Page 26 of The Amendment

“Hello?”

“Hey, love. What are you up to?”

“Oh, just picking up the kids from the park. How’s the trip going?”

“Really well,” she said, dragging out the words. “It’s beautiful out here. Seth was right, these mountains are nothing like what we have back home.”

“Well, don’t get any funny ideas about packing up and moving to Colorado. I’d miss you too much.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.” The warmth of her voice reminded me of how much I missed her. After their divorce, she and Seth had reconciled almost immediately. It was the most amicable divorce in history, as far as I was concerned. Then again, I guessed when feelings weren’t involved, it did make things easier.

From time to time, I found myself longing for Peter and me to learn how they’d managed it.

Now, Glennon and Seth had moved back in together—strictly as best friends and roommates—and as far as I could tell, they hadn’t missed a beat.

When I’d expressed concern over the arrangement, worrying it might cause one of them to get hurt, Glennon assured me my fears were unfounded. They’d simply spent so much time together neither of them could bear the thought of being apart.

“Well, good,” I said. “Are you at the hotel, then?”

“Not yet. We stopped for a bite to eat before Seth’s meeting this evening. We’ll check in, in just a few hours. I just wanted to call and see how Maisy’s recital went.”

“Her recit…” I trailed off, my stomach dropping. How could I have forgotten? I checked the date on my phone.

Yesterday.

Her recital was yesterday, the tenth, same as it had been every year since she was four. She’d been out with Bailey yesterday. Had they gone to the recital without me? Had she been expecting me to be there and I’d missed it? Why hadn’t she mentioned it? Why hadn’t I caught it? I placed my head on my steering wheel, my body filling with a cold dread.

No wonder she’d hardly spoken to me this morning…

“Glen, I forgot.”

“Forgot?” she asked, as shocked as I was.

“I don’t know how I could’ve been so stupid. She was out with friends last night, or at least, that’s what I thought, and I just… I don’t know. I spaced. What do I do? How do I tell her how sorry I am? She must hate me.”

“Okay…” She was the voice of reason carrying across the line, her tone soothing. “Just breathe, okay? She doesn’t hate you. She could never hate you. It was an honest mistake. You just need to talk to her. Ask her how it went. Make sure she knows you didn’t plan to miss it.”

I thought back over the past few months, trying to recall the last time I’d attended a practice with her, but failing.

Once, I’d been there every Thursday night without fail, but when her friends started joining her team, there’d been carpools and changes of plans, and eventually, I’d been traded out for the dance moms whose entire lives revolved around their children’s dance careers. Somehow, until that moment, I’d never realized it.

That’s how it happens, isn’t it?

It’s one tiny change of plan. The first time your child doesn’t want you to hold them. The last time they ask you to play with them.

Just baby steps and minuscule differences, and we all just assume it’s a hiccup…that things will go back to the way things have been if we just keep on trying. Keep believing. Keep assuming things are normal.

But they aren’t because there is no normal.

Normal doesn’t exist and it never has.

There are just these periods where things feel safe and calm, and then, long before we’re ready, everything’s torn apart and we call it change.

We look back at our lives and wonder when it all changed, but the truth is…the better question is, when didn’t it?

Because we’re always changing. Life is always changing.

It’s the rarer moments where things are still.

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