Out of the Clear Blue Sky

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

Lillie

Let's spin back a few months.

Brad had never had great timing. Some examples . . . He booked a weekend for us to New Orleans for September 1. A massive hurricane hit two days before. A decade later, he planned a vacation to Puerto Rico for the last week of October, and New England had a nor'easter that crushed the power grid and grounded all planes for a week the day we were supposed to take off.

When he was twenty, his grandfather died and left him a drafty, never-renovated, single-family brownstone in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a part of New York that no one had really heard of before. Brad, not telling his parents, wanting to be his own man, sold it immediately for $350,000. (The house is worth upwards of $4 million today . . . I check Zillow from time to time.) He invested the real estate sale money in the dot-com bubble four months before it burst and lost every penny he'd earned on the sale.

Brad would leave for the airport early enough, but he'd pick the wrong bridge to cross-if he chose the Sagamore, there'd be an accident. If he picked the Bourne, there'd be construction. If he went to the bathroom during one of Dylan's games, our son would sack the quarterback or make a leaping interception and run the ball in for a touchdown.

He proposed to me as I was vomiting up lunch the day I learned I was pregnant. Literally, as I was on my knees in front of the toilet, gacking, he sat on the edge of the tub and said, "Will you marry me, Lillie?" I had to puke twice more before I could answer.

And then, the night before our son graduated from high school, he told me he was leaving me, mere seconds after I told him I had booked us a trip to Europe come October.

I should've known something was up. Brad never arranged our date nights, but that night he had announced he was taking me out to dinner. To Pepe's in Provincetown, even, one of my favorites, especially because of their incredible coconut cake.

"Wow!" I said. Pepe's was usually reserved for special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries. "What a nice surprise!"

And, you know, how lovely. Maybe Brad was doing this to celebrate our eighteen years, four months, two weeks and three days of parenthood. Dylan Gustavo Fairchild, named for a poet and my grandpa, was our near-perfect son, a wonderful human and the sun, moon and stars to us. Maybe Brad was feeling sentimental, too. Maybe he wanted to talk about our boy and thank me, something he had done at every one of Dylan's birthdays over the years, which never failed to make me tear up.

Maybe he sensed that I was a little terrified of what life would be like without our boy living with us.

How thoughtful. And talk about perfect timing! I'd originally been waiting till after graduation to tell my husband about the big surprise. As a reward for raising a child into adulthood and sending him off to college-and to have something exciting and different to look forward to-I'd booked us a trip. In April, sensing Brad was getting a case of the blues (as I was), I'd decided we should take a vacation, just the two of us, something we hadn't done since our honeymoon, aside from the very occasional weekend away. I spent hours and hours on travel sites, looking for the best hotels, restaurants, cheap flights, special offers, upgrade possibilities.

Venice for three days, a train ride into the Swiss mountains, where we'd stay at a beautiful hotel on a lake, then five days in Paris, where Brad had always wanted to go. A trip to begin this new chapter of our lives and take the sting of our son's absence away.

Dylan would be out with his friends tonight, so he wouldn't miss us. He was the very best of kids-a football player who viewed his body as a temple and all that. Drinking and drugs could seriously screw up his place at the University of Montana. Also, the dangers of drinking, drugs, unprotected sex (and saturated fats) had been drilled into him since his conception. His mommy was a healthcare professional, after all.

When I got home from work that night, I shaved my legs and washed my hair, conditioned it so I wouldn't break the hairbrush-I took after my Portuguese ancestors with thick, coarse black hair. Last year, I'd found a few white strands, too, but hey. Well-earned, right? After I dried off and put on some lipstick and mascara, I decided I was gorgeous and Brad was a lucky man. Then again, he was damn good looking, too, just a little gray in his blond hair, a neatly trimmed beard, his aqua-blue eyes framed by glasses. He had movie star eyes, Beth liked to tell me. Almost too blue to be real.

