by Lulu Pratt
“She’s too young to understand, anyway,” Mom says dismissively.
“Nathan can want what he wants, it doesn’t matter,” I tell my parents.
“You don’t think he’s going to be able to convince Lara? She only has him left in her family,” Dad points out.
“She’s also told him pretty upfront that the situation we’ve got is what Alexis wanted, and that’s the important thing,” I counter.
Riley starts to fuss, and I know if my parents aren’t going to drop the topic, I need to at least get her into her playpen and away from the discussion. I clean her face and hands and lift her out of her high chair.
“I’ll be back,” I tell my parents, and take my daughter into the living room just off the dining area. I give her one of her toys and set her in her playpen, while I’m away from my parents I take my phone out to text Lara.
My parents are going on about your dad wanting to pull some kind of legal bullshit?
I know a little bit about what Lara’s said to her dad, but I’d had no idea that Nathan was actually pushing for any kind of court ruling.
I know Lara’s at dinner with her father, because she’d told me so. Nathan seems to be lonely, and I can’t blame her for wanting to spend time with her father, who has no one else in the world really other than her. My parents at least have each other.
I slip my phone into my pocket and go back to the table where my parents are still eating. I pick at my food, trying to think about what to say.
“It’s not a big deal,” I tell them finally.
“We just want to make sure that you’re paying attention. That you’re prepared in case Nathan takes some kind of stand,” Dad says.
“It’s a non-issue. If Nathan tries something legally, he’s going to need Lara’s backing, and he doesn’t have it,” I insist.
“If you’re sure,” Mom says doubtfully.
I look at her for a long moment.
“What do you mean by that?”
She shrugs.
“I just know that Lara and you had history, and that when you and Alexis got together…” she lets the sentence die off.
“It might be easier than you think for Nathan to convince his daughter that she should have full custody of your daughter,” Dad says, and I’m not sure whether he’s finishing Mom’s sentence or making his own point.
“Let’s just change the subject,” I say, glancing back into the living room at my daughter.
Riley’s playing with her toys, totally oblivious to our conversation, and I can only hope she stays that way. I make a mental plan to get back to my house as quickly as possible, even if it’ll be lonely with nobody but me there. My parents planned to keep Riley until I can pick her up after work the next day.
My phone buzzes in my pocket but I can’t look at it. I try to keep my parents’ minds off the topic of my father-in-law or the possible ways he might be influencing my sister-in-law to come against me for custody of my daughter. But even as I tell Mom and Dad about work and about Riley’s new milestones, in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder if maybe they’re right that Nathan would be able to convince Lara more than I would.
I give Riley a kiss goodbye and finally take out my phone as I head to my car, reading through a few texts that Lara has sent me while I’ve been with my parents having dinner.
I swear to God, I have no intention of taking Riley away from you.
The next one, sent a few minutes later, says:
I think my dad might be losing it a little bit.
The last one, which I got right after I walked out of my parents’ house, is probably the most ominous.
Dad is off the rails. I need to get out of here. I’m leaving here in the next fifteen minutes, if it’s at all possible.
I get into my car and text Lara that I’ll call her when I get home. Obviously she and I have a lot to talk about, whether or not we’d rather do anything else. I’m worried about what her father might have said to her, but at least I can be pretty confident that she’s not willing to go along with whatever it is.
Chapter Nineteen
LARA
By the time I get the first text message from Ethan, I’m already starting to regret agreeing to meet with my father for dinner. Right from the beginning, I had gotten the feeling that Dad’s feelings concerning Ethan, rather than mellowing, had only gotten more intensely resentful.
My phone buzzes in my pocket as Dad’s getting the bread he’d nearly forgotten out of the oven where he’d been warming it.
My parents are going on about your dad wanting to pull some kind of legal bullshit?
I know that Dad has mentioned how I should have full custody of Riley, instead of sharing guardianship with Ethan, but I haven’t heard anything recently about him pursuing any kind of legal way of doing that.
When Dad comes in I decide to tread lightly. Dad’s obviously still grieving. We all are, but it’s harder for him, it has to be. He’s lost his wife and a daughter less than a year apart and both losses are still raw.
“Things are working out really well with the arrangements between Ethan and me,” I say as he sits back down. I help myself to a warmed-up roll and spread some butter on it.
“You’re getting to spend a lot of time with Riley, right?” I nod in answer to Dad’s question. He’s not as good a cook as Mom, but they’d mostly shared the duties of taking care of dinner most of my childhood, so at least he hadn’t fallen into the habit of a lot of suddenly alone people of eating takeout most of the time.
“She’s at my place a few days a week, and then, obviously, with you or with Ethan’s parents, and then with him. He’s really holding up well with Alexis gone. Better than I would have thought.” I glance up and Dad’s got a bleak expression on his face.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that he expected for Alexis to be out of the picture before too long, and was prepared for it,” Dad says.
“I don’t think anyone really thought that would happen,” I counter.
