In a Book Club Far Away(17)

In Sophie’s ear, the background noise amplified.

“You’re on speaker now,” Olivia said.

“Carmela,” Sophie called out. “It’s not a midlife crisis.”

“It better not be.” Carmela’s voice was stern. “When are you coming home?”

Sophie lay back down, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. “It all depends on how your Auntie Adelaide does.”

“How is Auntie Adelaide?”

“Fine, so far. Surgery’s tomorrow.”

“And then, you’ll be home right after?” Carmela asked. “Because I already miss you.”

“Will you leave her alone?” Olivia piped up, sounding farther away. “Mama, you can be gone this weekend. We can handle the house and Daddy without you.”

“Speak for yourself, Daddy will be a mess without her,” Carmela said. “He was a mess today. He was moping around and eating all the junk food. It’s bad, real bad.”

Her girls continued to bicker, and Sophie shut her eyes in exasperation. Seven or seventeen, her girls hadn’t changed. Their ideas were polar opposites, down to how they thought their mother—who was in her midforties and had earned her stripes, thank you very much—should handle her personal life. Then again, she had to be thankful that the girls even cared. Many of her friends had kids who simply took their money and ran off without even a thank-you text back.

“Hey, now. Liv. Carm.”

When they fell silent, she continued, “I told you I was keeping the return date open-ended. The clinic doesn’t need me for a couple of weeks, so I’m going to play it by ear. Liv’s right, Carm. Your daddy can take care of himself, and so can you.”

“No, I can’t. I need you,” Carm said in her stubborn way.

Sophie imagined her face scrunched up, cheeks blown out in indignation. She laughed. “I need you, too… to understand. It’s important I’m here.”

“Fine,” she whined. “But something doesn’t feel right.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” And yet, Sophie knew she was fibbing. Of the two girls, Carmela had a finger on the pulse of the family. She was like a sponge, an empath, and a lie detector. She knew that Sophie had basically run away from home.

As the girls jumped into describing what they’d done during school, Sophie examined the room she was in. It was like a Longaberger basket factory exploded in this twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot bedroom space. Square baskets lined a horizontal shelf mounted on a wall. Atop a pine armoire sat circular-shaped baskets tipped to their sides with faux greenery spilling from them. Two cylindrical baskets on the antique school desk in the corner were filled with pencils.

The baskets had been purchased at those multilevel-marketing home parties where the hostess plied everyone with drinks and food, and people threw down hundreds of dollars on baskets. Peer pressure and retail therapy in one afternoon—once upon a time, Sophie’s life had been filled with those sorts of parties. It was another way for military spouses to bond.

Sort of like book club.

At the thought of book club, heartburn climbed Sophie’s chest.

When her daughters began arguing on the other end of the line—one wanted LED lights hung around their room, and the other believed that it would interrupt their REM sleep—Sophie excused herself, burdened with her own warring thoughts and the voices of Adelaide and Regina downstairs.

“Girls, I’ve got to go. Call me, later?”

“Bye, Mommy,” they said, almost in unison.

After Sophie hung up, she took a breath. A second later, her phone rang again. It could only be one other person. She lifted the phone to her face, pressing her lips together at her psychic ability. She clicked the answer button. “Jasper.”

“When were you going to call to let me know you got there? I’ve been waiting.”

Her first thought: Damn it.

Her second reaction: raised hackles. Really, Jasper’s request wasn’t strange, nor was it demanding, but this concern was extra. “It took forever to get out of Reagan, and I wanted to speak with the girls first,” she said with more bite to her words than she’d planned.

“I’m sorry, I was just… worried.” His tone switched to pensive. “You didn’t exactly tell me your plans.”

“I did tell you.”

“No, you mentioned that Adelaide needed your help. But you didn’t tell me the details until the day before you left!”

I mean, technically I did tell you.

“It’s like you up and left me.” A hint of anger sparked in his voice, and a sigh followed. “All I wanted was for you to call, and you didn’t. So I’m sorry for sounding upset. I was in the dark, until Carmela buzzed me and said she was on the phone with you.”

“That second daughter of mine,” she quipped. Carmela, her intuitive young lady. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you first.”

A beat of silence passed, after which Jasper said, “I guess the girls have the whole weekend planned for me.”

She drew on her patience. “Oh yeah?”

“Something about board games and making a music video on their phone.”

“That’s sweet.” Sophie felt a tinge of jealousy. Not once had her girls asked her to be in a music video. Then again, as the person home every single day, she was old hat.