Nicholas Sparks - Two by Two

Why then, I sometimes wonder, do I feel as if that’s not enough?

The phone didn’t ring.

Not in the first week, nor the second, nor even the third. While I’d met with more than a dozen different potential clients and all had expressed initial interest, my office phone remained mute. Even worse, as the month neared its end, none of them would make additional time to speak with me when I reached out to them, and their secretaries eventually reached the point where they asked me to stop calling.

Peters.

His fingerprints were all over this, and I thought again about Vivian’s warning to me. “If he thinks you’re trying to poach his clients, he’ll do whatever it takes to run you out of business.”

By the beginning of July, I was both depressed and worried, a situation made worse by the most recent credit card bill. Vivian had obviously taken my words to heart about her life not changing; she’d been running errands like crazy, and since I’d let the cleaning lady go, the house had become a regular disaster. After work, I’d have to spend an hour picking up around the house, doing laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning the kitchen. I had the sense that Vivian seemed to view my taking over of the domestic duties-and the credit card bill-as some kind of worthwhile penance.

Our conversations since I’d started my business had been superficial. I said little about work; she casually mentioned once that she’d begun putting out feelers about finding some part-time work. We talked about our families and made small talk about friends and neighbors. Mostly, though, we talked about London, always a safe topic. We both sensed that the slightest offense or misspoken word might lead to an argument.

The Fourth of July fell on a Saturday, and I wanted nothing more than to spend the day decompressing. I wanted to tune out concerns about money or bills or clients who ignored my calls; I wanted to stop the little voice in my head that had begun to wonder whether I should get a second job or start looking for jobs in other cities again. What I wanted was to escape adulthood for a day and then cap the holiday weekend off with a romantic evening with Vivian, because it would make me feel like she still believed in me, even if her faith was getting wobbly.

But holiday or not, Saturday morning was Vivian’s Me Time , and soon after waking, she was out the door to yoga class, after which she would go to the gym. I gave London some cereal and the two of us went to the park; in the afternoon, the three of us attended a neighborhood block party. There were games for the kids, and Vivian hung with other mothers while I sipped on a couple of beers with the fathers. I didn’t know them well; like me, until recently, they’d tended to work long hours, and my thoughts continually wandered to my looming financial fiasco, even as they spoke.

Later, while the fireworks blossomed in the sky above the BB &T Ballpark, I continued to feel the tension in my neck and shoulders.

On Sunday, I felt no better.

Again, I hoped for a day to unwind, but after breakfast, Vivian told me she had some errands to run and would be gone most of the day. The tone she used-both casual and defiant-made clear that she would be out of the house for most of the day, and was more than ready for an argument if I wanted one.

I didn’t. Instead, with my stomach in knots, I watched her hop in the SUV, wondering not only how I was going to hold myself together, but how I was going to keep London entertained for an entire day. In that moment, however, I remembered a slogan I’d conceived in the first year of my advertising career.

When you’re in trouble and need someone in your corner…

I’d written it into a commercial for a personal injury attorney and even though the guy was disciplined by the bar and eventually lost his license to practice, the ad had caused a flood of other local attorneys to advertise with our firm. I was responsible for most of them; the go-to guy when it came to any form of legal advertising and it made Peters a ton of money. A couple of years later, an article appeared in The Charlotte Observer and noted that the Peters Group was considered to be the ambulance chasers of the advertising world , and a few banking and real-estate executives began to balk at the association. Peters reluctantly pulled the plug on those same clients, even though it pained him, and years later, he would sometimes complain that he’d been extorted by those same banks he had no trouble exploiting, at least when it came to the fees he charged them.

Still, I was in trouble and I needed someone in my corner … and I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to visit my parents.

If they’re not in your corner, you’re in real trouble.

It’s hard for me to imagine my mom without an apron. She seemed convinced that aprons were as essential as a bra and panties when it came to women’s wear, at least when she was at home. Growing up, she’d be wearing one when Marge and I came down to breakfast; she put one on immediately after walking in the door after work, and she’d continue wearing one long after dinner had been concluded and the kitchen had been cleaned. When I’d ask her why, she’d say that she liked the pockets, or that it kept her warm, or that she might have a cup of decaffeinated coffee later and didn’t want to spill it on her clothes.

Personally, I think it was just a quirk, but it made buying her Christmas and birthday gifts easy, and over the years, her collection had grown. She had aprons in every color, every length and style; she had seasonal aprons, aprons with slogans, aprons that Marge and I had made her when we were kids, aprons with the name “Gladys” stenciled onto the fabric, and a couple of them even had lace, though she considered those too racy to wear. I knew for a fact that there were seven boxes of neatly folded aprons in the attic, and two entire cabinets in the kitchen were dedicated to her collection. It had always been something of a mystery to Marge and me how our mom went about selecting her Apron of the Day, or even how she could find the one she wanted amidst all the others.

Little about her apron-wearing habit had changed after she’d stopped working. My mom had worked not because she loved her job but because our family needed the money, and once she stepped away, she joined a gardening club, volunteered at the senior center, and was an active member of the Red Hat Society. Like Vivian and London, it seemed as though she had something planned every day of the week, things that made her happy, and it was my distinct impression that the aprons she’d been selecting over the last few years reflected a more cheerful disposition. Plain aprons had been banished to the bottom of the drawer; at the top were aprons patterned with flowers and birds, and the occasional slogan such as Retired: Young at Heart but Older in Other Places.

When I arrived with London in tow, my mom was wearing a red and blue checkered apron-without pockets, I couldn’t help but notice-and her face lit up at the sight of my daughter. Over the years, she’d begun to resemble less the mother I’d known and more the kind of grandmother that Norman Rockwell might have created for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post . She was gray-haired, pink-cheeked, and soft in all the right places, and it went without saying that London was equally thrilled to see her.

Even better, both Liz and Marge were at the house. After a quick hug and kiss from all of them, their attention shifted completely to my daughter, and I pretty much became invisible. Liz scooped her up almost as soon as London burst through the front door and all at once London was talking a mile a minute. Marge and Liz hung on her every word, and as soon as I heard the word cupcakes , I knew that London would be occupied for at least the next couple of hours. London loved to bake, which was odd since it was something that Vivian didn’t particularly enjoy, what with all the white flour and sugar.