“Well, it’s not like he hasn’t taken full advantage of her death,” Dad says sourly.
“How?” I stare at my father in confusion, wondering just where he’s getting his information from.
“He’s got everyone jumping through hoops to help him keep giving Riley a normal life, and it just isn’t fair, not after he killed your sister,” Dad tells me.
I shake my head. “He didn’t kill Alexis. He had an accident, one that the police, the insurance and everyone else in the entire world has said he couldn’t have avoided, and there’s nothing for him to pay for.”
“He ripped this family apart and then destroyed it,” Dad insists.
“No, Dad. He got together with someone who maybe he shouldn’t have, and married her, and had a baby with her,” I tell him. “I might blame him and might still blame Alexis for betraying me back then… but there’s nothing since then to blame him for.”
“How can you say that?” Dad glares at me.
“Because it’s true. He married Alexis, and he loved her, and there’s nothing wrong with two married people in love having a baby,” I point out.
“You’ve been spending too much time around him. That’s the only way I can explain how you could possibly feel this way.”
“I feel this way because my sister died, and I have to find some way to figure out how to live with her husband and my niece,” I explain.
“So, you’re spending all this time around him and now he’s got you wrapped around his finger, just like everyone else. The poor, pitiful widower.”
I have to wonder if part of Dad’s problem isn’t that he feels jealous of losing the status of being the widower in the family.
I text Ethan under the table. It’s coming really clear to me that instead of spending the months since Alexis died coming to terms with what happened, Dad has just gotten angrier. He’s blaming Ethan, and even when I still hated Ethan the most, when my feelings concerning him were the worst, I couldn’t have come up
with a way to blame him for Alexis’ death.
“Dad, I love you, and I want you to be part of Riley’s life,” I say.
“I should hope so. Come on, Lara. Don’t you think it would be better if you had sole custody of her? It would make more sense. She needs a mother figure, and a real one, not just someone who spends half the week with her. And I can help you raise her.”
I shake my head hard. I’m glad that I’ve managed to finish dinner first, but I definitely need to get out of here. I text Ethan once again.
Dad is off the rails. I need to get out of here. I’m leaving here in the next fifteen minutes, if it’s at all possible.
I let Dad rant for a few more minutes, going over material I’ve already heard. How Ethan is irresponsible, how he’d never really been fully okay with the way that Ethan dated me and then Alexis as if it didn’t matter which of us he was dating. How it was Ethan’s fault that the family fell apart, and that it shouldn’t matter that he was Riley’s father.
“Dad, I love you and I want you to be part of Riley’s life, but I need you to listen to me,” I say.
Dad looks at me in surprise and I take the dishes from the table into the kitchen, gathering up my nerve and mentally rehearsing for a moment. I hate leaving Dad to do the dishes himself, but I have to get out of here.
“What do you mean?”
“If you can’t drop this thing about me needing to have full custody of Riley, or if you try to pull some kind of legal maneuvering to punish Ethan by taking his child out of his life, I will make sure that you have no contact with her, or with me,” I say firmly.
“What are you saying, Lara?”
“I’m saying that if you want to remain part of Riley’s life, and mine, you are going to have to learn to keep your mouth shut about how much Ethan is to blame. He’s not at all to blame in Alexis’ death, and he’s not the only one to blame in the falling out Alexis and I had.”
I lean in and kiss him on the forehead, and turn around. I grab my purse and hurry out to my car before Dad can come up with anything to say to try to make me stay. I have to get home. I have to think about what the hell my life has become.
Chapter Twenty
ETHAN
I pull into the parking lot at Lara’s apartment building, still tense from my dinner with my parents. By the time I got home, about an hour before, she’d sent me another text, saying that her dad was apparently trying some kind of legal shenanigans. We definitely need to talk about that, and about my parents too.
I find a guest parking spot and get out of my car, heading up to Lara’s unit as quickly as I can. When I get to the door she answers almost as soon as I’m done knocking, looking flushed and almost flustered.
“What happened?” I follow Lara into the apartment and close the door behind me, locking it automatically. Lara goes into the kitchen and pours herself a glass of wine.
“Dad is off his rocker,” she says shortly. “Do you want some? Or a beer?”
“How much wine have you had?”
Lara rolls her eyes. “This is my first glass,” she says. She raises an eyebrow, silently repeating her first invitation.
“I’ll have a beer, thanks.”
She gets me one out of the fridge and hands it to me before taking a big sip of her glass of wine.
“Dad is still blaming you for the accident, first of all,” she says, walking in the direction of the living room. Lara sits down heavily and shakes her head in disbelief.
“I’d kind of gotten that impression,” I say. If I’m honest, I blame myself too, even if there’s no possible way I can think of to have avoided the accident, and Alexis’ death from it. The fact that I was driving haunts me still.
“And he’s apparently been talking to some kind of lawyer who thinks he has a case for me to get full custody of Riley, which, by the way, I still don’t even want,” she says, adding the second part quickly with a hasty look in my direction.
