by Claire Adams
Kayla came down wearing her jeans, home team T-shirt, Chuck Taylors, and carrying the baseball doll that Alissa had gotten her for her birthday. Just seeing the doll made my chest ache, but I took in a deep breath and pushed past it, not wanting Kayla to notice. Christina asked Kayla about the doll, and she proudly told her that Alissa got it for her. I could see the irritation and suspicion on Christina’s face, but I didn’t give two shits about how she felt about it. We were divorced, and I was living my life.
When we got to the ball field, Kayla was off the wall with excitement. She jumped around, waiting for us to get out of the car, holding her doll close to her chest. She loved ball games so much, and I was really excited to be there with her. Christina kept a pleasant look on her face but struggled slightly walking across the gravel parking area in her heels. I stifled my laugh, not trying to provoke her. I was enjoying her misery, but I wasn’t trying to be a complete asshole.
During the game, Kayla was yelling, clapping, and following along with the game. Christina, on the other hand, looked absolutely miserable and slightly annoyed by the screaming fans, splashing beer, and constant buzzing of some sort of insect. She turned her nose up at the opportunity to have a beer and hot dog and settled on a soft pretzel that she picked at as if I had handed her a slab of raw meat. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen the snotty Christina poke her head out too often, but I could tell she was still in there and bursting to get out. I glanced down at Kayla to make sure she wasn’t noticing and then directed her attention to the mascot coming on the field, glancing over with irritation at Christina. She sighed and put the pretzel down, forcing a smile when Kayla turned excitedly toward her to point out the antics on the field. I was starting to get a bit irritated with her personality, but I was going to let her do her thing.
“You okay?” I asked, trying to be nice. “You are acting really standoffish.”
“I’m fine,” she said, taking in a deep breath. “I’m just not a big fan of baseball games. You know that. I’m not really sure why you chose this for bonding purposes.”
“It’s time that you realized the world doesn’t revolve around you and that your daughter actually has her own interests,” I said shortly before turning back to the game.
“I am very aware that Kayla has her own interests,” she replied calmly. “You do remember that although I’ve missed a lot this last year, I did raise the girl from when she was a baby?”
“Then realize that she is going to be her own person, and you either sacrifice your preconceived notions and try to enjoy these things or be pushed out little by little,” I said. “She won’t always be 8 and just happy to have you around.”
I was getting irritated with her inability to relax and enjoy the game. Immediately, I looked over at her seat and realized she was sitting where Alissa sat the first time I brought her to the game. Alissa was so cute with her cheering and excitement, and I regretted the fact that I hadn’t had the chance to bring her and Kayla together to the ball field. They would have had a blast, dancing with the mascots and yelling at the referees. I knew there was no way that Christina was ever going to get to that point with baseball, and the best I could hope for is that eventually, she would relax enough to stay pleasant during the games. All she was doing this time was strutting her stuff and soaking in all the men’s attention around us when she got up and walked around in her heels.
I took a deep breath and sat back in my chair, deciding that I needed to stop trying so hard to control the situation. It was going to be what it was going to be, no matter how hard I tried to protect Kayla. She was going to get hurt at some point, but I was trying to make it so it was the least impactful as possible. I wanted Kayla to have her beautiful childhood and not lose that happiness she had just gained back weeks before. I watched as Kayla tried to talk to Christina, pointing out different things and really trying to involve her in the game. Kayla knew her mother was not a big fan of the game, and it meant a lot to her that she would even come out with us to watch. Christina looked incredibly uncomfortable, almost like Kayla wasn’t even her daughter. She was short, perfunctory, and everything she did lacked emotion. I could see the forced smile on her face as Kayla called out to the ref for a bad call.
It concerned me that Christina was struggling to treat her daughter as if she were her own. It came naturally to me, and in the past, I thought it came naturally to Christina, but I may have been completely wrong about that. She looked like a very nicely dressed robot, responding with short bursts, head nods, and fake grins, her shoulders tensing every time Kayla would lean over and hug her tightly. It didn’t look like Kayla noticed, but it definitely was visible to everyone else, especially me. I tried to work the situation out in my head, trying to understand that Christina had just spent over a year away from her daughter. It couldn’t be easy just jumping right back into the old routine. It was amazing how much difference a year made in the life of a child, and Kayla was almost a different person than she was when Christina left. I think she was expecting that 5-year-old child that was just happy to be clinging to her mom and playing at the park.
The family rhythm was definitely an adjustment, especially since I had completely changed our lives to a more sensible and manageable lifestyle, not full of the glitz and glamour that Christina had come to be accustomed to. We had picnics, watched movies, and ate dinner together at the table with no cell phones or computers. Kayla and I went to ball games and play areas, and we didn’t care about what other people thought of us. It was like Christina had walked into a completely different world after being with Dale, and I knew that had to have some kind of adjustment period.
