Her name was Esme, which Cleo thought was exactly a name that MaryAnne would select—French. She was surprised, however, that Esme was nearly Lucas’s age. She didn’t peg MaryAnne as a young-mom type, but then, no one probably pegged Cleo as the young (single) mom type either. Truth told, Cleo hadn’t even been sure if she wanted children, but then her parents died, and when she saw the plus sign on the test the spring of her senior year at Northwestern, she thought it might be nice to go through life with someone. By the time Lucas was born, she knew she’d never have a moment of doubt.
Which wasn’t true. She had plenty of moments of doubt. Somewhere on that list of 233 screwups, at least a dozen of them were related to Lucas. Not Lucas. She loved him more than she ever anticipated. Just the whole thing: the struggle; the exhaustion; how like it or not, being a mother at twenty-three and in law school affected her choices; how differently she anticipated it would all go for her. Maybe MaryAnne felt similarly.
“Are you in eighth grade?” Lucas asked her, staring at the cement as they walked.
“Yep. You?”
“Yeah. But I guess I’m old enough to be in ninth.”
“No, that’s not true,” Cleo interjected, and Lucas shot her a look that could quite possibly wither her right there in the fading sunshine on the Broadmoor sidewalk. Cleo popped her eyes back at him. She didn’t know the rules of him talking to a girl because frankly, she’d never seen him interact with one. Was she not allowed to speak? Did she have to render herself invisible? She was only thirty-seven! She liked to think that she was at least hip enough to make small talk with her kid.
“Mom—” he said.
“I only meant that when we moved to DC, you started kindergarten as one of the oldest. I didn’t hold you back.”
“I didn’t say that you did.”
“Well, it sort of sounded like . . .”
At this, Gaby grabbed her elbow and pulled Cleo back a half pace to let Lucas and Esme find their footing on their own.
Cleo watched Esme stroll down the street, so lanky and at ease. Her gait was exactly like her mother’s—MaryAnne had always been good at track, one area where they didn’t compete with each other—and Cleo guessed that Esme had it in her to do a mile in less than seven minutes too. It was so strange, she thought, to show up and find a younger rendition of her old friend, as if time had stopped and she were looking at their old selves. Cleo found herself a little slayed at this, at the notion of their fourteen-year-old selves having the chance to do it again, to do it better. So maybe this was what regret felt like: sorry for the fact that they weren’t wiser to how they would blow it up.
“I haven’t seen him this talkative since. . .” Cleo watched Lucas banter. “I don’t know. Birth?”
“I glanced at his texts on the plane today,” Gaby replied. Of course she had, because Gaby was such a goddamn smooth operator. “I think he has a girlfriend back home too.”
“He what?” Cleo actually stopped midstride.
“I could be wrong, but . . . I’m usually not.”
“I’m sorry, you mean my fourteen-year-old who usually communicates by grunting and stuffing food into his mouth has . . . what?”
Gaby grinned. “See, look at that, we’ve only been in Seattle for two hours, and already I’m rocking your world.”
“I hate you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Gaby said, and they double-stepped to catch up with the other two who were leading the way.
Esme waved to the security guard at the front gate of the club, and they wound through the walking path to the main building, which was also more or less just how Cleo remembered. Ornate fabrics, overstuffed window seats, bookshelves stacked with leather-bound collections that absolutely no one was going to read in between their tennis matches or golf rounds. Everything about the club was rich, and though Cleo was theoretically part of an elite class now, still, it knocked her off guard. Being elite in intellect or even elite with power wasn’t the same thing as being elite with wealth, because if it had been, Cleo wouldn’t have had to work so hard and fight so hard to land where she did. As a kid, Cleo always shoved her hands