Darcy straightened, smiling weakly through her tear-magnified eyes. “Does this mean you’re going to stop sneaking around and come clean about your
friend
Aidan?”
Heat flushed Laura’s cheeks. Darcy had known all along. Laura had fooled no one but herself.
“Want another shocker?” Darcy asked.
“There’s more?”
“I wanted to hate the guy, but I like him, and I think you two make a nice couple.”
“Oh, Darcy, I don’t know. I don’t think I should—”
What if Laura could actually show her daughter a healthy relationship where the partners supported each other? Aidan had already proven to her time and again he could do that, if only she’d let him. If only she could summon the courage.
“I’m scared,” Laura said, admitting to her daughter what she’d never before admitted to herself. “After your father—”
“He’s not Daddy.”
“Well, I know that.”
“So why suffer?”
Laura stared at Darcy. When had they switched places, and her daughter become the voice of reason?
Aidan’s truck screeched into the driveway, and he burst through the front door, all traces of calm stripped from his face. His rich voice thinned. “Finn’s police scanner—heard the call—drove across town—” he said, but he looked as though he’d run across town. His wide-eyed gaze took in Laura and Darcy, and then zipped around the corners. “Where’s Troy?”
“It’s okay. He’s at a friend’s.” Laura’s throat swelled with the knowledge Aidan loved her son. He loved her family.
“Go for it, Mom,” Darcy whispered, and she kissed Laura’s cheek.
Maybe it really was that simple.
Laura took a deep breath. “Aidan’s rule number one. You always win,” she said, and his waiting-for-Laura-to-make-sense expression clouded his face.
It was high time Laura made sense.
Right in front of her daughter, she went to Aidan and kissed the bafflement off his handsome face.
Aidan laughed, the sound more beautiful because she’d inspired it. His happiness reverberated through her chest. His arms wrapped around her waist.
His strength only made her stronger.
She stroked his lopsided dimple, the curve of his smile, and met his gaze. “You win. You’re right. We’re great together,” Laura said. “Welcome home.”
Chapter 32
B
y mid-August, the honeymoon was over.
Aidan stretched across their bed, so that his feet touched her, the way she liked it. His lips curved into a soft smile, content, even in his sleep. His scattered belongings—bike sneakers, half-balled socks, cast-aside scrub bottoms—reassured her that everything had changed.
Today marked the second week of Aidan’s rotation into pediatrics. No more cake fifty-hour weeks. As Aidan had warned her, on required rotations from the emergency room, residents worked up to eighty grueling hours. Sleep was a luxury.
Laura kissed Aidan on the warm pulse of his temple. With a grin, his eyes flashed open. He took her around the waist, pulled her on top of him, and tickled her neck with his mouth till she shrieked with laughter. “I brought you coffee,” she said when he released her and came to sitting. “You have twenty minutes before I kick you to the curb.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” He winked and took his steaming mug of coffee from Laura’s hand.
“Nope, you’re like a bad penny,” she said. A joke, since she told anyone who’d listen Aidan was her
lucky
penny.
She and Aidan had decided telling their friends and families they were going steady fell short of the truth. Instead, they’d shown how they felt by sending out wedding invitations and throwing a July Fourth party in the backyard for one hundred and fifty guests, with Elle and Maggie as bridesmaids, Darcy as the maid of honor, Aidan’s friend Finn as an usher, and Troy as the best man. Aidan’s mother, sisters, aunts, and uncles inflated Laura’s extended family from zero to seventy-five. Fine by her.
Although she’d known Aidan for less than six months, she had absolute faith in his integrity. She admired the way he spent his days—from his occupation saving lives to making sure they included Darcy and Troy in family decisions. Miracle of miracles, Darcy was coming around to accepting Aidan, which didn’t prevent her daughter and husband from butting heads. And Troy and Aidan continued to bond over sports and outdoor activities. Aidan promised to take Troy camping whenever he could finesse a couple of days off. Troy knew Aidan wouldn’t disappoint him. Laura measured her relationship with Aidan not by the month on the calendar, but by the strength of their love and mutual respect. Their marriage would endure whatever life offered.
Twenty minutes later, they were standing in front of the house on the cement step. Laura rose on tiptoe, prepared to give her freshly showered scrub-ready husband a get-to-work-on-time pristine peck on the lips. Instead, he pulled her into a deep kiss that threatened to make them both late for work. “Don’t hold dinner for me,” he said, and jogged to his truck. The engine roared to life. The truck made it to the edge of the driveway before it backed up to where Laura was standing.
“What’s wrong?” Laura said.
Aidan leaned out of his window. “Uh, forgot to tell you I love you,” he said, and then sped from the driveway and onto the street, leaving Laura with a hand pressed to her heart. “Love you too.”
Outside on the deck, she awaited the sunrise. The first rays winked and twinkled, squinting between the peaks of the distant mountain range, and then pouring across the green fields. Sunlight blazed, and she shielded her eyes, taking in the goodness in tiny sips.
She was learning not to gulp up all the beauty at once, learning to trust in steadfast abundance.