I was trying to be sensitive to that notion, but at the same time, I had to remind myself that none of this would be an issue if she hadn’t run off and left us for the last year and a half. She wouldn’t have to feel out of sorts with her own daughter. This struggle she was having was all self-inflicted, and although I would try to make it easier for Kayla’s benefit, it was really hard to feel bad for Christina at all. From the looks of it, too, she hadn’t even noticed that it was all up to her to prove to me she was really in this for Kayla. Instead, she looked bewildered and off-kilter, and it was starting to give me pause.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Alissa
It felt really good to be back at my mother’s house with the smell of food cooking in the kitchen and her perfume wafting through the halls. It had been two weeks since Christina had come back, and I hadn’t talked to Ryan at all since the conversation about him trying for Kayla’s sake. Every day, I wanted to pick up the phone and call him, but I didn’t. Coming to see my mom was a good distraction. We were sitting in the living room, talking and drinking wine like we usually did. Bella had been having some issues with morning sickness, so she had sat this one out, deciding it was safer if she stayed at home hugging her trash can and cursing her husband’s part in her pregnancy. Bella was definitely not enjoying her newfound body like she thought she would.
I watched as Mom slipped through the pages of a photo album she had put together from their trip around the world. There were so many different places, and the photos spanned across multiple continents. I had to admit that I was pretty jealous of their trip and reminded myself that I would get there one day. Beyond just the beautiful scenery, I was incredibly taken aback by how happy she looked in every single one of her pictures. I could tell she was more than in love and more than ecstatic to be with my new stepfather, and it filled my heart with warmth knowing that kind of love was still out there, and it was possible. My mother was old school about relationships like me, and it took her a bit to open up to the idea of someone other than my father, but once she let herself go, she became this amazingly happy and easygoing woman that I remembered from my childhood.
“We really did have so much fun,” she said, shaking her head and smiling at the pictures. “Oh, and look there. That monkey was stalking me the entire time I was walking down the beach. It was hilarious, and o
ur tour guide made sure to throw him some extra treats for enchanting me.”
“You look so happy,” I said, turning the pages. “I just can’t get over how in love you two are, and how you spent the last several months traveling all over the globe. It’s so damn romantic. I hope that one day, I will have the same thing.”
“Well, being a mother, I worried about you girls constantly while I was gone,” she said. “In fact, had I known that there was a relationship brewing for my youngest and a baby on the way for my oldest, I probably would have decided to stay home and be there for you two.”
“Don’t be silly.” I laughed. “We are grown women. We missed you terribly, don’t get me wrong. But you deserved every second of that trip.”
“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head. “I leave for vacation, and you start dating your brother, and your sister gets knocked up. Doesn’t sound like you two have everything under control.”
“Mom,” I said, gasping.
“Oh, honey, I’m just kidding.” She laughed. “Besides, Ryan is technically your stepbrother, no blood relationship. You are both consenting adults, so I had no issue with it at all. I just wish I could have been here to help you through all the hard stuff. And as far as your sister is concerned, it’s her third marriage and first baby, so I would say that was a win. I have a good feeling about this one, and that baby will definitely bring some much-needed grounding into her life. Don’t get me wrong, though. I do admire her free sensibilities. I just want to see you both happy.”
“I know.” I sighed. “As far as Ryan is concerned, I can’t stress enough that it is over between the two of us. Christina, Kayla’s mom, came back into the picture, and that was that. It was really hard for me to accept that it might be the best thing for Kayla, but I saw how bad that little girl struggled without her mom close by. I told Ryan that he owed it to Kayla to try to make it work, and at least see where things could go. I couldn’t be the one responsible for breaking up a family, and I knew that if I played any role in it, Kayla would never forgive me. Things would never be perfect like they were, just hours before Christina showed up, and there was no way around that fact. Christina has the upper hand in this situation, and I knew that it would be better for me to back away gracefully than scratch and claw for something that I wasn’t sure I had any control over at all.”
“Good for Kayla? Yeah, right. That woman wouldn’t know how to be a parent if she wrote the book herself. She is a good-for-nothing person that left her husband and baby behind, and then expects to walk right back into their lives like nothing ever happened. She deserves to be single and alone.”
I laughed a little to myself, surprised by my mother’s reaction to it all. She wasn’t the kind of person that would normally spite others for her own thoughts and feelings. She definitely had an opinion about Christina. That was for sure, but I wasn’t completely sure that it was unbiased since she saw how in love I was with Ryan at the party. She was a mother bear that wanted to protect her cubs, something that I always loved about her, even when it wasn’t what aligned with my own thoughts. She always taught us to be moral and do what we thought was right, which is what I had done for Ryan. Only then, I started to get second thoughts about it. I brushed the feeling off, assuming it was due to the fact that I really missed them, and I was struggling being away from the two of them.
