Okay you guys, so I've decided that – for now – I'm going to post the original version of the rest of the story. Over time, I'll go back and replace the chapters with the "NHL Cut" as I can finish them.
So, to prepare you, here's the timeline of THIS version: instead of being called up by the Sentinels, Adam kind of folds up hockey after 9/11. Something about the events, followed by his fight with Lacey, caused him to give up on his old dream and let the NHL idea go. He gives away all his old gear and instead focuses on his new goal of becoming a lawyer. He finishes up his undergrad and goes to law school all over the next four years. During this time, he moves in with Morrigan (his friend, the goalie from college) and Mendoza (who had come to NYC, inspired by 9/11 to become a New York firefighter) and takes an internship at a local politician's office. In this version, he still sends Lacey's ring back to her at the wrong time and still has the "come to Jesus" talk with Travis (don't know if you guys know that expression? Maybe it's a Southern thing!. So that part remains the same.
Also, while in law school at NYU, he happened to encounter Sarah again, the girl he'd met in the school's multiplex the night after 9/11 with whom he'd held hands. Hopefully y'all remember. She'd lost her fiance. Anyway, the two of them are together now, and you'll read more of those details below.
I hope you find this chapter beautifully poignant. It involves a lot of catching up to where our characters are three years from the last one, and contains a lot of subtle indicators that they have never forgotten one another…
Now may I introduce you to…Esq. Adam Banks.
/
Song: "Not Over You - Gavin DeGraw"
Spring 2007
"Mr. Tadlock, I understand," Adam kept his usual measured tone. "But we're up against quite a lot right now. Mrs. Tadlock has records stating that the last time you were visiting the children, you used, and I quote directly from her statement, 'The F word three times and GD five times'." He closed the file folder and waited on Craig Tadlock to respond.
The man did so by breaking out into a loud , raucous laugh. "Really? She has the kids counting my cuss words now? Can't you see what Amber's doing here? Picking on anything and everything so I can't get joint custody. She ought to be embarrassed by the low-brow bullshit she's–" Craig slapped his hand on the desk, then rested his elbow on it, rubbing his head and sighing. "So, what do I do?"
"I agree, it's petty," Adam began by reassuring the volatile man. "But you do realize that in custody cases, the mother usually holds sway. So you're going to have to work twice as hard to get half the results. Remember me saying that at your very first consultation? That means you've got to be on your absolute best behavior. Why don't we counter this by giving evidence of the things you do with the kids when you have them. You said you attended Donuts with Daddy two weeks ago with Carson, right?"
"Yeah, and I take Aspen to ballet every single Tuesday so Amber can go to her damn Zumba classes. I'm telling you, Banks, if you don't make this happen for me, you're fired." Craig's partially bald head was flushed red with anger.
But Adam was nonplussed. He received these threats often from people who expected miracles from him. He mostly found his work with Karsten Karsten & Brown, with whom he'd been working since passing the bar two years ago, to be very fulfilling. But there were always a few people, mostly belligerent men, that could be taxing to say the least.
Ignoring Craig's threat, Adam began making notes. "All right, so I'm making a list of the things we've discussed that are going well between you and the kids. Hang in there, keep doing what you know to do. Your court date is still three months away. We've got plenty of time to turn this around."
To inform Craig the meeting was over, Adam tucked his pen in his pocket and stood up. "All right. Have a Happy Easter, Mr. Tadlock."
Thankfully, Craig was Adam's last client of the day, and his partners had already left. Gathering his stuff together quickly, determined he wasn't going to spend another late night in this office, Adam locked up and walked the few blocks to the subway. He knew Sarah would be waiting at his apartment with Chinese takeout.
He and Sarah had been together now for close to three years. She, like he, was very focused on her career. Sarah worked in bankruptcy law and he in family law, but the two of them found parallels and spent hours comparing notes. It was mostly all they talked about. Adam's relationship with Sarah was comfortable; it was predictable, methodical, and exactly what he needed at this time in his life. They still lived independently, spending a few evenings a week together and rotating whose place they stayed at (Sarah liked to have a system for everything, which suited Adam fine). They were not at all serious, despite the amount of time they'd spent together and the fact that they were both nearing the end of their twenties. There wasn't much room in his relationship with Sarah for passion, which was perfectly okay with him. Where there was passion, there was drama. And heartache. Adam had had his fill of both.