I put on a cute summer dress and pulled my long hair into a side ponytail. Earrings, perfume, strappy sandals. Texted my patient Ciara, who was at thirty-eight weeks and felt like the baby had dropped. How are you feeling, goddess? Anything changed?

No, but she just punched me pretty good in the side, and I saw her knuckles, Lillie! So amazing!

You're growing a human, I texted back. YOU are amazing. Have a great night, and call me with any changes.

Being a midwife was like being someone's best friend for an entire year, from the first obstetrical visit-sometimes before, if they come to you for fertility or other issues-to the three-month follow-up. The thrill, the responsibility, the honor of guiding the mama through her pregnancy, birth and postnatal care, not to mention any other female issues she might have in her lifetime . . . it was like nothing else. Ciara was a primipara-this was her first pregnancy-and she was in awe of the whole process, as she should be.

Smiling, I went into the front hall, where my husband was waiting. "You look gorgeous," I said, kissing him on the cheek.

"Thanks," he said, looking up from his phone. "Take a sweater in case it gets chilly."

"Good idea." He was right . . . spring nights could be wicked cold on the Cape, and P-town, the narrowest part of our little peninsula, always had a breeze off the water. I grabbed a blue sweater from my bureau.

As we closed the front door behind us, I stopped to check the swallows that had made a home against the beam and ceiling of our porch. They'd been delightfully noisy the past few days, especially when Mama Bird came to feed them.

"Hello, babies," I said, peeking at their little bald heads. From the nearby lilac, the mama bird chirped, reassuring them that I was good people.

"Let's go, Lillie," Brad said, waiting at the top of the stairs that led to our driveway. He didn't love the birds the way I did, and he often startled when coming in, since Mama Swallow was territorial. Me, on the other hand . . . I was a bird lover. I'd grown up in this very house, on this land, and I could identify every bird that graced us by their call and markings. Swallows were favorites of mine, swooping on the water, tails spread in their graceful arc. Plus, they were lucky. They represented a happy home . . . and, if you were feeling morbid, the soul of someone who died. My vov™, I liked to think, because I had adored my grandfather, and he was the one who'd built this house back in the fifties.

"Bye, babies. Sleep tight," I said, then followed my husband down the walk.

In the car, I texted Dylan that we were going to Pepe's for dinner and I hoped he was having fun. Ended it with a heart emoji, because I couldn't help myself.

"He says to have fun and bring him a slice of coconut cake," I said after the phone buzzed with a response. Soon, I wouldn't be able to do those little things for my son. "It's going to be so weird without him."

"Yeah," said Brad. "But it's also a new start for all of us."

"It is," I said, but the familiar lump rose in my throat. My little boy, now six foot three. High school had flown past in a blur of driving to and from Nauset High School, parent-teacher conferences, projects and proofreading his papers. I'd spent thousands of hours sitting on the bleachers, watching him at first stand on the sidelines, then become a starter on the football team. He grew seven inches in three years. He had a girlfriend and was on the honor roll most semesters. He was, and always had been, a wonderful son, good-natured and hardworking and funny, and my heart had been aching since September, when the clock began ticking.

Brad was quiet, too. I reached over and patted his leg, and he glanced at me with a quick smile that didn't reach his eyes. Yes. He was feeling it, too.

Five more weeks before Dylan left for football camp. Five weeks left of the life I'd known these past two decades, happier than I could have imagined. Dylan's birth when I was barely twenty-three, easy and routine and miraculous. Buying our house on Herring Pond from my dad, ensuring that it stayed in the family, and working for years on its renovation. Getting my certified nurse-midwife degree online (from Georgetown!). I worked part-time until Dylan was sixteen and no longer needed me to drive him around, which I missed more than I'd expected.

