Page 152 of Give & Take

“I mean you showed yourself you could do a hard thing.”

“It wasn’t even hard,” Nova says.

Lana nearly chokes on her water.

“But do you mean doing hard things makes you feel good?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”

“Even if that hard thing is to quit,” Lana says. I know she’s talking about her own book, which she told me yesterday she officially shelved—and felt nothing but relief for doing it.

“Or even if that hard thing is to do something completely different than you’re used to,” Lori says.

“Like what you did?” Aurora asks. “You had babies far away.”

Lori smiles like Aurora’s the cutest thing in the world. “Yes sweetheart. Close enough. Or… like your mom, who switched her job a few years ago to start this life in Redbeard Cove with you two.”

The girls catch on that this is a game now.

“Or like how I hired a nanny I knew would be the perfect fit for you two,” Lana says, “even though I had kissing feelings for him.”

“Excuse me,” I say, lowering my arm from where I’ve been holding onto Aurora. “You’re ready to admit you had kissing feelings for me from the beginning?”

“Not the very beginning,” Lana says, but her cheeksflush.

“We’ll have to dig into that later,” I say, giving Lana a pointed look and brushing my foot against hers under the table.

“There’s still more presents,” Aurora says, impatient.

“Right.” Lana pulls her Mom’s present toward her. A moment later, she’s holding a folded patchwork quilt—made from what looks like fifty different swatches of fabric and every color of the rainbow.

“Mom!” Lana says.

“I may not know my quilts,” I say, “But that is the nicest one I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah!” The girls say, pointing out patterns and characters in the fabric they recognize.

“I didn’t know you quilted?” Lana says to her mother, clearly touched.

“I don’t. This was made by me and all the women in the community I worked with over the past year. When I told them I’d be missing your birthday, everyone either contributed a scrap of fabric or helped with the stitching. Even the moms who—” She glances at the girls. “Well, the ones who really wanted to be moms—they’re there too. They’re the reason the program let me leave a week early, so I wouldn’t actually have to miss it in the end.”

Lori holds it up to reveal the pattern of multicolored scraps makes a heart shape against the dark background.

“Wow!” The girls ooh and ah.

I take the blanket from Lori and wrap it around Lana’s shoulders, feeling strangely emotional and making a note to call my own Mom tonight. And Deanie. And maybe we’ll pay a visit to Shelby, too.

Lana hugs her mother for a long time, both of themcrying and saying things the rest of us don’t hear before we move on.

There’s a gift from Mike—a copy ofThe Joy Luck Club, which he concedes in a note may not be his cup of tea, but is about women, so ‘Lan, you should like it’.

“I guess it’s something,” Lori says.

“Hey, he got her a gift,” I say. “That is something.”

“He called me, too,” Lana says. “I’ve got a voicemail I haven’t returned that says he has some things he wants to talk about.”

Lori frowns, looking suspicious. “Like what?”

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