“I know.” I sighed. “I don’t like her any more than anyone else does. I just know how important it is for a little girl to have her mother in her life. Kayla was so lost when I started to come around, and the way she is now, well, it is like night and day. A mother is really important in a child’s life.”
“I agree with you,” she said. “A child needs a mother, or mother figure in their lives. It is really important to growth and emotional stability. That being said, Christina is not a mother in my eyes. She put her wants and needs to be with another man over those of her husband and her child. She lost her privilege to be a mother to that child the moment she stepped foot out of that house without any intention of ever coming back.”
“That is true,” I said. “It was really hard to believe that she actually cared about them when she begged Ryan to take her back. She was exasperated, and she seemed like she was looking for something, but it wasn’t the comfort of her child. I really couldn’t read her very well, but if I had missed all that time with my daughter, the first thing I would do would be to spend time with her and then approach that subject later, not standing in the living room in front of company.”
“Well, I don’t necessarily believe that her intentions were truthful,” my mother said, closing the book.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can see her crawling back to that life not because she wanted to, but because she got dumped,” she said, shaking her head. “When you have nowhere else to go, you pick the destination you can manipulate to your needs the best. If he does take her back, I can see her leaving again in the near future.”
“I just don’t understand how you can fall in and out of love so quickly,” I said, frustrated. “I mean, it has plagued me ever since Dad left. When you love someone, it should take great acts to make you fall out of love with them. In my eyes, it’s easy to love, and it’s hard to walk away and get rid of the feelings. Anyone who has ever been broken up with knows that feeling all too well.”
“Love is a tricky thing,” she said. “And let me just remind you, Alissa, Ryan has been divorced for quite some time now. It isn’t like you fell in love with a man that was off-limits. It doesn’t make you able to let go any easier, knowing that you didn’t do anything wrong in the situation. I can understand how being bested by that blonde twit could be extremely frustrating.”
“It just makes it hard because fighting for Ryan means that it will affect Kayla in one way or another,” I said. “I don’t want to do that if I can manage to avoid it.”
“Honey, either way, that poor girl is going to have some sort of feelings about the situation,” she said, patting my leg. “You would be shocked to realize just how intuitive little girls really are. Listen, if you want to fight for your man, then do it. You are not in any way, shape, or form in the wrong for doing so. Ryan was a free man when you started dating him, and any claim Christina had to him was left behind when she signed those divorce papers. If you fight for him and that beautiful little girl that you love so much, that does not make you a homewrecker. What it does do is make Christina a homewrecker for coming in and stealing what was not hers. She gave up on that man and that little girl when she abandoned them. You have to stop seeing yourself as the villain and realize that you just might be those two’s hero.”
“I never thought about it that way,” I said, biting my nails and staring off into the distance.
“That’s why I’m here.” She chuckled. “You sit here and ponder. I’m going to go make us some tea. I think I’ve had my fill of wine for the day. Otherwise, you might find me taking a nap in the garden later.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding my head and focusing on the chair across from me.
I was so confused about what to think, how to think, and what I should even do about all of this. On the one hand, my mother made a very good and perfectly valid argument. I was not in the wrong whatsoever for dating Ryan. On the other hand, I was still worried about what it would do to Kayla if I were to fight to stay a part of their lives. I knew that if he took Christina back, I would never be able to be around them again. It would change the whole dynamic of how I handled my family and the holiday gatherings we all loved so much. In the end, though, that wasn’t even my biggest concern. My biggest issue was that I loved him, and I felt deep in my gut that I should be fighting for him and making sure both he and Kayla knew how much I loved them, how invested I was in their lives, and how much I wanted us to be a family. Once they knew that, if they still decided to bring Christina back, I had done all I could do to win them back.
It was a difficult decision, but I knew that I was going to
have to make it, and sooner than later. The longer I allowed that woman to inch back into their lives, the less likely I was to get a good response when I went knocking on their door. I wasn’t even sure if it was already too late.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ryan
Laughter bellowed from my chest as Kayla bounced out of the car and down the walkway to the house, wearing her new elephant hat and duck shoe covers that I got her at the gift shop at the zoo. I knew that this outing would be a hit for Kayla, since she pretty much loved the zoo with everything in her being. It was hard to do these kinds of things without constantly thinking about Alissa, but I tried to stay the course, not wanting to take myself backward into something that I wasn’t sure I had any control over anymore. It had been weeks now since Alissa and I had been together, and we hadn’t talked at all, not even through text. I tried to respect that, knowing how hurt she probably was.
I reached the front door and unlocked it, letting Kayla run inside and wait for Christina to catch up. I was assuming she wasn’t used to the energy level of an 8-year-old, but at least this time, she had worn jeans and a T-shirt with sneakers instead of traipsing around in high fashion next to the lion pit. She walked past me and smiled fakely with her lips tightly pursed together. I rolled my eyes and sighed, walking in behind them and shutting the door. Kayla raced upstairs to put away her stuff, and I looked over at Christina, not sure what to say to her.