Page 31

Before

Work-widowed was starting to feel like my permanent state of being. Over a stretch of weeks that turned into months, Will had bounced from one big trial or case to another, breaking only once, to attend a legal conference in Malibu.

“You can come?” he sort-of-kind-of offered.

“That might be nice. We could finally spend some time together.” I smiled, swallowing the complaint that I wanted him to insist that I had to come.

“I’ll be tied up most of the day, but the spas at the hotel are supposed to be amazing.”

I’m supposed to spend three days in the spa? I can do that here, where I get to bring Este along.

“It’s okay.” I shrugged.

It wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to tell him that. He was so tense that the smallest things had started turning into fights. I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning one day, and you would have thought he came home to find me burning the house down.

“If you couldn’t do it, you should have just said so. I would have asked Alma,” he had snipped.

“I’m sorry. I meant to. But Este and I got tied up at the club and—”

“Tied up at the club? Was there some kind of emergency meeting you two had to attend? Did the pool bar run out of paper umbrellas?”

“Hey!” I fired back, testy from weeks of neglect. “Don’t be shitty to me just because you’re stressed.”

I must have surprised him, because his eyes widened for a second. It’s not like me to push back. Not with him anyway. But I had been accepting the bare-minimum effort from him with our relationship for long enough. Why should I accept meanness on top of it?

It was just a damn suit.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed. It was a false victory, though. I knew he simply didn’t have the time to fight with me, so the apology lacked sincerity. “It’s just that I needed that suit.”

“You have a zillion suits.”

“I like that one,” he huffed as he headed back to his home office.

I started to avoid being home during the times he was working at the house.

It was too lonely to be under the same roof but on separate ends of the house, me in the living room or our bedroom while he holed up in his office for hours at a time.

I would take myself for aimless walks around Winter Park.

I walked to the library and around Hannibal Square and spent hours wandering the acres of Kraft Azalea Garden. I was a sad, aimless work widow.

One Thursday, I was driving up Morse Boulevard when my phone rang.

I saw the incoming call from my mother and thought about letting her go to voicemail—she called sporadically and only ever on her terms. But when she was in the mood to chat she was persistent as hell.

I knew that if I sent her to voicemail she’d just call right back, and keep calling.

Plus, it had been a few weeks since we’d spoken.

“Hi, Mom.” I sighed into the phone.

“Nora, you’ll never believe the day I’m having.” As always, she spoke in a breathy lilt that made men fall over themselves to help her.

I refused to take the bait. Complaining was her primary form of communication. Last month, she called from the middle of a five-star resort in Italy, beleaguered by the low supply of ice in Europe. “How’s Sardinia?” I asked.

“Hot. You can’t believe how hot. I thought we were coming here to escape the Florida heat. I told Paolo we should have gone to Switzerland, but he has friends he’s visiting here. All ill-tempered smokers, of course.”

Considering Paolo was an ill-tempered smoker himself, I couldn’t muster even an ounce of shock.

Paolo, a tall, silver-haired Italian man, wore shirts that were unbuttoned too far down, and though my mother’s given name was Ramona, he called her Bella after drinking too much wine. She was Bella most days.

While she had been thrilled by my union with Will, she had ultimately been too busy with her own travels to stop back home for more than a year.

When she called to “check on me,” that usually just meant downloading her latest calamity to me.

Tragedies could include but were not limited to an errant Net-a-Porter delivery in Paris; driving a too-small rental car on the Amalfi Coast; or not getting a pedicure in time to board a yacht where shoes were strictly prohibited.

“Anyway,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with the plumber all day.”

“In the States? Or was there an issue with your hotel room?”

“Well, both.”

When I officially moved out of her place and into Will’s, Ramona decided to have her Winter Park condo completely renovated.

And as it turned out, there was a Four Seasons in Greece with the most divine faucet handles she had ever seen—as if divinity and plumbing fixtures were one and the same—and now, she was on a mission to source the heavenly bathroom hardware.

For the majority of the day, she had endured the harrowing task of tracking down the manufacturer by way of a serial number.