His career with the law firm had been lucrative, and Adam lived in a nice condo in the Upper West Side, even if not a big one. He didn't want to completely blow all of his income, so he was sure to set plenty of his money aside for savings, had purchased some stocks, and was giving to charity. He had wanted to do some good with the excess he felt he possessed as a bachelor, but it had taken him quite a bit of time to pick out a cause that resounded with him. There were too many good nonprofit organizations that did alot of things he believed in.
But there was a place he liked to visit to work away from the office. It was a place that had turned him on to Cafe Au Laits, and a place where the baristas all knew his name, recognizing him as "that quiet, serious lawyer that comes in here every week."
It was the Brooklyn Cat Cafe.
There was a specific booth he always liked to sit in while drinking, working, and watching the cats play. There was even one gray and white tabby, Oscar, that seemed to have made him his "person," but it was almost as though the little cat sensed Adam's sense of purpose when he visited, and merely climbed up into the seat beside him as he worked, not demanding any attention at all. More than once Adam had considered adopting him, but he wasn't sure if he could handle shedding season, so he opted to just spend time with Oscar while he was at the cafe. It was to this quaint little place that he donated his charity money.
He still regularly got together with Mendoza and Morrigan, and more than once one of his former Ducks' teammates came to visit. He'd gone to Guy and Connie's wedding as well as Dwayne's, Charlie's, Julie's, and Goldberg's so far.
"No way you're staying a bachelor past Goldberg, Dude," Fulton had jested with him one day. "Times are getting desperate."
Fulton himself had married once, but had shown poor judgment in picking out a mate. Megan had taken his buddy for all he'd been worth, which hadn't been much, and was now denying Fulton access to their small son simply because she could. Adam had been a lawyer long enough to know there were two sides to every story, and no one was completely innocent. But Fulton had been as close to innocent as they'd come, and it made him angry to see someone take such advantage of his friend.
"Fulton, I'll come back home and represent you for your trial. We can talk about this over the phone, I promise I"ll make it work. Let me help you. I know family law," he had tried to plead with Fulton.
"No. I can't win this, man. She can have full custody as long as I can see the little guy every other weekend. It's not really fair for him to be put in the middle of this."
His friend's humility and selflessness should have been something Adam viewed as noble. But instead, it just frustrated Adam and made him feel Fulton was giving up too easily. He conceded, however, that this was probably because as a lawyer he had a better view of where there was a case and where there wasn't. Fulton most certainly had one, but he'd learned a long time ago that he couldn't make anyone do or not do anything.
Mendoza was just as happy as he'd expected to be on the fire squad for Hell's Kitchen, even though it paid much less than it needed to. He, also, had recently married. Morrigan was continuing to climb the sportscaster ladder, but was still a bachelor like Adam, so needless to say, he was the one Adam had drinks with the most when he had time. Aside from work, neither of them had very many obligations.
There were times Adam missed hockey so much he could almost taste it. But at the same time, he had an aversion to it he couldn't explain. Therefore, as much as he was still bugged by his friends about joining a local league to play just for kicks, he steadfastly refused.
"I just really don't have time," was always his argument, and it was mostly true. But he was sure that if he wanted to, he could carve it out.
By and large, Adam was happy. He had a fulfilling career, a family that was thriving–Travis had three children he loved, his mom had taken a break from painting to make upcycled handbags, which she enjoyed, and his dad was close to retirement–a great girlfriend, and he loved living in the Upper West Side.
Adam made it home around six, and by then Sarah was already there with the lo mein. "I texted to see if you wanted lo mein or General Tso's chicken. But I couldn't get you so I gave it my best guess."
"Lo mein's fine," he replied from the bedroom as he hung up his suit coat. "The Tadlock case again." Adam knew it was unethical to use names, even with Sarah, but he tended to let it slide with her, given she also was a lawyer and knew better than to let them slip.
