Pearl Cove

25 | Pressley

"Laurel, you're twenty-one."

"Aunt Poppy didn't start school until she was twenty," Laurel countered. "Grandma didn't go back to get her Master's until she was thirty-two. Why are you putting me in some ridiculous time crunch?"

Now, my mother was frustrated. What Laurel was saying, what she was asking for, wasn't happy, so.

"Because, Laurel, You need to be practical. You're going to be a mother." I heard my mother shift, her personal attempt to end the conversation. "You can't raise a child on a part time job in Woodpine, and without a college degree-"

"Cole is almost through with his college degree," Laurel snapped. "And he'd go for his Master's, too, if we could just go to the city. His parents said they would help get us on our feet there. We just might need a little more than that."

This, I knew, was a stab in the gut to my mother. As much as she and Cole's mom, a wonderful woman who worked three jobs in New York for as long as I could remember, got along, my mother liked her plans. I was certain it hurt her to know that Cole's parents were on board with he and Laurel jumping ship and moving to the city. Luckily for her, it wasn't that easy.

"You know the deal," my mother said, her voice hushed now. "If you take classes, your father and I would be more than willing to help. But I'm sorry, honey, my hands are tied-"

"I don't want to be here for the rest of my life," Laurel said, her last resort. "Isn't that how you raised us? To want more than this village has to-"

My mothers interruption came out so harshly it even took my breath away. "I raised you to be smart."

Since I was afraid that the continuation of their conversation would result in the two of them shunning each other for the rest of eternity, I felt the urge to step in. Or, step out, I guess.

When Laurel spotted me, I saw tears welling in her eyes. Then, something that I might not have seen had this conversation happened months earlier, a bit of relaxation in her shoulders. I may not have been Laurel's favorite still, but I wasn't my mother. To her, to both of us, that was something.

"Laurel," I said, my voice cracking as it came out, a result of holding my breath for too long. "Aunt Poppy wants us in the kitchen. Something about pickles and cheese?"

I certainly wasn't expecting a laugh from Laurel, or for her to jump out of her skin and join me and we walked, arms linked, toward the kitchen. And it wasn't what I got. Instead, it was a smile, a few wiped tears, and a nod. Maybe we were on our way to skipping around the city, baseball hats and sunglasses hiding our mediocrity, behaving the way all sisters should. Or maybe the closest we'd get was a nod in a moment where a hug or shared tears would suffice just as well. Either way, we were growing. Somehow.

We took my dad's Suburban to the ball, a choice made to fit the whole family in just one car. One we were all ready to go, we climbed over tipped seats and each other's legs to fit in the truck, every conversation from chickpeas to life plans hushed while the night moved along slowly. My parents took the front seats while Grandpa sandwiched himself between Cole and Laurel in the middle row. Poppy and I were left to be squished together in the back, a pairing crafted by the gods themselves. Grandma would've agreed.

We were crossing over Anchor Bridge, the night falling over the town like a blanket, when I saw Elm Street stretching behind us in the rearview mirror. The Christmas lights had all been taken down as the calender moved onto the duller winter months, but the street still looked the same. More normal, even, and closer to its summer state.

"Did I spend too much time with her?" I asked suddenly, my voice coming out in a whisper as the rest of the car spoke at a normal volume. Like always, Poppy was with me. Or, at least, she heard me.

"Who?"

"I could've spent every moment I spent with her with you or Grandpa or-" I thought of Laurel, decided she could hear me say her name if I did, and opted against it. "Or Grandma. I could've had so much more time with Grandma if I hadn't been so-"

"Oh honey," Poppy breathed. "You can't start thinking like that. It'll drive you crazy."

Aunt Poppy's hand landed sympathetically on my knee. To my surprise, I wasn't crying.

"I just feel like so many years of my life are gone with her," I told Poppy. "All of those moments are ruined now."

Poppy took a second, then turned to me with her sweet face as serious as I imagined it would be. "Did you love Luna? Truly?"

I nodded.

"Were you happy for all of those years?"

And again.

"Well, maybe in time those memories can be that way again. If you don't hold hatred in your heart, you can still have those nights on the lake and those moments together. They ever have to leave you. They never have to be bad."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said slowly. "The time we spend with the people we love isn't linear." There was a smile on Poppy's face, a nostalgia for the past accompanying it. "I still spend every Monday night with someone I haven't seen in fifty years. Our last moments together don't have to be our last."

What Poppy was saying, whether she knew it or not, was resonating so deeply within me that I felt time slowing down. She was right: just because something catastrophic put an end to me and Luna as I knew us, that didn't mean that the hours and days and weeks we spent together were destroyed, too. Just because we were over, it didn't mean we shouldn't have happened. If we ended up strangers, I could still call our memories friends.

"Let your Grandma be your soft Sunday mornings and think about the laughs you had with Luna when you're sad if you want to," Poppy said.

I nodded again, this time fighting back the tears. They weren't so intrusive, however, because they were happy ones. Reminiscent ones.

"Thank you, Poppy."

Poppy's smile was warm as she faced back toward the road we were crawling down.

"We only realize how sweet our moments are once they're gone," she said. "We have to learn not to take them for granted. They're only ours, after all."