LITMIR.BIZ

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was every bit as important as Ed’s. She was the Yorkshire pudding to his roast beef, to use a British analogy, which she always tried to do in order to ingratiate herself with her fearsome mother-in-law, who, even after sixteen years, remained appalled that her precious only son had married an American.

      Ed was still sitting on the bed, staring at the floor, and Lauren reached into the drawer by the bed and pulled out the box she’d wrapped carefully.

      “Happy birthday.” She handed him the gift and felt a thrill of anticipation. “I wanted to give it to you now because later on it’s going to be crazy here with a houseful of people all wanting a piece of you.”

      Ed opened the package and stared at the contents. “You bought me a rain forest?”

      “Not a whole rain forest. A patch of rain forest. I know how committed you are to environmental issues. You cycle everywhere, you’re always talking about saving the planet. I thought—”

      “It’s a scam, Lauren.” He sounded tired. “I can’t believe you spent money on that. You do realize you’ve probably financed the cocaine industry?”

      “It’s not a scam. I’m not stupid.” And he knew it. He knew she’d graduated top of her year at school and had a place at an Ivy League college before her world had crashed down. Ed had been the one to encourage her to pick up the threads of her dream once Mack had started senior school. She’d been studying for an interior design qualification and was finally poised to embark on her own career. When she’d passed her exams, they’d celebrated with champagne. “I researched it carefully. We can visit whenever we like.”

      “Right. Because flying to Brazil is great for the planet.” He tossed the box on the bed and she felt her throat thicken.

      “I was trying to give you something original and thoughtful.”

      “It was thoughtful.” He rubbed his fingers across his chest. “It’s not you, it’s me. Ignore me. I need to start the day again.”

      He heaved himself off the bed, walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

      Moments later she heard the hiss of water.

      She stood there, flummoxed.

      This wasn’t about a patch of rain forest. Was he on the verge of a midlife crisis? Was he about to start wearing skinny jeans and have an affair with someone barely older than Mackenzie?

      Making an effort not to overthink and overreact, she went in search of her daughter.

      She found her in the kitchen, hunched over her phone at the kitchen island. A pair of oversize pink headphones covered her ears.

      Mack hated pink. The headphones had been an attempt to fit in with a group at school who teased her for not being girly enough. Mack called them “the princesses,” and they’d made her life a misery.

      If Mack heard her mother come into the room, she gave no sign of it.

      There was no tray laid for breakfast. No sign of any birthday treat.

      Nothing except a single overflowing bowl of breakfast cereal that Mack dug in to.

      Lauren tried to work out what she could say without causing an explosion. “Hi, honey. You haven’t forgotten Dad’s birthday?”

      Mack looked up from her phone and removed her headphones in an exaggerated gesture.

      “What?”

      “Dad’s birthday. Today.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Aren’t you going to wish him happy birthday?”

      “Does he want to be reminded? Forty is pretty old. Not quite a senior citizen but that landmark is definitely on the horizon.” Mack took another spoonful of cereal. “I figured he might rather ignore it. And it’s six fifteen. I’m not a morning person. I guess I could have made him tea, but he hates my tea. He always moans that it’s too weak.” She put the headphones back on her ears and went back to Snapchat. Dressed in an oversize T-shirt, she looked younger than sixteen. Her hair was the same sunny blond as Lauren’s, but Mack allowed hers to flop forward in an attempt to hide the stubborn spots that clustered on her forehead. Her braces had come off a few months earlier but she still smiled with her lips pressed together because she’d forgotten she no longer needed to be self-conscious.

      It was only when Mack picked up her empty bowl to put it in the dishwasher that Lauren noticed the two pink streaks in her hair.

      “What have you done to your hair?”

      “I woke up with it this way. Weird, huh? Fairies or gremlins.”

      “Mack—”

      Her daughter sighed. “I dyed it. And before you flip out, everyone is doing it. All the other mothers were fine about it. Abigail’s mom helped her do hers.”

      This was her cue to be like “all the other mothers.” It was a pass or fail test, and Lauren knew she was going to fail. “Why didn’t you discuss it with me?”

      “Because you’re such a control freak you would have said no.”

      “You have beautiful hair. Is this about trying to fit in?”

      “I don’t care about fitting in.”

      They both knew it was a lie.

      Lauren picked her words carefully. “Honey, I know it’s hard when you’re teased, but it happens to a lot of people and—”

      “That does not help, by the way. It makes no difference to me how many other people have been through it.” Nonchalance barely masked the pain and Lauren felt the pain as if it were her own.

      “Your individuality is the thing that makes you special. And you need to remember that most people are thinking about themselves, not anyone else.” She decided that this wasn’t the time to raise the school issue again. “I know you’re upset. Has something else happened?”

      “You mean apart from the fact that my mother is always on my case?”

      “I’m trying to be supportive. We’ve always been able to talk about anything and everything.”

      Mack scooped up her phone. “Yeah, right. Anything and everything. No secrets in this house.”

      Her tone made Lauren feel uneasy.

      “Mack—”

      “I need to get ready for school. My mother had a place at an Ivy League college, so nothing short of Oxford or Cambridge is going to be good enough for me. Education is everything, right?”

      It was too early in the morning to deal with teenage attitude. Lauren opened her mouth to remind her to wish her father a happy birthday, but Mack was gone.

      Another slammed door. Her world seemed full of them.

       No secrets in this house.

      Feeling a burn of stress behind her rib cage, she took herself downstairs to the basement gym they’d installed and tried to run off her anxiety on the treadmill. She flicked on CNN, giving herself a taste of home.

      Storms in Alabama. An alligator thirty feet long in Florida. A shooting in Brooklyn.

      A wave of homesickness almost knocked her flat. She yearned for morning runs on South Beach, the smell of the sea, the taste of seafood caught fresh that morning, the sight of the sun setting near her sister’s house in Menemsha.

      Twenty minutes later Ed appeared. He was dressed in cycling gear and had his phone in his hand.

      Lauren breathed a sigh of relief. This was routine. Ed cycled to the office and changed once he got there, and it seemed that today was no different except that he was running later than usual.

      “Have a great day, birthday boy.” When he didn’t answer, she muted CNN and slowed the treadmill until it stopped.

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