"Still with that guy? Well, kudos to him for still trying. So many men give up, and I don't think that's right. A father has just as much of a right to custody as a mother does." She brought over drinks. Adam had formed a terrible habit for Coke in recent months.
"Why don't you do family law? I bet you'd enjoy it much better than pushing bankruptcy papers around," Adam observed, plopping down on the couch in more relaxed clothes, turning on the TV. It was almost time for Mad Men. "You know, don't you, that Grandpa Greg was in advertising around the same time as this show? He's got all kinds of stories."
"Oh yeah?" Sarah sat down on the other end of the couch, giving plenty of room for the food in between them. "So, guess we're stuck watching this tonight?"
"I mean, we don't have to," Adam shrugged. "But you know this is usually my Monday night ritual."
"Okay, well I'll give in tonight," Sarah reached back to rake her long brunette hair into a messy bun. "You know I'm much more partial to Private Practice."
Adam rolled his eyes. "No way am I watching that."
Clucking her tongue, Sarah picked up one of the takeout cartons, digging in.
All was good. No matter that every time he walked into his beloved Brooklyn Cat Cafe, he felt as sad to be there as he did comfortable; and no matter that, when he and Sarah fell asleep that night, he tried for the first time to snuggle close enough to her to try sleeping with his forehead touching hers just to see what it would feel like.
"What are you doing?" Sarah chuckled, pulling back a bit. "I can't sleep with you breathing in my face."
Adam gave her a half-smile, not really feeling right about the gesture anyway. "Yeah, guess it is kind of weird to sleep that way, huh?"
He rolled over, suddenly feeling a gaping hole in his chest. But he took a deep, cleansing breath to cover it up, and when he found he couldn't sleep yet again–another RA flair rearing its ugly head–he sat up and turned on TCM, catching the very end of To Kill A Mockingbird. Gregory Peck always struck him as one of those guys you could cry in the lap of. Then, keeping the volume down so as not to disturb a soundly sleeping Sarah, he watched Casablanca, but quickly turned it off before the very last part, as he usually did.
Finally, his eyelids grew heavy. Adam fell into a peaceful sleep, dreaming of Craig Tadlock holding a kid in each arm, smiling in a way he had yet to see the man do. And he woke up feeling a renewed sense of purpose.
/
/
"Lacey," Kristy whimpered, face awash in tears. "I'm not ready. I'm too scared, I can't do this."
Lacey squeezed her best friend's hand. "Kristy, you kind of have to. The baby's not coming out any other way. Davy will be here any time, and he's going to help give you the strength to do this, okay?"
Kristy shivered despite the fact that she was sitting in a warm tub of water. The midwife, a soft spoken, calm woman, began to lead her in a series of breathing exercises meant to relax her. It took a minute, but Lacey finally managed to disengage her fingers from Kristy's just long enough to duck out of the room, calling Davy on speed dial.
"I'm coming, don't do anything without me!" Davy fairly shouted into the phone. "I mean tell Kristy–!"
Lacey could tell by the ambiance that he was driving. "Davy, nothing's happening that quickly, I promise. Listen, be careful above all. Drive slowly. I know you don't want to, but do it. The midwife and I are here. Everything's okay."
But Davy was already blubbering. "What if this was a bad idea, what if we should have done this in a hospital? I had a bad feeling when she said she wanted to do home birth. And now look!"
"'Now look' at what?" Lacey kept a calm tone to try to help Davy stay level-headed. "Nothing bad has happened. The midwife seems more than capable, she's been doing this for twenty-seven years, and she's working with Kristy to keep her calm. But she is a little scared, Davy, so you've got to be strong for her, okay?"
"O-Okay," her almost-brother, usually one to take everything in stride, stammered.
Kristy had been having contractions since the day before, but they were far apart, and she had thought them to be false labor pains.
"I'm still two weeks away," Kristy had chirped to Lacey over the phone.
"Well, still. I've got a couple of personal days I haven't taken yet, so let me call them in and I'll come be with you while Davy works. Just in case."
It hadn't taken long to convince Kristy, so Lacey had gone over to help keep Kristy comfortable, record contraction times, and watch episodes of Big Love, their current guilty pleasure.
