But I think you’re being smart to find someone else, someone who thinks you light up the room.” She pauses, staring at the floor. “Not someone who doesn’t even really see you anymore.”

I don’t know if she’s talking about me or her or Trevor or Ryan or Dad. I wipe my eyes and try to swallow.

“I’m tired of fighting to get your father to notice me,” she says, looking so weary and wise that I have to clench my jaw shut so I don’t sob. “He spent too many years just expecting me to be there when he felt like noticing. There I was, mother of five, keeping the house, cooking, running you kids all over, taking care of you when you were sick, and I was still just as in love with him as when we first met. Meanwhile, he just kept doing whatever he felt like doing. The job, the guys, you kids when the mood struck him. It seemed like everything was more important than I was.”

Buttercup moves her head to Mom’s lap now, and Mom strokes the dog’s big ears.

“Do you really love Harry?” I ask around the thorn in my throat.

“Yes,” she says simply, and my heart cracks. “I like feeling new and interesting and…well, adored.”

I nod, misery rising off me like a fog.

“I was hoping you’d be my maid of honor, Chastity,” she says. “Though you don’t have to answer now, of course.”

I don’t want to break down in front of my mother, so I stand up. “I have to go,” I squeak.

“Okay,” she says, standing too and hugging me. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too, Mom.” I choke. “I just have to run to my room for a sec.” With Buttercup on my heels, I escape down the hall.

As I was the last kid to leave for college, my room was spared from being made over into the den or sewing room, as were the two rooms that held the boys. Sitting on my old bed here in the gloom, Buttercup beside me, I look around. My basketball trophies still sit on the top shelf of the bookcase. The Goo Goo Dolls stare at me from a poster. My fuzzy lavender rug, which I thought so utterly feminine at the time, looks considerably more Rastafarian than it once did. Otherwise, not much has changed.

Tears are dripping down my cheeks. I try to take a deep breath and get a grip. I fail.

I once believed in everlasting love. I thought that, at the root of everything, beneath the irritation and impatience and bickering, my parents would always love each other. Would always be together, even when they were apart. I didn’t know that someone could be the love of your life and then fade from your heart. I didn’t know your heart could feel like a used-up eraser, rubbed down, grimy from neglect and overuse. It’s an unbearable thought. Unbearable.

The back door slams. “Betty?” My father’s voice is laced with panic. I didn’t hear his car.

“Betty, Jack just called me. Betty!” My father, who thinks nothing of tramping through burning buildings on floors weakened by flame, sounds like a frightened child. “You can’t be serious, honey. You can’t do this!”

Their voices come to me with horrible clarity, and though I hate hearing them talk, I’m welded to the bed. Buttercup rests her head on the purple rug and watches me.

“Mike, I’m sorry, but I am. I’m marrying Harry.” There’s no anger in my mom’s voice, just sadness and resignation and an underlying, bleak honesty.

“Oh, Betty.” I have never heard my father cry before. I’ve seen tears in his eyes, yes. Quiet with grief or sharp with fear, yes, but this raw sobbing punches me right in the throat.

“I’ll retire. I’ll do it tomorrow! I’ll call the chief right now, Betty—”

“It’s not that, Mike. It’s too late. I really am sorry.”

“You can’t! You still love me. Please! I love you, Betty. I always have.”

Mom’s voice is soothing and kind, horribly gentle—not the Father Donnelly voice, but the loving-mother voice, the one we heard when we were feverish or stomach sick or crying because we weren’t popular enough or hated being tall. “I gave you years to retire, Mike. If you do it now, it’s just because you don’t want me with someone else. It’s not really for me.”

“Please, Betty.”

“No. I’m sorry, Mike. Part of me will always love you, and we’ll always have the kids and grandkids, but it’s over now.”

My father’s crying breaks my heart.

Mom talks some more, but I don’t hear it. After a few minutes, the kitchen door closes and I hear an engine start, then Mom’s footsteps coming down the hall. She opens my door, leans against the door frame and looks at me.

“Is Daddy okay?” I whisper.

“I called Mark, and he and Luke are going over.” She looks at the floor. “I think you should go now, honey. I want to be alone.”

I DRIVE HOME LIKE A ZOMBIE and feed Buttercup. Standing there, watching her devouring her kibbles, her jowls flopping against the bowl, I feel the walls closing in. I can’t think about my parents—it’s too sad. I have to get out of here.

Where I want to go and where I should go are different places. I shove my feet into my high-tops and run down the block, toward the place I should go.

It’s full dark now, and the music of a summer night flows around me, radios playing and doors slamming, kids screaming, a baseball game down at Reilly Park. Restaurant courtyards are packed; fairy lights twinkle; people are laughing and drinking and eating and having a wonderful bleeping time. I keep running, my flat-soled high-tops slapping on the pavement.

Eaton Falls General Hospital is artificially bright and welcoming. Hi! Glad you’re here! Have a great time! the foyer seems to shout; it’s decorated with bright murals and fichus trees. Great choice, I think viciously.

“Can I help you?” The woman at the front desk beams.

“Which floor is the surgical floor?” I ask.

“That would be six,” she answers. “Are you visiting a patient?”

“No,” I answer. “I need to see Dr. Darling.”

“I can have him paged,” she offers, but I’m already loping to the elevators.

My steps are fast and hard as I stride down toward the sixth-floor nurses’ station. “Is Ryan Darling around?” I ask.

A nurse stares at me disapprovingly. “He’s with a patient.”

“Is he in surgery?”

“He’s with a patient,” she repeats loudly, as if I’m hard of hearing. She looks me up and down, judgment heavy in her face “Why don’t you call his office and make an appointment?”

“Why don’t you back off, okay? He’s my boyfriend.” There should really be a better word than boyfriend. Something with dignity and solemnity. Boyfriend makes it sound like I’m fifteen.

“The fact remains that he’s—With. A. Patient.”

“Fine! Is there somewhere I can wait?”

The nurse, who is as sweet and compassionate as, say, Nurse Ratched, sighs dramatically. “There’s a waiting room reserved for families at the end of the hall. Please try to be sensitive to them, won’t you?”

Stifling the urge to punch her in the stomach, I barrel down the hall, not daring to glance in the rooms that line either side. I’m miserable enough without seeing sad families and sick people.

The waiting room is empty, though a few Dunkin Donut cups announce recent occupancy. CNN is on the television mounted on the wall, but I don’t look at that, either. My father’s broken voice echoes in my head. He never believed this would happen. He just didn’t listen.

Sooner than I might have expected, Ryan opens the door. He’s wearing scrubs and a white doctor’s coat, and if he’s been dealing with human suffering, it doesn’t show. He’s still as icily attractive as the first time I saw him. Mr. New York Times. “Chastity! What a nice surprise,” he says, giving me a kiss. “How are you? Just here to pay me a visit?”

“Ryan, I have some bad news.” My throat clamps shut again. “My mother is getting married.” My voice cracks on the last word.

“To Harry?” he asks, rather obtusely.

No, dumbass, I want to say. To Barack Obama. “Yes, to Harry,” I snap.

“Isn’t that nice,” he murmurs, then seems to see my expression for the first time. “Or not.”

“My father is devastated, Ryan,” I announce, a hard edge in my voice.

“Sure, sure,” he placates. “But still…” He thinks better of finishing and glances at his watch.

“But still what, Ryan?” I demand.

He tips his head and shrugs. “Still, Chastity, you have to look at the bright side. I know you’re probably sad that your mother’s moving on, but your parents are divorced, after all. Your mom is marrying someone who thinks very highly of her, someone who’s very comfortable financially. It’s a good match.”