Page 94 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

“Right.” I give a small nod. “I mean, yes. I could use the bathroom, too. I’ll come with you.”

In the bathroom neither of us makes a move toward a stall. We stand in front of the mirror as we have a million times in the past. She reaches up and puts her hands on my shoulders. Our foreheads touch, which requires her to go on tiptoe and me to lean down. We commune in silence for several long moments. Slowly, almost regretfully, she pulls back.

“I just wanted to thank you again for today. I would have come myself if I’d had to—but I’m so glad we made the drive together.” She doesn’t break eye contact. “And I’ll be forever grateful that you drop-kicked Shane Adams.”

We share a smile of satisfaction. Hers goes crooked and then disappears.

“I hope you won’t be mad at me for saying this, but I think you should take Jake and your mother up on their offer.” She swallows and her eyes fill with tears. “Today was awful and I can’t help thinking how much worse it might have ended. Life is short. We’re all doing the best we can. When we love someone and especially if they love us, we need to cut them some slack. No one’s perfect, Lauren. Maybe not even you.”

She watches my face. I know she’s afraid that I’m going to huff out of here and turn my back on our friendship that finally seems to be back on track. But I can’t be mad at her for speaking the truth. That’s what best friends are supposed to do.

She smiles in acknowledgment and understanding, having clearly read my face, if not my mind. “Good. And if you can spare a couple more days, come back with them. Maybe we can brainstorm a new career path for you. And another book forme.” Her smile deepens. “I’ve been working onHeart of Goldfor so long I’m not sure I’ll have the nerve to start something else. Whitney and Heath might think I’m cheating on them if I take up with new characters.”

We find the others outside. Jake has a protective arm around my mother’s shoulders. I walk toward them, my steps slow and measured. I still feel the anger inside me, but it’s such a small and pitiful emotion next to the love I feel for her and that she’s always showered on me. My parents look so right together. I’m not certain exactly where I fit.

“Are you sure you have room for me?”

“Absolutely,” they answer without even glancing at each other.

“Let me get your bag out of the rental car.” Jake walks to the Ford Focus.

My mother smiles but still seems afraid to make the first move.

I climb into the backseat. Like a forty-year-old child going on a family vacation. For the very first time.

Forty

Kendra

There’s not a lot of small talk on the drive to Richmond. I can’t quite believe that Jake and I are driving home in a car with our daughter in the back. I refuse to let myself think of all the years we could have been doing this.

I keep checking on Lauren in the rearview mirror, thinking I need to saysomething, though I’m not sure whether that something should be another apology or an explanation of where we’re taking her. Each time I look, she’s dozing. Or at least pretending to.

Jake’s the one who suggested this trip down memory lane and now as we get close to the eastern edge of the city my nerves jangle for too many reasons to count. I haven’t been back since I left to have Lauren at my aunt Velda’s forty years ago.

I barely recognize my hometown. It’s so much bigger, so much more crowded than I remember. It’s only when we turn onto Monument Avenue that I begin to recognize homes and, of course, the monuments that have now become so controversial but at the time simplywere. When I was growing up some of the Gilded Age mansions had been subdivided into apartments. Some blocks were more run-down and less impressive than others. Our two-story brick on the corner of Monument and Tilden wasn’t even close to one of the grandest but my father, who’d“pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” was inordinately proud of it and what it said about him.

The breath catches in my throat as Jake pulls up to the curb in front of the family home. The shadows are lengthening, but the details of the house are not yet blurred.

Built in the ’20s and wedged between two other large homes it still has Doric columns supporting the curved portico. Dormer windows line the top floor.

My gaze flies to my former bedroom, where I used to sit on the window seat. As a little girl I spent hours reading there, so as not to disturb my “resting” mother. When I was older I stared outward in search of a first sight of Jake.

I feel his eyes on my face now. “I’ve never driven by without picturing your face pressed against that window. Or remembering the time I actually climbed up that trellis to reach you.”

My smile is pure reflex and tinged with sadness. I’ve spent so many years trying not to think of this house, of my parents, and of Jake. Now that we’re here memories race through my brain, one blurring into another, like flipping through the pages of a picture book.

Lauren rouses in the backseat. “Where are we?”

“Thirty-two-twenty-three Monument Avenue.” I twist around so that I can see her face. “This is the house I grew up in.”

Her eyes fly all the way open. She rubs them as she slides across the backseat. We leave the car and stand on the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder. The family that never was. But that I hope can still be.

The air is warm and still, heavy with moisture. The grass and sidewalk are damp. Water drips from the leaves of the trees and from theFOR SALEsign. My heart races as I imagine my father coming outside to demand what I’m doing here even though I know my parents are long dead.

“My mother planted that magnolia when I was born.” I point to what is now a towering giant of a tree that dominates half thesmall front yard. It’s dotted with large white saucerlike flowers. “She planted those roses, too. And the confederate jasmine.” In my mind’s eye I see her in the floppy straw hat that protected her pale skin from the sun, cutting and trimming and digging. The basket she’d put the fresh flowers in, on the ground beside her. The smile on her face when she arranged them in vases and set them around the house. “Gardening was one of the few things she seemed to enjoy. When she was well enough to go out.

“Jake lived just a few blocks over on West Franklin.”

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