"I'm not a Margene!" Kristy exclaimed after taking her ice cream spoon out of her mouth. "She's a little silly, don't you think? I mean, immature."
"It's more her personality on the whole. She's pretty sweet and innocent like you are," Lacey leaned over and straightened out the pillow underneath Kristy's feet, which sat propped on the coffee table. "If I could pick anyone to play you in a TV show, it would definitely be Ginnifer Goodwin."
"Wait, we're talking again! What did she just say?" Kristy turned the volume up on the remote control.
It wasn't long after that that Kristy's contractions had accelerated, soon only a handful of minutes apart. "Okay, I'm calling Janice," she informed her friend, standing quickly to go find Kristy's phone on which she was sure the midwife's contact information would be stored.
Kristy was very calm at first, but once Janice arrived and assessed her, declaring that this was, in fact, actual labor, she seemed to lose her cool a bit. Lacey tried to help her friend stay calm, get undressed and into the water birth pool without also getting in the midwife's way, and communicate with Davy all at the same time. It had taken simply one word from her for Davy to flip over the "Open" sign to "Closed" on the door of his successful upcycled furniture shop and jump into his car.
Lacey felt she was in need of a stiff drink already in order to keep the pair of them–and therefore herself–sane. But very soon Davy pulled up in the driveway and was at once by Kristy's side, regurgitating all the information they had learned in Bradley classes at rapid speed.
"Baby, don't talk to me anymore about Bradley classes!" Kristy fairly shouted after a minute of this.
Janice and Lacey traded a secret smile before Lacey left the room for Davy and Kristy to have an intimate birth experience. But she was certainly not leaving altogether. The couple was practically in a state of panic when she'd mentioned for them to just call her when they needed her.
"But what if we're too busy to call? Can't we just yell for you in the other room?" Kristy had pleaded while Davy knelt behind her, combing her sweaty blonde tendrils into a ponytail to keep them off her neck.
"Okay. Fine. Other room it is."
So Lacey went to the kitchen to find something to eat, phoning Jeff.
"What are you supposed to do there for the next… I don't know, how many hours does labor take?" Her husband sounded mildly irritated, though she wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if the two of them shared any kind of nightly ritual. But then, irritation in general wasn't out of character for Jeff these days.
"I don't know, Jeff, but she wants me here and I'm going to stay. Let's take one for the team, all right? It's her first baby." Lacey settled on cheese puffs and raw broccoli with ranch, the best she could do, and made her way back into the living room of Davy's modest house, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder.
"Yeah, well we'll have ours in an actual hospital. This whole natural birth thing is whacko." He continued to sound grumpy.
"Right. Definitely." Lacey replied a little too quickly, changing the subject. "Anyway, was work rough? You sound a little aggravated."
"Well, I am. I mean, I finally made this chicken casserole you've been wanting me to bake for months, and now you're not even coming home."
"Jeff," she sighed. "How was I supposed to know this was going to happen? Is it too much to ask you just to bring me a piece? Because I do want it, and I appreciate that you went through the trouble."
It wasn't always easy to powder his behind when he was in one of these moods, but Lacey was trying to take the advice from the marriage self-help books she had been sneaking home to read, not to mention Kristy's contributions.
"Keep trying, Lacey," her best friend had tried to encourage her when she and Jeff had begun to sink into a discontented state about a year after their marriage. "Maybe if you give him compliments and let him know what he's doing right even when you don't feel like it. They say feelings follow thoughts and actions, so even if you're only pretending to be happy with the things Jeff does, that's a good start."
Well, she was trying. Lacey had done her best to be a good wife from the moment the couple had gotten married. The first year had been a good one. They'd floated seamlessly from engagement to matrimony without the least little ripple of discomfort.
But then, almost to the very day of their one-year anniversary, the trouble began.
Lacey couldn't put a finger on what started it, but Jeff seemed to become irritable, particularly with her panic spells. Her job at DSS was becoming way more stressful, and more than once she had woken up to discover she'd pulled blonde hairs out in the bed. It unnerved her that often he woke up and acted disgusted.