Darcy’s sunflowers skirted the deck, and a warm breeze combed through the enormous heart-shaped leaves as the blossoms tilted their yellow ruffle-trimmed faces toward the mountains. Darcy had taken up gardening in the middle of June, and along with the sunflowers, she’d planted vivid purple violets and sherbet-orange daylilies, highlighting their white farmhouse with splashes of color.
Each day, Laura would discover a new plant making a home in their yard, and Darcy kneeling, up to her elbows in soil. Sometimes, Darcy would even coerce Heather and Cam into joining her. Without fail, on the days when Darcy worked alone, a crease would form between her brows, and Laura could almost see her daughter’s mind shifting to Nick, wondering where he, his mother, and his grandmother had moved to after the courts had placed Nick on probation.
No sounds of waking teenagers trickled down the staircase. For the moment, they were securely tucked into their beds. For the moment, they were healthy and well. Her mind was peaceful when she stayed in the moment.
She left her supporting roles of wife and mother in the kitchen and sailed through the unlocked door of her writing studio: Jack’s old studio she’d feminized with lavender paint. She settled into her ergonomic chair, waited for the screen to hum on, checked her notes, and rocked gently, picking up the thread of her story. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard.
For inspiration, she spoke her favorite Rilke poem in her head but couldn’t contain the last line, reverently connecting creativity with God: “ ‘I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.’ ”
Just a few chapters into the novel, and the story was already taking a circular path—a hero’s journey where the hero left the everyday world to learn old and new lessons, and then returned home, wiser for the voyage.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
EQUILIBRIUM
Lorrie Thomson
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The following discussion questions are included to
enhance your group’s reading of
Equilibrium
. For a
little something extra, serve the delicious gingersnaps
Laura bakes using the recipe that follows.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.
How does Darcy see her mother at the beginning of the novel? Discuss the ways in which that perspective changes by the end. Talk about how Laura and Darcy switch roles over the course of the story.
2.
Jack used to tell Laura that the most obvious reasons for a character’s actions were usually wrong, excuses masquerading as explanation. How does this apply to Laura’s relationship with Aidan? Laura says that Aidan is the polar opposite of her late husband. Do you think this makes him a good match for Laura? Why?
3.
How are Laura’s and Darcy’s relationships to Jack similar? How do they differ? And how does that affect the way they cope with his death? How does Aidan help Laura see her relationship with Jack differently? How does Nick help Darcy see her relationship with her father differently?
4.
Compare Darcy’s and Troy’s memories of their father. How did his actions toward each of them influence their grieving?
5.
How does Troy deal with his grief over Jack’s death? Laura believes she and her son are very much alike. Do you agree?
6.
How do Laura and Darcy view Nick differently at the beginning of the story? Does this change by the story’s end?
7.
What are the similarities between Darcy’s and Nick’s relationships to their fathers? In what ways do Darcy and Nick express the same emotions differently?
8.
When Darcy first meets Nick, she thinks of herself as Daddy’s girl. Even though she’s embarrassed by how her father ended his life, she’s always looked up to him. Has her relationship with her father changed by the end of the story? How?
9.
Laura mentions her mother, a woman who kept to herself and might’ve died from never having reached out to others. Do you think Laura sees herself in her mother? Are there similarities? By the story’s end, how has she learned to take her mother’s life as a lesson in reverse?
10.
How had Laura tamped down her emotions in response to Jack’s? Is that coping mechanism now working in her favor or against her?
11.
At the beginning of the story, Darcy’s best friend Heather is struggling with a secret that she later reveals to Darcy. The reveal forces a temporary wedge between them. How do keeping secrets, and the resulting fallout, factor into other aspects of the story?
12.
Discuss how Darcy and Troy react differently to Aidan.
13.
As an adult, how does Laura now view the way her relationship with Jack began? How does that factor into her romance with Aidan? How does Laura’s early relationship with Jack lead to Laura’s concerns about Darcy and Nick?
14.
In what ways do Elle and Maggie support Laura? Why is Laura reluctant to tell them about her relationship with Aidan?
15.
Laura stuck by Jack through his struggles with bipolar disorder. Do you have any personal experience with it? If so, how has that influenced the way you read
Equilibrium
? Do you think she could have—or should have—done anything different with Jack?
Gingersnaps
2 cups unsalted butter, softened
2½ cups dark brown sugar, packed
3 eggs, room temperature
¾ cup molasses
4½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ cup ground ginger
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Beat in eggs and molasses. In another bowl, sift flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Use a wooden spoon to stir dry ingredients into wet. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for thirty minutes.
2.
Either use a pastry bag to pipe one-inch rounds or drop batter by the teaspoonful onto the parchment-covered baking sheets. Leave two inches between drops to allow for spreading.
3.
Fill a small bowl with warm water and wet your finger. Press finger into drops to flatten. Bake ten to thirteen minutes until brown.
4.
Lift parchment off cookie sheet and set on cooling rack. Remove cookies from parchment when firm.
5.
Enjoy about six dozen cookies!
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2013 by Lorrie Thomson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8577-5
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8578-2
eISBN-10: 0-7582-8578-7
First Kensington Electronic Edition: September 2013