The First Husband by Laura Dave Page B

find so many pains when the rain is falling.’ ”
    As I disconnected from the voice mail—unable not to wonder for a moment why Nick would take it upon himself to call Peter—the phone vibrated again. It was Griffin, his third time trying to reach me.
    I flipped it open. “You don’t give a girl much chance to settle in, do you?”
    “It’s an emergency,” he said.
    My heart stopped. “What’s the emergency?”
    “I got tickets to Wilco.”
    I felt myself start to smile, biting my lip. “And how’s that an emergency?” I asked.
    “It’s in Santa Barbara,” he said. “If we want to make it in time to hear ‘Remember the Mountain Bed,’ we have to leave right now.”
    I could just shut off the lights, stop asking myself to answer any of Nick’s questions, and go.
    This was what I did.

    This was when the other thing happened, the other thing that changed everything: my mother came to town.
    My mother came to town and I let Griffin meet her. She was a real estate agent most recently in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she and her newest husband, Gil, had moved about a year and a half ago. She was great at her job (no one knew how to sell a house fast better than my mother did). And she often took trips to celebrate her sales. Though this was the first time a trip had taken her to me.
    My mother wasn’t exactly easy. And considering the current state of affairs, I might have even tried to avoid seeing her. I was certain she’d have a million questions about how I’d gotten from Nick to Griffin—from the point where she thought she knew what was happening in my life, to a life she didn’t know at all. But I felt guilty, knowing she was uncharacteristically worried about me. Plus, Gil was coming with her. Kind and good Gil Taylor. And I decided it might be okay. She seemed to be on better behavior when he was around. We all were.
    So we decided to meet at a rustic restaurant in Venice called Gjelina. Griffin and I got there first, and I think he was taken aback when they walked in—or, maybe I should say, when my mother walked in. My mother’s beauty could do that. She looked both older and younger than she was: her long blond hair perpetually pulled back in a ponytail, showing off her flawless skin. Her tired, blue eyes complemented perfectly by a pale blue peasant dress. Knee-high maroon boots.
    As she got closer to the table, not exactly smiling, Griffin squeezed my hand.
    “Hey hey hey, sweet girl!” Gil said to me, as my mother reached out her hand and introduced herself to Griffin. Griffin, to his credit, didn’t just stand up to meet her handshake. He also helped her into her seat.
    “It’s great to meet you, Mrs. Taylor,” he said.
    “Oh, let’s not start that way. Call me Janet, please,” she said, smiling too big, too forcefully. “And it’s not Mrs. Taylor, Griffin. Even though that’s my beloved’s last name. It’s Adams. Still just Janet Adams. I kept my name from my marriage to Annie’s father. I didn’t want to change my name to be different from my daughter’s. I’m not built that way. Though if she ever eventually marries, I’m sure she won’t have any problem changing her name from mine.”
    There was the other part that Janet chose not to mention. If she had actually changed or hyphenated her name every time she married someone else, it would now be Janet Adams-Samuels-Nussbaum-Taylor. There was an Everett in there too. But that was only for a week. A complicated week in which I turned fourteen and we moved from Boston to Seattle. That time, it was Seattle. And, then, back.
    “So we have a new man at the table tonight?” my mom said, settling in. “Did you train him to be so well mannered already? Or is he putting on a show to impress your mother?”
    This was vintage Janet. Asking a seemingly innocuous question—one that didn’t ostensibly suggest what was beneath it—and there was usually a lot beneath it. We didn’t speak very often, but when we did my mother