Page 3 of Sunkissed Memories
“You were just warming up!” Peter hugged her. “You were figuring out her game.”
Kade, who was fifteen, and Olivia, who was thirteen, came up and high-fived their older sister, then hurried to their father’s car, eager to get home. It was already nearly nine. Hannah packed up her tennis racket, said goodbye to her teammates and coach, then walked with Peter and Ada back to the parking lot. She wore a look of ecstasy.
“I want to ride with Dad!” Hannah said.
“All right. But we’ll see you at home?” Peter said, checking Ada for signs of sadness.
“Of course!” Ada glanced at her phone to hide her emotions. To her surprise, there, on the screen, was a text message from someone she hadn’t heard from in years.
“What’s up?” Peter asked, hanging near Ada’s car as Hannah joined her other siblings by his. He’d noticed her change in emotions and looked worried.
“It’s Quinn,” Ada said.
“Wow. I haven’t heard that name in a while.”
“I know!” Ada laughed, showing him the text.
Quinn Hackney: Girl, it’s been ages. Come to the opening next Friday? There’s a party after! We need to catch up!
“Another life,” Peter said knowingly.
Ada’s heartbeat quickened. “You don’t think we could go, do you?”
Peter hesitated, his eyes falling into hers. It had been ages since they’d gone to the city together. Ages since they’d taken a trip just the two of them. It suddenly felt like a necessity, as if Ada needed a trip to Manhattan to make everything else feel worthwhile.
“Hannah doesn’t have a match, does she?” Peter asked.
Ada shook her head. “Not next weekend.”
“And we’d be gone, what? Two nights at the most?”
“Can you make it work?” Ada imagined Peter’s orthodontist schedule, all the braces and checkups he would have to undergo next week. But surely he could rearrange things.
“Let me talk to Fern,” Peter said, speaking of his sixty-two-year-old secretary, who wore bright pink cardigans every day and always sent the kids birthday presents. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”
Chapter Two
The following Friday, Ada took the day off from patients and set to work, teenage proofing the house. Across the counter, she left notes for Hannah, Kade, and Olivia, instructing them on how to prepare certain meals, how to clean up after themselves, and how to call emergency services if needed. Their essential point of contact was Peter’s mother and father, who lived across the island and had previously been the kids’ babysitters on the few occasions when Ada and Peter had managed to get away. But with Hannah being eighteen, and Kade and Olivia being so responsible, Ada and Peter decided it was time to let them have the house to themselves.
Just in case, Ada called their next-door neighbors and informed them that the kids would be home alone that weekend. “Check on them, if you feel like it,” she said, a smile in her voice. “And let me know if they cause any ruckus!”
“They won’t.” That was the consensus. “They never do.”
Peter returned from his morning ten-mile run, showered, ate breakfast, and announced he was ready. Ada had already packed their to-go bags. After nearly twenty years of marriage, she was accustomed to Peter’s habits and could anticipate what he needed and when. Sometimes she wondered what Peter wouldpack if he were left to his own devices. Would he remember his toothbrush even though he was an orthodontist?
They got in the car and sped to the ferry, joking and laughing as they went. There was a lightness to everything, an ease that excited Ada. She knew that in a few years, after Olivia left for college, Ada and Peter would be empty nesters. They’d have to learn how to uphold the love they’d always had, to keep nourishing it. She’d seen plenty of her patients get divorced after their children left the island, like they’d forgotten how to be alone together.
On the ferry, Peter wrapped his arms around Ada’s stomach and kissed her neck. “How are you feeling about tonight?”
Ada’s throat tightened. “I’m excited,” she said, which was mostly true. “I can’t believe I’ll see everyone again. It’s been ages.”
The truth was that Ada still couldn’t believe that Quinn had reached out like that. She’d assumed everyone from the old crowd had forgotten about her.
At four thirty that afternoon, they reached Manhattan and parked in the garage connected to their swanky hotel. The hotel itself was a half mile from the theater and less than a mile from where Ada had lived in her late teens and early twenties, a time of electricity, of drive, of otherness. Peter, incidentally, had lived just down the street. They walked there first, hand in hand, recounting old memories. It was hard to believe they’d met so long ago.
“I still remember the first time I saw you,” Peter said, lacing his fingers through hers. “I’d never been to an opera before, and I didn’t know what to make of it. But when you came out on stage and started to sing, I’d never seen or heard anything more magical.”
Ada blushed and kept her eyes down. She’d been nineteen at the time, and a fresh face on the opera scene. But there hadbeen talk among the opera crowd about her future, a sense of excitement for her advancing career. Most opera singers didn’t discover their true and most powerful voices until they were in their late thirties or forties (the age Ada was now). Still, Ada had been incredibly advanced at nineteen, leaving many to speculate that her voice at forty would be sensational and one of a kind.
