Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [120]
She packed one big suitcase to last a couple of weeks and arranged to have the rest of her stuff boxed up and sent to her mom and David’s house. There was nothing keeping her in New York until August, when her show resumed, and that was assuming she got picked up again.
She spent the night in a comfortably untrendy hotel in Midtown and rented the car in the morning. It was a strange feeling, driving out of town with her suitcase in the back. She had no apartment, no fiancé, and no idea where she was going. Really no idea. She’d veered off the map, which was supposed to take her to an unknown place in rural Pennsylvania.
Tibby’s note had said she wanted Carmen to meet someone. What was that about? Who could Tibby want her to meet at this point? She hoped it wasn’t some kind of blind-date situation. That would be seriously uncomfortable. Granted, Tibby hadn’t liked Jones any better than Lena or Bee had liked him, but still.
Damn. She pulled over and studied the map. Why was she trying to get to Belvidere, Pennsylvania? Why was being on the right road to get there any less lost than being on the wrong road to get there?
But she turned herself around and persevered anyway. The evidence gave her no reason to believe she even knew who Tibby had been during the last two years, but she still trusted her. She couldn’t help it. And if nothing else, the landscape was quite beautiful, with forests and farms and valleys glowing with the yellow-green of early spring.
A little past noon she turned into a driveway. She saw the street number on the white fence post. She eased up the lane very slowly, taking in the pretty clapboard farmhouse, the shaded yard, and the handful of buildings surrounding it, including a classic red barn.
She stopped the car and peered over the wheel. She was debating whether to walk up to the farmhouse and knock on the door, when the very door swung open and a tall, thin man with a baby in his arms walked out of it. Her brain was trying to process the identity of these people, when she turned her head and a figure came running out of the barn and suddenly became Bridget. In a dreamlike way, Carmen turned her head again and watched the man with the baby become Brian. She was too surprised to get out of the car until Bridget flung open her door and pulled her out.
It was a completely strange place and yet here was the first familiar thing she’d felt in months. Bee put her arms around Carmen and held her for a long time, so artlessly it felt like nothing had changed. For all the stumbling and dreading Carmen had done over the first words, there was nothing she needed to say.
“Where are we?” she asked.
Brian was standing a few feet from her when Bridget pulled away. Carmen went to embrace him, but stopped and stared at the little girl in his arms for a long moment. She had the strangest feeling. She knew this face, but she hadn’t seen it in a long time.
“This is Bailey,” Brian said.
Tibby had a baby. Carmen was too awed to speak.
“There’s so much to tell you,” Bridget said excitedly.
It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.
Bridget grabbed Carmen’s hand, as naturally and tenderly as the old Bee would have, and pulled her toward a yellow cottage just beyond the house.
“Brian says Lena should be coming today too.”
Lena was a person who understood happiness through sadness, and because of it, the happiness that unfolded that day was robust.
The discovery of Bailey, a little girl plucked out of her memory, was all the more extraordinary because of her mother’s loss. You gave us a way to keep loving you, Tib. You must know this child will never be without mothers. Bailey’s face was so evocative and so beautiful, Lena had to turn her head away.
Soon after she and Kostos had arrived, Lena had taken a few moments sitting on the grass