I loved having her here. Six months after breaking it, her hip was almost good as new, and while she had returned to Connecticut to work, she regularly drove back to Devon. She liked the people, she said. Given how busy she was during visits, I believed her. But she also spent time with us. Since the new Margaret liked who she was now, she was more relaxed than I’d known her to be. Maybe it was growth. Maybe it was resolve. Whatever, she was easy to entertain. That said, she declared that she, not Liam, would use the guest room in the carriage house when it was done, if for no other reason than to make sure I was using the pottery studio below.
Ah. But that issue was still TBD. Clay had been my life once—too much, I wondered in hindsight. I had been a powerhouse wife, mother, and sculptress. But life in Devon was more laid-back. I had slowed down in ways that were good, and I feared that with a studio literally in my back yard, I would regress. And then where would makeup fit in? I loved the people part of that. I loved the Spa, whose scent alone still brought me peace. I loved knowing Edward was right upstairs.
I also loved Kevin and the pottery studio. Visits there several times a week worked for me. So the first floor of the reincarnated carriage might well end up being a game room.
For a brief minute, I pressed the phone to my chest and looked out over the lawn to the river. The sun had fallen behind the trees now, barely breaching their denseness, but, if anything, darkness was a better foil for the picture that was already clear in my mind. Lifting the phone, I thumbed forward and tapped into the cause of my glow, studying it full-screen for what had to be the hundredth time.
At eight weeks, a fetus was pretty amorphous. There was an oversized head and a bean body, together no more than raspberry size. Fingers and toes were visible, still vaguely webbed, but the tail I was told had been there at first was gone. We couldn’t see the sex yet, which was probably good. We weren’t sure we wanted to know. It was one of the things we hadn’t decided. This had happened faster than we’d expected. My mother, who didn’t yet know, would say it was meant to be. In this, I had to agree with her.
Hard to believe how determined I had been not to do this again. I was frightened. I was grieving. I hadn’t wanted to put myself through the risk of loving and losing again—had feared I wouldn’t survive.
But I had survived once. This was the message of that night when we cried over my grandmother’s green velvet box. It was also the message of the tumult six months before. I had faced court hearings, the press, and a resurgence of self-doubt, and still I survived. This time around, I’d had better tools. Going forward from here, even more so.
And then there was the joy. I had forgotten what it was like to see the first image of my baby. Memory of that joy had been lost in sorrow. Studying this sonogram now, putting a finger to the beginnings of a nose and chin, to the indentation where an eye was forming and wondering what color it might be, to the tiny hand whose fingers would fully separate and one day not so far into the future close around mine, I felt the joy again.
That still stunned me.
But the past was like that. We might think we had it pegged, and that it was over and done. We might deny the pain, the fear, the sorrow. Deep down, though, it was there. Like DNA, the past was part of who we were. Only when we accepted that, were we whole.
There were still times when I felt guilty being happy, but those times were coming fewer and farther between. This picture on my phone, in my hand, was proof of the future, and it held promise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe thanks to the many, many people who helped me in the writing of Before and Again. Problem is, I don’t know who most of them are! Our lives have crossed, however fleetingly, at one point or another, and something they said or did registered enough to appear in even convoluted form in this book.
I do know who my husband is. Before and again, Steve helped me with the legal aspects of what you read here. From the bottom of my ever-loving heart, I thank him.
I also thank Andy Espo and Derek Braunschweiger, for their very basic, very current, and down-to-earth explanation of how a person with evil intent can hack into my computer. This helped me not only in crafting Before and Again, but in protecting my own devices. I will never, ever, ever open an unexpected, unverified attachment again.
None of those, thank goodness, come from my editor, Leslie Gelbman. Everything she sends is legit and welcome. My very special thanks to her for her willing ear, her wise counsel, and her friendship. We think alike, she and I. Not only has she taken my writing to a new level with this book, but she has made it fun.
Before and again, I thank my agent, Amy Berkower, without whose care and expertise I would not be working with Leslie and, hence, would not be in this happy place.
And to all those at St. Martin’s Press, from Sally Richardson on, my thanks for their faith in my work and their undying enthusiasm.
Finally, I thank my readers—before, again, always.