The vendor—out of Milan—had a patchy work schedule and a limited supply.

I pulled into a parking spot on Park Avenue, still aimless, but tired of driving.

Ramona’s ramblings on faucets and fixtures had taken almost an hour.

Linear stories were not among her strengths.

I had zoned out a couple of times as she described the metal filigree and how confusing international area codes could be.

As the call wound down, I considered confiding in her. Telling her I was lonely and sad and that my husband had become a ghost of himself. This was what people with functional connections to their parents might have done. Or at least I suspected as much. I couldn’t know for sure.

But asking Ramona for advice was a dead end at best. At worst, I would have to relive the story of some failed boyfriend or engagement as she projected her own relationship issues back tome.

“Can I send you anything from the Mediterranean?” she asked.

As if the Mediterranean is some local grocery store, a quick stop on the way home.

“I don’t think so,” I started, but I could hear her talking to Paolo now. Something about a nightcap. I looked at the clock on my phone and added six hours. It was almost eleven-thirty at night in Sardinia. “I’m good, Mom. Love you.”

She was distracted in a second conversation with Paolo now, but her attention drifted back to me long enough for her to say, “You, too, dear.” And then she hung up.

I tossed the phone into the passenger seat and stared at it, thinking about my mom and then Will.

I wished I could channel Este in these moments of my life.

She’d have the perfect blow-it-off-who-cares attitude about the fact that two of the most important people in my life were pathologically unavailable.

If she were here, though, she’d tell me to stop looking for people to be something they’re not.

Even though it was nearing dusk, I couldn’t bring myself to return to that cavernous, empty house just yet.

So, I opted for a walk down Park Avenue and quickly spotted the sign for Lemon & Fig, Marcus’s restaurant.

I had bumped into Marcus at Este and Beau’s a handful of times since the day we first met.

I shouldn’t have liked running into him as much as I did.

He was always so laid-back and easy to be around.

And he was nice to me—something I never got from Will’s circle of friends.

Something even Will didn’t have the energy for lately.

What’s the harm of going in? We’re friends. At least, I think we are.

I pushed open the trendy glass-paneled door leading into a dining room that was just like Marcus—cool and accessible.

The warm-wood shiplap and a bright green living wall framed the wide-open restaurant.

The atmosphere was a carefully curated encounter with all things earthy and fresh.

Wood floors painted white kept the space from being too dark or heavy.

There were large black-and-white pictures of beach scenes on the walls—waves at sunset, surfboards gathered in a row on a low fence, and sandpipers chasing low-tide finds.

By all appearances, business was good. The dining room was crowded and lively. I spotted a bar in the back with an empty seat and decided to post up there after confirming with the hostess that seating myself at the bar was allowed.

I couldn’t say why, but I felt awkward being there. We had only ever hung out at Este and Beau’s. Maybe Marcus was just being nice when he suggested I stop by.

Relax. You don’t even know if he’s here.

“Hey, Nora,” a familiar voice called from the back of the house.

Marcus was coming out of the kitchen in a white chef’s coat, holding two artfully plated dishes. “You came,” he said, and that boyish smile was on full display. “Let me run this food, and I’ll be right back.”

So, he’s here. Okay. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s a restaurant.

He reappeared a few minutes later, this time from behind the bar. “Welcome to Lemon and Fig.”

“This is a great space,” I said. “How long have you been here?”

“Four years, maybe? We started doing pop-ups and some elevated food truck gimmicks to build word of mouth. But then Paul McCartney’s stepson posted something about us on his social media when he was at Rollins. We were off to the races after that.”

“Wow,” I said. “After the Beatles broke up at that hotel down at Disney World, I thought they were done with Florida for good.”

“But for the grace of Sergeant Pepper go I.”

I held back a laugh—fearful it could be perceived as flirting.

We’re just friends.

“So, what brings you in?” he asked. “Are you eating or just looking for a cocktail?”

“What do you recommend?”

“Everything.” He opened his arms, proudly showing off the space.

“I’m not sure I’m hungry enough for everything. What are you known for?”