“I know you don’t,” I say, sitting down on the couch about a foot away from her. Lara sighs and half-throws herself backwards on the couch, looking for a moment exactly like she did when we were in high school together. In spite of being the good kid who got the great grades, Lara locked horns with her parents more than once, and seeing her in the middle of a fit of temper like the one she’s in right now is pretty damn familiar.
“I told him that if he can’t manage to keep his mouth shut about you, I’m going to keep Riley out of his life, and I’m going to be out of his life too,” Lara tells me. She sighs and takes another sip of her wine.
“That’s a pretty damn bold stance to take,” I say appreciatively. I think about my parents pressing me about Lara and Nathan and what they might be up to, what scheme they might have come up with, and I almost feel ashamed of them for thinking that Lara’s even capable of meditating a scheme like that.
“It’s the only stance I feel like I could take,” Lara says.
“I still appreciate it,” I tell her, raising my beer to her and taking a sip.
“There’s no reason for you to be out of Riley’s life,” Lara points out.
“I’m sure your dad just… he’s trying to work out how to feel about everything, you know?”
Lara raises an eyebrow at me and sips her wine. “How ironic is it that you’re the one arguing in his favor when he apparently hates you right now?”
I laugh. “I just guess I can see a little bit of what it’s like for him. He’s lost his wife, who died with her daughters still not speaking. Now he’s lost his elder daughter, too, and he’s alone, you know?”
Lara sighs. “I’ve been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt for that reason,” she says. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “After tonight though, I think I need to be firm with him.”
“You really think he’s serious?” I hadn’t even really believed that, not when my parents brought it up and not even when Lara began texting me about her father going off the rails.
“He’s talking to lawyers. That’s serious enough,” Lara says firmly.
“As long as you’re not going along with it, it’s probably not going to go all that far,” I point out. We both sit there silently for a few moments, and I can almost visibly see Lara calming down.
“It’s just frustrating,” she says quietly.
“That I can totally get. I have to say I wouldn’t have expected you to call me, though.” Lara smiles wryly and looks down into her glass of wine, half of it gone already.
“I couldn’t think of anyone else I could talk to about it, honestly,” she says, sighing.
“Still feeling lonely?” The idea that a woman as gorgeous as Lara could be lonely for any amount of time, when I know for a fact that all she’d have to do is crook her finger and give someone a little look and any straight single man with sense and the ability to see would come running, is almost hilarious to me.
“A little,” she admits. She takes another sip of her wine.
I take a longer pull of my beer. Just being around Lara like this, with both of us alone, is enough to remind me of not just what we were like as teenagers dating, but also of what kissing her recently had been like. In spite of her saying before that we can’t make good decisions for Riley together if things get physical between us, I haven’t been able to shake how exciting it had felt to kiss her, and how much I want to kiss her again.
“It’s lonely for me, too,” I say. I can’t quite look at Lara when I say it. It feels so pathetic to admit it. I know it’s not wrong for me to miss Alexis, and I do. I miss her at least some part of every hour of every day since she’s been gone. But more than that, in particular, I miss being with someone.
“We talked about this. We can’t get physical,” Lara says, as if she’s reading my mind.
I smile at her. “Why not? I mean, being serious, really thinking about it. Why not? What is getting physical going to really make happen?” I set down my beer and force myself to meet her gaze right on.
“It’s
going to make everything complicated, and you know it,” Lara says.
“Why does it have to?” I shrug off that idea.
“Because we have history. And Alexis has only been dead for, like, five months. You’re not thinking straight.”
“All I know is that we’ve both had a frustrating night, and for once neither of us is taking care of Riley,” I point out.
“That doesn’t mean we should do anything,” Lara insists.
“You’re lonely and so am I. We’re both tense. Why not?” I lean in closer to her, and I see Lara tense up a little bit, but I can also see that she’s not exactly, at least on a purely physical level, against what’s happening between us.
“Because we shouldn’t,” Lara says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.
“If you can tell me right now, in all honesty, that you don’t want to, I’ll finish my beer, wish you a good night and go home,” I tell her.
The silence drags out between us for a long few seconds, and I start to think she’s actually going to tell me that she doesn’t want it, that I’ve misread all the cues I’ve gotten from her.
“It’s wrong and I shouldn’t,” Lara says quietly. “It’s wrong, but I want to.”
I don’t say anything. Instead I finish leaning in and kiss her, full on the lips. For just an instant Lara tenses, and the next second, when she begins kissing me back, I realize that it was in surprise, not because she’s going to tell me to stop. I feel her move on the couch slightly and open my eyes a crack to see she’s putting her wine glass aside so it doesn’t spill. After that we’re both involved, kissing each other more and more heavily.
I try to take it a little bit slow, to give Lara a chance to tell me to stop, or that she doesn’t want to go any further. I start with my hands on her waist, feeling the tension in her body, and then work up to her breasts gradually, over the top of her shirt. When Lara doesn’t stop me, I cup her breasts a little more obviously, giving them a quick squeeze.