"I'm trying to understand, Hon, I'm sorry if I don't always," he ventured one day after he realized he'd crossed a line with his frustration. "Just…I don't know what you have to panic over. Your dad's dead, you can always change jobs if you want to, and we have a good life. Why does this happen? I mean, here we were at the company lu'au last weekend and you freaked out and locked yourself in the bathroom just because a Frankie Valli song was playing. How can I explain that to people?"
At times like this, Lacey wanted to slap him. She knew he was trying, but his simplistic view of life just didn't allow for him to comprehend PTSD. She didn't need him to question her, she just needed him to be there as a calming presence.
But almost nothing about Jeff's personality was calming. She'd always known that, but now it was frustrating her. And lately, his new aggravation was her lack of enthusiasm in bed, and she was able to see the swelling tide about to crash down upon him when she would have to break the news that she still didn't want children.
She was compared constantly to the women she deemed "the Stepford wives"–the other company wives where Jeff worked who apparently excelled in all things wifely. They cooked, had spotless houses, sculpted bodies, confidence, and doubtlessly did all the things at night that their husbands wanted. The one thing Lacey could do in step with them was throw great parties. She knew that was one thing Jeff was proud of her for.
It was easy to understand why Jeff was swayed by the other men he worked for. He was younger, after all, and seemed to be caught up in this ideal fantasy of what life should be like. The only problem was, Lacey had been dealt enough hardship to be light years ahead of him in understanding that life was not, would not ever be, perfect.
And she couldn't be perfect, either.
The advice from Kristy would have been so easy to give. Davy's shop where he sold the creations he and Stuart made was currently doing so well that Kristy was able to drop down to part-time at her local newspaper job. She mostly covered social news, things like interviewing contestants at chili contests that were held to raise money for elementary school field trips. Her old dream of writing about the difficult to tackle topics such as addiction seemed to have faded away, and now Kristy was mostly focused on her home life with Davy. Their marriage, it seemed to Lacey, had done nothing but thrive.
After getting off the phone with Jeff, Lacey watched TV for a few hours before curling up on the loveseat and falling asleep quickly. Kristy was right–she did work a lot. She had racked up vacation, sick, and personal days, which was part of why she had no problem taking a couple of them to be with her friend. Part of her was dreading going back.
David Stuart McBrayer was born at 4:45am after twelve hours of hard labor. Occasionally, Lacey woke up to hear the heart-rending cries of Kristy's travail, but at last, a baby arrived. Holding the tiny infant was a bittersweet experience. He was beautiful, and so, so perfect in every way. Heartbreakingly so, as Lacey knew life as a mother was not to be hers. She couldn't risk affecting a child with her foundering mental health.
Jeff thankfully seemed to understand that over the next little while, Lacey spent many of her evenings after work at Kristy and Davy's house, helping and interacting with the baby. Kristy was in tears most nights for the first few weeks due to her difficulty with breastfeeding. But even though Lacey didn't have the first clue how to help her friend with this issue, she tried to support and encourage her all she could. Finally, little David caught on, and all was well.
In the following weeks, Lacey came to learn through the constant array of flyers sent to DSS to advertise community resources that there was a place called Hope Heals. It was a center open during the afternoon hours intended to help support and provide case management to teens and young adults who struggled with mental health issues. The idea was to help them find jobs at which they could be successful, connect them with psychiatrists and therapists, and provide activities to keep them busy and help give them a social outlet. It was when she and some fellow DSS workers paid a visit to the nonprofit to check it out that Lacey found out they were hiring case managers.
She would be taking a pay cut, and the benefits weren't great. But Jeff had assured her he could just add her to his own work benefits, despite the extra money that would be taken out of his check every other week. It was good of him, but then, he was quite supportive of this career move for his own reasons.
Hope Heals was a bright, happy place. There was an accent wall the clients had painted themselves, adding graffiti and using permanent markers to etch encouraging statements. Even in the restrooms, there was a Joy Board on the wall beside the mirror. Uplifting quotes could be added by staff and clients alike.
Lacey loved it, and couldn't wait to go into work every day.
