Page 6 of Saltwater Secrets
She knew what had happened before Aria was able to say it aloud.
“We’re breaking up!” Aria finally offered, her fingers drawing lines down her cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” Hilary said, wrapping her daughter in a firm hug. “It’s okay. It is.”
Aria sobbed and sobbed and refused to touch her snack plate. Estelle and Hilary often glanced at one another, their facesechoing their thoughts: breakups happened all the time, but they wished they could take away this awful pain.
After twenty minutes, Aria blew her nose and sniffed. It was like she’d cried out all the tears she had available. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I feel pathetic.”
“You shouldn’t!” Estelle said. “Love is the most beautiful thing we attempt in this life. But it can also bring the most pain.”
“I still love him,” Aria said. “But we can’t go on like this.”
Aria explained that Thaddeus had applied for an internship in London and gotten it; that they’d been fighting for months, and she saw this as a reason to take a real break. “If we talk every day on the phone, it will make everything so much harder,” Aria said.
“A clean break is smart,” Hilary agreed, stroking her daughter’s hair.
“But it’s harder at first.” Estelle nodded.
Aria clamped her eyes shut. “I wanted to marry him. I wanted to be like my mother and my grandmother, who married the first men they ever loved.”
Hilary didn’t have to remind her daughter of the dramatic story of her and Marc’s romance. She wasn’t sure it would help, not now that so much was a confused haze for Aria.
“You’re so young, honey,” Estelle said. “I know it doesn’t feel like that right now.”
Aria sniffed.
For a little while, they talked about logistics. How Thaddeus was going to leave for London in a week, and about Aria needing a place to stay until then.
“But I don’t want to stay in that house all summer by myself,” Aria whispered. “It’ll be like living with ghosts.”
Hilary nodded. “You can stay with your father and me as long as you need.”
Not long after Aria stopped crying, she grew quiet and reticent, sipping her glass of wine and watching the water. Hilary’s heart filled with dread. But there wasn’t much time to sit in silence. Soon, Sam and Darcy arrived, Darcy with her brand-new baby, whom everyone doted over. Aria held the baby for a long time, looking confused, as though she’d really thought she’d have her own baby soon and couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t, now.
Darcy and Sam both had many wonderful things to say about the breakup.
“Thaddeus was a wonderful first love,” Sam said, tucking her legs under her knees. “You taught one another so many things about life, about love, about companionship. You learned what you want and what you don’t want.”
Aria blubbered, “I’m pretty sure he’s the only person I’ll ever love like that. It was a complete love. I feel like every other kind of love will feel guarded or insincere.”
Sam shook her head, flashing her blond hair back and forth. “It won’t feel like that. You’ll know when you’re ready to love again. You’ll be able to open yourself up to it.”
“In the meantime, I really think you should have some fun!” Estelle announced, surprising everyone. Even Aria let out a funny laugh.
“I never dated much,” Estelle said. “I know you girls think it’s romantic that I loved Roland since I was a teenager. And I guess it is romantic, in many ways. But the downside is that I never got to learn about myself with other boyfriends. I never got to have any other love stories. The modern girls of today date around! They experience things! They try on different hats, so to speak, and figure out the best possible path for themselves.
“The world has changed since I was a girl,” Estelle went on. “I’m sixty-seven years old. Almost seventy! When I was a teenager, women weren’t legally allowed to have their own creditcards. It was very uncommon for women to have their own bank accounts, and most of the women I grew up with didn’t go to college and got married and had children very young. My mother never dreamed of having her own career.”
Hilary had never heard her mother talk like this before. Her ears perked up.
“Of course, all the women I know are incredible multi-taskers. Especially my Coleman girls,” Estelle went on, smiling at Sam, at Hilary, at Darcy, whose baby slept innocently in her arms. “But Aria, maybe you should think of this time as a gift. You don’t owe anyone anything, right now. Your time is your own, to do with what you wish. Thaddeus is going into the world to discover himself. You owe it to yourself to do the same.”
Aria’s lips parted, as though she searched for the right thing to say and came up dry.
At that moment, the doorbell rang. It was the takeout they’d ordered: fresh sushi from their favorite place. Hilary popped up to answer it, offering the driver a massive tip. He was saving them.
On the porch table, Hilary set out the sushi, keeping one eye on her daughter. Aria filled her plate and dotted a maki roll with wasabi, listening hard as Darcy described her own dating adventures. Darcy was just a little bit older than Aria, but even she honored her past of exploring.
