Seventeen years. We’ve been through a lot. A miscarriage before Maddie. My mother’s long illness and death. Irvin’s back surgery. A year when money was so tight we ate spaghetti four nights a week.
We were good. We’d always been good.
But I’ll be honest. Lately, I’d been wondering.
Not about Irvin. About me.
When you’ve been married seventeen years, you stop seeing yourself through the other person’s eyes. You just see yourself in the bathroom mirror at six in the morning. Gray hairs. Lines. Hot flashes. A body that’s had a baby and a miscarriage and forty-eight years of gravity.
And you wonder if he still sees the girl at the wedding with the wine on her dress. Or if he just sees the tired woman in the blue bathrobe.
I’d never asked him. I was afraid of the answer.
I baked her a pie.
That’s what you do on Willowbrook Lane. When somebody moves in, you bring something. Mrs. Pratt across the street brought me a lasagna when we moved in fourteen years ago. I’ve been bringing pies ever since.
Peach. It’s my best one. My grandmother’s recipe, with a lattice top and a little cinnamon in the filling.
I walked it over that afternoon. The moving truck was still in the driveway. Men in blue T-shirts were carrying furniture up the front steps. The woman was standing on the porch with a clipboard, pointing.
She saw me coming up the walk. She smiled again. The same smile she gave me through the bathroom window.
“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Is that a pie? Did you make that?”
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said. “I’m Janet. I live next door.”
“Vanessa,” she said. She took the pie. She held it up and looked at the lattice. “Wow. This is gorgeous. Nobody’s ever brought me a pie before. I didn’t think people actually did that.”
“They do on Willowbrook Lane.”
“I guess they do.” She looked at me for a moment. Up and down. Not in a mean way. Just looking. “Do you want to come in? It’s a disaster in here. But I’ve got a coffee maker unpacked. That’s the important thing.”