Her DSS experience had thankfully taught her quite a bit in the way of expectations, and how not to have them when helping individuals. Some of her clients stayed connected to the center and was genuinely helped by their resources, but a lot broke away or didn't take their issues and the support given to them seriously. It was a heartbreaking thing, but by now, Lacey knew how to steel herself.
She had a new job which led to an improved marriage as her stress level had gone way down. Jeff finally consented to them buying a cat as much as he hated them, so four-month-old Peaches joined the family, lighting up a room with his long-haired orange fur and energetic personality. Jeff put the baby conversation on the back burner despite the onesie his mother had sent them that read "I [Heart] Daddy" on the front of it. If there was one thing Lacey could change about her marriage, even above Jeff's attitude about her anxiety, it would be her mother-in-law. But Lacey always tried to play nice and remember to be thankful the dastardly woman lived three hours away.
Things were good, and her professional and social lives were thriving.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't make your wedding like you made mine," she apologized to Julie, calling her friend for the first time in a good while as she lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling with her phone to her ear. The fact was, she figured alot of the Ducks would be there, and she wasn't sure that wouldn't include Adam. She just couldn't chance it. So she fed the line to Julie that she couldn't tear herself away from work because other people would be on vacation that weekend, but they both knew people didn't generally go on vacation in February in Minnesota. Julie never challenged her, however, and she felt sure her friend knew the truth without her having to spell it out.
. Lacey still kept her connection to Cat's Cradle, volunteering during the less busy seasons of her life and giving money when she couldn't do anything else. Alice still ran the place, but was progressively becoming less able to handle it well. She could tell when she went in one day and was greeted by, for the first time ever, a smell coming from the kennels.
"She didn't get to clean the boxes out yesterday," Hilda, ever the same unchanging force to be reckoned with, whispered. "I think it's becoming too much for her to handle."
And why wouldn't it be? Alice had soldiered on into her eighties, even if she still had the energy of a younger woman. Now, it was nearing the time for her to hand over management to someone else. The conversation was initiated by Lacey, gently. She wanted to try to coax the woman into realizing it was okay to give over the reins to someone else. She had done her duty by so many cats over the years, and retirement would surely be a breath of fresh air.
"No, Lacey, I can't," came Alice's reply. "Not yet. I haven't found the right person for the job. Trust me, I'll know when I meet them."
So, quietly in order for Alice not to notice, she took the litter scoop and went about emptying the cat boxes herself. While here, she often wondered about Stella and hoped sincerely the little cat was still living a blissful life with the Bankses. She would be about twelve years old by now, no longer young herself. But it gave Lacey peace to know she would be taken care of as she aged, even if she had no way of seeing her or knowing for sure if she was even still alive.
Halen lived with Lacey and Jeff for a good while, long enough for her to abandon her dream of going off to Concordia and opt to attend St. Paul College for a two year degree to become an Administrative Assistant. It felt odd to Lacey that her squeamish, dainty little sister had become something of an insect expert from working at the pest control company, and intended to stay with her employer indefinitely. It wasn't something Lacey would have wanted for Halen, and it certainly didn't make their parents happy. But it was what it was, and Halen, after earning her associate's degree, received a raise big enough to allow her to get her own apartment, if a very humble one on a side of town Lacey wasn't psyched for her to live in. But Halen was in her early twenties, and Lacey knew she had to let her sister make her own way in life.
Ariel, who graduated from college that Spring, was engaged to marry Trace, the nice young man she'd met at Lacey's wedding. The two of them had kept contact all through Ariel's college years, occasionally visiting one another at school, and it was much to Lacey's surprise that they'd manage to keep their connection through all that time of doing the long distance thing. But her sister seemed very sure that this was the path she was ready to take, and so Lacey did all she could to make sure Ariel would be ready for marriage in the Fall.
"I don't know what I saw the girls doing, actually," Lacey mused as she sat on the couch in her old living room with Mom and Stuart. "But definitely not working for a pest control place and getting married fresh out of college."