Every single day from his birth onward had been based around taking care of him, whether it was walking the floor the first three months of his life, or making him a steak after school during his growth spurt. Talking with him in the car when he still sat in the back seat, hearing things that he wouldn't admit at the dinner table . . . a girl he liked, a bad dream he'd had. Teaching him to drive . . . the time when he'd finally mastered parallel parking the night before his test, and had leaped out of the car to hug me-one of the last spontaneous hugs I'd had from him. Oh, he hugged me every day. Just . . . you know. In an obligatory way.

In five weeks, I wouldn't even see him every day. I might not talk to him every day. If he was sick, I couldn't help. If he broke his leg, I wouldn't be there.

But that's what you want as a parent. For your kids to grow into independent, self-sufficient adults. If you do your parenting job right, you're guaranteed heartbreak when the fledgling flies off and leaves you behind. I sent a thought of sympathy to the mama swallow.

I reminded myself that I was also a wife, a daughter, a friend, a sister. A midwife. A woman about to go to Europe for the first time ever. It would be good to reconnect with Brad, too, because this past year had been so focused on our boy. The last trip we'd taken had been three years ago, when we drove cross-country. Seeing Yellowstone was the reason Dylan was going to school in Montana.

Maybe we could swing a special vacation every year or so, just Brad and me. And sure, Dylan could come if he was on break. We could rent out our house for the month of July and that would pay for the trip. Many adventures still waited for us, I told myself firmly. The best years were still ahead. Traveling, our son in this final phase of childhood, then becoming a man, and hopefully a husband and father. Many adventures, for sure.

We turned off Route 6 and headed down 6A, past the Days' Cottages, each one named after a different flower. When Dylan was little, we'd read every plaque with great enthusiasm-Daisy! Aster! Zinnia! Cosmos! When had that stopped? That constant surge of nostalgia made my throat tighten for the umpteenth time that day.

When Brad turned onto Commercial Street, Provincetown's main street, I automatically checked out the gardens, which were in full spring glory-lilacs and peonies, clematis and irises. My own garden didn't get full sun, being in the woods, so these were a visual feast. There was my mother's house. Beatrice, my stepmother, was out in the garden, a big straw hat on her head adorned with a jaunty red scarf. Even in the dirt, she looked glamorous and European. I lifted my hand, but she didn't see me, which was fine.

As we came into the center of town to park, pedestrians and bicyclists meandered on the street. Already so busy, and it wasn't even Memorial Day. We inched along, smelling the good smells of the dozens of restaurants and cafŽs. A gorgeous night in the prettiest town ever.

It was a point of pride to be the daughter of a Portuguese fisherman, and I always felt so welcomed in this town (except by my mother, that is). I knew the other fishermen by name, knew the harbormaster, knew the longtime bartender at the Governor Bradford, knew just about every scruffy townie leaving the dock. And everyone knew I was Pedro Silva's daughter. The Portuguese fishing industry was still alive and well-my father had retired a couple of years ago, but we still went to the Blessing of the Fleet and the Portuguese Festival each year. Dad, never one to sit still, went out a few times a week with Ben Hallowell, who'd bought the Goody Chapman from him.

We parked on the wharf, Brad grumbling about the price as usual, got out and weaved our way down the street through the other pedestrians. When was the last time I'd been to P-town just to stroll? Too long ago. I linked my arm through Brad's, but we had to part ways when the sidewalk narrowed (or stopped altogether).

At Pepe's, our table was waiting, a snug little booth toward the front of the restaurant. "Can we have a table with a water view?" I asked the server.

"I requested this one," Brad said. "It's more private, and it'll get chilly when the sun goes down."

"True. This is great. Thanks, honey."

We looked at the menus and ordered. Brad got a martini, which was new for him . . . he'd started being interested in "mixology" at some point this winter. I ordered a glass of white wine, acknowledging silently that I'd be the one to drive home. Brad was a lightweight, despite his somewhat pretentious grilling of the waitress over gin types and how many dashes of bitters he wanted. That's what marriage was about, wasn't it? Putting up with little irritants for the big picture of security and contentment?