“It’s someone’s special day today!”
She’d nearly forgotten, and probably would have if Trish hadn’t called last night. Originally, she and Wade were going to take a trip to the Cayman Islands to celebrate, but he wouldn’t ever finalize their plans.
“I know you probably don’t want to, but it would be good for you… I’ve got a late brunch scheduled with Jeanie and Sophia in town. Won’t you come?”
Mom, you’re asking me to meet you and two other women your age for brunch on my birthday? It’s not exactly what I’d have planned. Libby shook her head. She’s trying, she thought. I should at least go for that reason. The guilt that rose up due to her lack of enthusiasm for going to brunch made her feel even worse. She should feel lucky to have anyone want to celebrate with her, but she didn’t feel lucky. She felt awful.
“Sure,” she said.
“Perfect! We’re meeting at Jeanie’s house. Do you remember where she lives?”
Libby pursed her lips and nodded even though her mother couldn’t see her. Finally, she verbalized her thoughts. “Yep.”
Of course she remembered where Jeanie lived! Jeanie, unbeknownst to her mother, had been her confidante. She’d always been able to tell Jeanie when her mother’s demands had become unbearable, and she had listened. Jeanie never had children of her own, but she was amazing with them, and Libby wondered if maybe she hadn’t been able to have any. Since that’s something one could never ask, and Jeanie hadn’t shared anything regarding the issue over the years, she was left to wonder.
“It’s at eleven. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay.”
“Libby?”
“Yeah?”
“Happy birthday, honey.”
She took in a deep breath. “Thanks. I’ll see you at eleven.”
All Libby had was the spare outfit she’d packed. She was supposed to pick up her boxes of things from New York at the local post office, but they’d said—twice—that the boxes had not arrived. She decided to have a look at her change of clothes, wondering how many wrinkles she would find.
She pulled her trousers from her bag and shook them out. They weren’t too bad, but they didn’t go with the pair of shoes she had. She draped them on the bed and paired them with the shirt she’d packed. The shoes would do, she decided after a debate with herself, since they matched her handbag.
Mentally reexamining her packing choices, she got up and got ready with what she had. The only silver lining to it all was that she didn’t have groceries yet, so she could justify a visit to The River Market where they had delicious coffee and an enormous array of freshly baked muffins.
The spring air, striving to be as hot as summer, but maintaining its chill every morning, had put a layer of dew on the grass that lined the front sidewalk of the cottage. With the late-morning temperatures only slightly cooler than room temperature, Libby decided to park the car and walk through town.
She worried about what she’d say to Celia’s friends. Her perfect life wasn’t perfect anymore, and she didn’t know how to do anything less than perfectly. For as long as she could remember, her mother had always expected perfection. Libby had thrown fits about the clothes her mother had made her wear as a child, the curls in her hair. In school, if her homework wasn’t in her neatest handwriting, she’d have to erase it, rubbing holes in her paper until it was her very best effort. Ultimately, it was her mother’s way or no way.
It occurred to her that her father should have stuck up for her, but after her parents divorced when she was ten, he had always let her mother make the decisions when it came to Libby, the Potters’ only child. He’d only been around to voice his opinions every other weekend anyway. By the time she was about fourteen, he’d moved to another state. So her mother went on with her rigid childrearing.
As an adult, Libby could rationalize this behavior, try to explain it. Her mother, resentful and bitter about having to live in a town she’d never have chosen for herself, had put all her hopes and dreams of success into Libby, and if Libby didn’t succeed, neither did her mother as a parent. All this made perfect sense to her as an adult, but it didn’t do anything to change the way it had affected her personality.
She worried that she wasn’t as good as her mother had made her out to be, and she worried that she had let her down. There she was, back home, having taken a job for which she was far overqualified, with no hope of a wedding or family in her future. Certainly her mother was disappointed. Could I have changed anything about the cuts at the office? she wondered again. Could I have been a better fiancée in some way? She went over and over it all in her head. She was an intelligent woman; she knew how to solve her own problems. But she couldn’t solve those.