Her mom shrugged. "Yeah, well the girls have good sense, even though Halen's is questionable sometimes. Who'd ever have thought she would be the wild card? But I had to learn some things the hard way, Stuart certainly has," at this, Stuart nodded, "and I'd bet you have, too."
Boy did she ever know it.
"'Ow's our lad doin'?" Stuart always asked every time Lacey came over without Jeff, which was most of the time.
"He seems okay," Lacey usually shrugged. "Just busy being married to his job."
""E works 'ard to provide fer yous, no?"
At this, Lacey usually forced a smile and nodded. Jeff did work hard to contribute to their income, and Lacey was thankful for it as she herself didn't pull a lot in at her job with Hope Heals. It was actually Jeff's job that made it possible Lacey could work where she wanted.
Her mom, however, was much less forgiving. "I don't like him," she stated bluntly one day.
"Mom, why?" Lacey sighed in frustration. Once her mom disliked somebody, there was almost no way of getting them into her good graces.
"I don't know, I just don't. He wasn't right for you. You're figuring that out about now, aren't you?" Her mom inquired, though not smugly. "I think you settled because you were lonely and he was there."
That kind of talk got Lacey's blood boiling, and it was typically when her mother made comments like this that Lacey left to go home. How dare her mom trivialize and make judgments about her marriage and about Jeff?
Sweet, promising spring soon turned into warm, breezy summer. Next came Ariel's wedding which was not nearly the fancy affair Lacey's was. Ariel opted for a church wedding close to Thanksgiving, she had no attendants and barely any guests. "I just like keeping things simple," she answered Lacey when she inquired one day if her sister was happy with such a minimal ceremony. "The important thing to us is to be married and have the people there we love. Other than that, who cares?"
But Trace was a genuinely great guy, and Lacey found herself giggling with happiness as her sister kissed her new groom. Oh the hopes and dreams of newlyweds.
Before she could blink, Christmas was upon them all. She'd gone through great pains to figure out what to get Jeff as a gift, and finally decided to splurge on the latest electronic phenomenon, an "iPhone". It was said to be lightyears beyond a regular phone, and when the man from the phone store showed her all the various capabilities of the gadget, Lacey knew this thing screamed Jeff's name. So she bought it, hiding it in the top of the closet behind her box of memories. She might even drive him to the phone store unexpectedly one day (likely before Christmas), then pull it out while they were in the parking lot, gift-wrapped of course. He would be wondering what they were there for as he tore into the present that had been passed over to him, mind blown when he actually held the thing they'd only heard about in commercials in his hand.
But just as she was plotting to give Jeff the best Christmas ever, hers felt shot all to hell when he commented to her one day, "Let's not do the Christmas movie this year, okay?"
The Christmas movie. It was a tradition Lacey had wanted to start for their own family, getting together with Davy and Kristy every year on the twenty-third and watching a holiday film. Jeff had humored her the past three years, and the four of them had put the names in a hat of the various Christmas movies they knew and liked, and they picked one. They'd thus far seen A Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life, and last year, Love Actually, which had made her cry too much for her to ever want to see it again.
This year, Lacey had the options all written out on little slips of paper, snipped out and ready to go when Jeff made his request. "Why not?" She inquired hotly. "This is the one thing I really want us to do at Christmas."
"You think we can watch the movie together with their eight-month-old? Come on." He moved to wrap his arms around her from behind. "And we can't exactly say 'Get a babysitter.' You know they're rarely without their kid. I think it'll be nothing but annoying, cute as he is."
Lacey just stared down at all her tiny strips of paper.
"And next year, who knows? We may be holding our own." He kissed her ear. "If you really want to watch Christmas movies, I'll watch each one with you from now til Christmas. How's that? I mean, doing it with friends was a cool thing to do for a few years, but stuff changes. You surely didn't think we were gonna do this forever."
It was sweet of Jeff to offer to watch movies with her. And Lacey knew he would, as many smart-aleck comments as he would make along the way. But suddenly the magic just went out of the whole thing, like a lamp being clicked off.
She was the only one who had really wanted this.
Back on the debut year of the movie tradition, Lacey had asked her mom for Yvette's gingersnap recipe, and had happily whipped up the cookie. She'd arranged them beautifully on a platter and brought them into the den when Jeff took one look, then turned his eyes back up to her. "Cool. So what else we got?"
