Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(69)

“I still need new black boots,” she declares as they walk along Prince Street, “and I want one of those long wool coats like Desdemona’s. I know where she got it, and the place is right down here.”

Desdemona is one of Caroline’s best friends, the daughter of a famously bisexual eighties rock star and his Tony-winning actress wife. She’s a good kid, even if her parents tend to cold-shoulder Marin and Garvey whenever they run into each other.

“It’s because you guys are conservative Republicans,” Caroline once mentioned—as if that explained it.

On some level, Marin supposes, it does. Garvey represents everything the right wing stands for, and Desdemona’s parents couldn’t be more left.

Marin herself privately comes down somewhere in the middle, but it’s been years since she dared voice an opinion that could be construed as even vaguely liberal. It bothers her, sometimes, that people assume she shares Garvey’s politics. Pro–capital punishment, anti–gay marriage, pro-gun, anti-choice…

Particularly that one. Anti-choice.

It isn’t necessarily that she wishes she herself had done things differently years ago. She wouldn’t have anyway—even if a choice wasn’t absolutely out of the question, as far as Garvey was concerned. She had made up her mind to have the baby before she even told him.

Had she opted not to, though, would she eventually have made peace with her decision? Or would she be enduring a private hell all these years later?

Does it matter? She’s in hell anyway.

You weren’t forced to give birth, Marin. It’s what you wanted. What Garvey wanted.

Yes. They even agreed on what should happen after the child was born—until the moment when Marin held her baby in her arms.

That was when she changed her mind.

But it was too late.

“Come on, that’s the place.” Caroline is tugging her toward yet another boutique.

Marin’s head is pounding. “You don’t need a wool coat for a few more months, at least. Or boots, for that matter.”

“Please, Mommy. I really, really, reeeeally want to look.”

Caroline only calls her Mommy when she really, really, reeeeally wants something.

Torn between the maternal desire to make her daughter happy and the selfish need to go home and take a handful of Advil, Marin relents. “One more store. But this is it.”

“ThankyouMommyIloveyou!” Caroline is already pushing through the wide glass door.

Marin follows, and is immediately assaulted by a blast of throbbing music.

Great. This’ll do wonders for my headache.

She looks around for a place to park herself while Caroline browses. No benches. No chairs. The store is modernist white from ceiling to floor, with strategically positioned track lighting and a soundtrack befitting a nightclub.

Marin wanders around glancing at impossibly hip clothes while Caroline disappears into the dressing room with an armload of coats.

“Can I help you?”

She looks up to see a male sales clerk, wearing faded, beat-up, low-slung jeans and a disinterested expression. There’s something familiar about him, and her heart immediately skips a beat.

Can it be…?

Marin clears her throat. “No, I’m just…uh…looking.”

He nods and turns to straighten a display.

He’s the right age. He’s good-looking, with dark hair and eyes…

And I feel like I’ve met him.

She can’t place him, but she feels as though she knows him. In all the reading she’s done on this particular topic, in every firsthand account related by women who have been in her shoes, that inexplicable familiarity is the dead giveaway.

The heart knows, one mother said, even when the brain does not.

The quote has stuck with Marin. It resounds in her head whenever something like this happens. These encounters don’t occur on a daily basis, by any means—but frequently enough to keep her in a perpetual state of what-if.

“Mom, can I get both of these?” Caroline emerges from the dressing room with two hangers. “I can’t decide, and they both look great, and—hey, Jackson, what are you doing here?”

The young man Marin was just watching—the one her heart seems to remember—turns toward her daughter. “Hey, Caroline. How’s it going?”

“Great! I didn’t know you worked here!” Caroline’s bright tone makes it obvious—to Marin, anyway—that her daughter did, indeed, know that. That he might even be the reason she absolutely had to have the coat Desdemona bought in this particular boutique.

“Yeah. I’ve been working here all summer.”

“Cool. Are you still at Juilliard?”

“I graduated.”

“Oh, right. I think I knew that.”

Seeing her daughter’s flirty smile, Marin is seized by a new and terrible what-if…

“Mom, this is Jackson,” Caroline tells her. “Remember? My friend Emily’s brother? He used to teach me guitar?”

Guitar. Jackson. No wonder he looks familiar.

Thank God, thank God…

“Do you still play?” Jackson is asking Caroline, who shakes her head.

Thank God it isn’t him.

This time.

But someday, it might be.

What then?