taking a beat, “is because we all live with regrets. And Senator McDougal is addressing those regrets she can change now. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had that luxury?”
“So there are others?” Bowen asked. Then clarified: “Other regrets, not men. That’s Senator McDougal’s business.”
Cleo worried for a beat that Gaby would betray her, share the revelation on national television that not only did she have further regrets but that she had a lengthy list of 233 of them that she kept in her top desk drawer where most people stored pens and paper clips.
“Bowen Babson, you know as well as I do, as well as any of your viewers do, that you don’t get through thirty-seven years of your life without making some mistakes. He who has, let him cast the first stone.”
“Or she,” Bowen pointed out before they cut to commercial. “She can cast that stone too.”
In the waiting room, Cleo stared at the ceiling, and then she stared at the floor. Gaby wasn’t coming. Emily wasn’t coming. Bowen, obviously, wasn’t coming. Matty wasn’t coming. MaryAnne wasn’t coming.
She understood that she hadn’t asked. Maybe, she thought, it was as simple as that: asking.
She picked up her phone and dialed Georgie.
TWENTY
Georgie flew in within hours. Literal hours. Cleo couldn’t believe how quickly she showed up.
“Oh.” She waved a hand and at least a dozen gold bangles clinked together. “A client was flying back and offered me a ride. We worked through some of her issues and we did some meditation, so it was a fair trade.”
She pulled Cleo back into a second embrace, and Cleo inhaled deeply—much like Veronica Kaye, Georgie smelled magical. They hadn’t seen each other in at least a year, likely longer. Cleo had done a fundraising stop in Los Angeles about sixteen months back—big donors at a mansion in Pacific Palisades—and she’d spent the night at Georgie’s and said hello to the twins and Peter, Georgie’s husband, who worked in real estate development. She wished she could say, there tangled up against her sister, that it was as if no time had passed, but it wasn’t like that. Time had passed. Their lifetimes—thirty-seven years for Cleo, forty-seven for Georgie—had passed, and she didn’t know her sister much better than she knew Mariann, the saintly nurse who had provided Oreos and a clipboard to fill out Lucas’s insurance forms.
“Hi, Aunt Georgie,” Lucas said when he woke, and honestly, Cleo was a little relieved that he remembered her. He barely knew his cousins, and he’d met Georgie on occasion but no more than half a dozen times. He offered her a shy smile, and Georgie rushed to him and clutched his cheeks and said, “My God, you are so goddamn handsome. How many girlfriends do you have?”
And Cleo said, from behind them, “Two, actually. It’s a bit of a chauvinistic problem.”
And Lucas groaned and said, “Mom, it’s under control. Please stop. I was raised by a woman half the country considers their feminist true north right now, so Jesus, I’m not going to become an asshole.”
Georgie laughed so hard that her bangles all clanged together again, and so Cleo managed a smile too, and already, just by adding one person to their small tribe, Cleo felt a little more optimistic.
“Besides,” Lucas said, “Marley is committed to, like, her camp boyfriend too.” He winced a little, and Cleo wasn’t sure if it were at his incision or at the camp boyfriend. “It’s all fine, Mom; no one has to be together together. Your generation is the one hung up on labels. We’re just cool with, like, whatever.”
Cleo didn’t know what to say to that, since she thought half her life’s work was dedicated to redefining labels, so rather than reply, she gazed at her son with wide, teary eyes and thought that she’d never been prouder of him in her life than now.
Lucas stared back at her, a little horrified that she was weeping openly, and said succinctly: “I’ve never seen you cry, Mom, like, ever.”
“I’m sorry,” Cleo said, though she still couldn’t stop.
“It’s OK,” he said back. “Crying is fine. It doesn’t bother me at all. Coach Beckett is always saying leave everything on the field, even your tears.”
Cleo thought that she should spend more time around men like Coach Beckett and less around men like Senator William Parsons.
Georgie took her house keys and promised to stock the kitchen.
“You’re too thin,” she said and then paused. “My God, when did I become Mom? I promised myself