Come to find out, Jeff didn't like ginger. So Lacey ate nearly the entire platter herself, except for the couple Davy and Kristy had.
So the last two years, Lacey had opted for chips, salsa, and pull-apart Christmas cookies. Everybody seemed just as happy.
That year, she closed herself in her bedroom while Jeff worked late, and again ate an entire platter of gingersnaps, turning on White Christmas.
If you're worried and you can't sleep,
Just count your blessings instead of sheep…
"I really shouldn't be doing this," she muttered to herself, using her napkins to wipe the tears from her cheeks. But she made no move to turn the laptop off.
It was what she had left.
That night, head on her pillow, she gazed at Jeff for a long time and smiled. He was charismatic, fun, and incredibly handsome. She knew they could get back what they had lost, if she just tried hard enough. So without thinking further, she moved closer to rest her forehead against his.
He began coughing uncontrollably before he shot up in bed.
"It's so damn hot in here. Did you dick with the air conditioner again?" He got up and went out into the hall to check.
"No, Babe," she replied absently. What had she been thinking anyway? Jeff's tendency to get too hot at night would never allow for such a sleeping position. Plus, judging from history, he would probably just think she wanted sex.
And so, patting his arm affectionately when he got back into bed, she rolled over.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and she had a lot to do. If she could focus on that, she'd be fine.
/
Yvette sat in a booth at The Daily Grind, taking a deep breath. She had just sold ten bags this month, and she could feel it in her wrists and fingers. Getting old was definitely not for wimps.
So this was where she went to unwind. It always had been, ever since the place opened when she and Phil were young parents. She still occasionally consigned paintings here, but she was taking a break right now from acrylic, oil, and watercolor. Sometimes she just needed it. During those times she usually found solace in other creative projects such as ceramics, pottery, and sewing, as now. Then after a while she would return to the paintbrush, refreshed and inspired anew.
But these days there was another artist's work that was featured predominantly on the walls of the coffee shop. These paintings drew her in, as they reminded her in some ways of her own style with their choppy, oil brush strokes. However, unlike her own paintings of mostly items and landscapes, this artist focused more on painting people. They were all faceless in a charming sort of way, their forms simple, but emotions and actions well conveyed.
Yvette neglected her Americano as she gazed around at all the colorful, whimsical works doubtlessly done by this one artist. It was then that she noticed a similarity in all of them that jumped out at her for a very good reason.
There was a picture of three little girls, one noticeably older, playing in a small backyard. One of them was wearing a maroon scarf. In another painting in the corner, a girl stood underneath a bright green umbrella in the pouring rain, the color contrasting excellently with the dark grays and blues of the rainy day. The girl in this painting, also, wore a maroon scarf.
Another painting featured a host of cats in a picket fence enclosure, their tails whimsically curling and curving in all different directions, making Yvette smile. Then she saw a maroon scarf hanging from the branch of a tree in the background. In each and every one of these paintings, a maroon scarf was featured somewhere as Yvette always featured a peacock in her own. The scarves were ever present–whether tucked in the hollow of a tree, worn by a subject, lying curled up on the ground, and once even tied around a kite in the sky.
Yvette sighed deeply and closed her eyes. She recalled a certain painting gifted to Adam years ago on a San Francisco trip–a maroon scarf lying in the snow.
There was someone she knew to whom maroon scarves meant something special. There was no way Lacey Breckenridge wasn't the one responsible for the vivid, cheerful paintings hanging on the walls here.
I want you to see this, Yvette wished more than anything she could text Adam along with a picture of the paintings. But what would be the point? It would only twist the knife she knew was still there deeper into his heart, and she fervently wished him the best with his girlfriend, Sarah, whom she'd only met a couple times.
So she would have to savor this realization alone. But it meant something she couldn't express that, even though Lacey was married now and, by all appearances, moved on, she had apparently taken all the love with her that Yvette's son had been able to give, and channeled little bits of it at a time into the maroon scarves Yvette could almost see fluttering on the breeze.