by Lulu Pratt
“Mommy there?”
If seeing Riley looking exactly like Alexis brought back my sense of guilt, her question reminds me even harder of my loss. As much as having sex with Lara a week ago soothed something in me, in the moment, it’s just made me feel the loss of my wife even more when I’m home alone.
“No, sweetie. Mommy won’t be there,” Lara tells her gently. “Mommy is gone.”
Riley considers this, and I have to wonder how long it will be before I can explain to her that her mother isn’t coming back in a way that she’ll actually understand it.
“But Daddy will be there, and Aunt Lara, and your grandparents, and all our friends,” I tell her.
“We should make sure to invite some people who’ve got kids Riley’s age,” Lara remarks.
“I guess,” I say with a shrug. It wasn’t really a huge issue at Riley’s first birthday, but I can see where it would take some of the pressure off the adults.
“She needs to start socializing,” Lara says. “I’ve been taking her to the park sometimes, but she can’t keep up with some of the bigger kids. Besides, she’s going to be starting preschool next year, right?”
“Alexis and I were starting to talk about when she could start,” I say. I don’t mention that we hadn’t really come to a conclusion on that, we’d put it off until Riley would turn two.
“I think if she’s ready at three, it’ll make it a bit easier on everyone,” Lara says.
“We’ll talk about it,” I tell her. I want to get off the topic, but I can’t think of anything that we could possibly talk about that wouldn’t just end up reminding me again and again of the wife I’ve lost.
“What do you want at your party, Riley-baby?” Lara turns my daughter’s attention back to the binder, and I watch her guide Riley through the different choices, pointing out pictures. Riley, of course, isn’t sure specifically what she wants, she doesn’t even really understand what her birthday is going to be. But she gets excited at pictures of face painting and ponies, butterflies and flowers, and Lara takes out a marker to make little squiggles next to what my daughter likes the best.
Once Riley gets bored of this, and goes back to her toys, her sippy cup still firmly in her hands, I know I need to start getting us ready to leave. And we need to make at least one decision about the party.
“How are we going to split the cost?” I look at Lara levelly and she shrugs.
“I figured once we decide between us what budget we want to go with, we can split that in half,” she suggests. She hands me back the binder, flipped to the page that has the ballpark costs for each of the ideas she’s had.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell her. I don’t even really know what Alexis spent on Riley’s first birthday. Alexis planned it almost completely without me, just telling me what part I would play. So many things in my life that Alexis just did and handled, without telling me about it, and now I’m running everything myself, trying to keep things half as organized as she did. Even months later, I feel like I’m treading water, Riley held in my arms, waiting for my feet to touch ground or someone to rescue us.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LARA
Riley is napping in my bedroom, and I’m putting together dinner for her, myself and Ethan, who should be arriving to pick her up in less than an hour, while I’m making phone calls to different people we’ve sent invitations to, trying to see if everyone’s received theirs yet.
We finally agreed on a ballpark budget, and on how we were going to split it, and what we were going to do for Riley’s second birthday. I’d taken on the job of taking care of the invitations, while Ethan insisted on calling the different contractors whose services we’re going to be using for the party — the face painter, the man with the pony, and a few others.
“Hey, it’s Lara. Glad I could get a hold of you, Giselle. I was wondering if you’ve gotten your invitation to Riley’s second birthday party yet?”
I haven’t spoken to Giselle in probably about three years. She was friends with Alexis, someone I knew from her circle but had never really been close to. Of course, she sided with my sister and with Ethan when the big drama exploded.
“Hey, Lara. I just got it in the mail today! You and Ethan are throwing the party together?” I can hear the tone in Giselle’s voice, and I’m not sure if it’s because she doesn’t think that it’s right for Ethan and me to be working together, or perhaps something else.
“Yeah, we figured it would be easiest that way,” I tell her.
“Well, as long as it’s all right if I can bring Logan and Charlene, I’m happy to come,” Giselle says.
I remember, fleetingly, that Giselle had twins sometime shortly after my sister gave birth. It had been in one of the phone calls Mom made to me, while I stayed away from my family.
“Absolutely,” I tell her. It’ll be good to have some kids around who Riley can play with.
“Are you planning anything in particular for the grownups? I could bring some wine with me,” Giselle says.
I laugh. “I think I’ve got that covered. Not enough for anyone to get drunk, but some grown-up punch,” I say.
“Good to know. I can tell you that everyone who’s going to be there with kids is going to need it, but then, you’re helping raise Riley now, right?”
I nod, even though I know Giselle can’t see me, and stand up to stir the soup I’ve got going for dinner. It’s starting to get cooler, and I think it’s going to be a really cold winter this year, so soup and sandwiches sounded like a great meal for all of us.
“Yeah, Alexis insisted on it in her will, so Ethan and I are working it out,” I say absently. I really just want to get off the phone and call the next person I need to check on, but I know that would be rude.
“Must be stirring up a lot of feelings between the two of you… I mean… he did get with you first,” Giselle says. I stop in the middle of what I’m doing and stare at my phone for a moment.
“I mean, we’re dealing with it,” I say once I have the ability to speak again.
“It’d be easy for the two of you to get back together… I mean… you’re spending so much time with each other now… I guess,” Giselle points out.
I thought I couldn’t be more stunned, but here I am.
“I mean, we’re not planning on anything like that at all, we’re just kind of moving past our history and doing our best for Riley,” I say. I need to get Giselle off the phone quickly, and a knock at my door gives me the perfect excuse.
“I just thought…. it would be good for everyone,” Giselle says, even as I start to try to get her off the phone.
“Sorry, Giselle, that’s the door. It’s probably Ethan here to pick up Riley,” I tell her. “I need to make sure dinner’s done for all of us, too. But thanks! And send me the RSVP if you can.” I say goodbye and end the call, shoving my phone in my pocket to go get the door before Ethan can knock again and wake up Riley.
“You look like you’re halfway out of your mind,” Ethan says as he comes in.
“Sorry, just trying to do three things at once,” I tell him, turning back to the stove so he can’t tell how flustered I am. Surely Giselle is the only person in the world who thinks that Ethan and I have any shot of getting back together. Surely, she’s just being weird, or trying to dig for some good gossip.
“I’ll go get Riley in a minute. Why don’t you sit down?” I stir the soup I’ve made and check on the sandwiches in their packets in the oven. I can’t help but feel a little guilty. Ethan and I did, after all, have sex. It’s the kind of thing that I should never have allowed to happen, and I’ve tried to steer clear of any kind of intimacy with him since then, even in my thoughts.
Did Ethan tell anyone about it? Does Giselle know? Was that why she made that suggestion? I can’t believe that Ethan would go around talking about having sex with me. He wasn’t the type even when we were together, and I can’t imagine that he’d want to make himself look like he was getting over Alexis too quickly
by admitting we’d hooked up. I’ll have to see if anyone else thinks that Ethan and I are in the process of getting back together.
“I think everything’s just about done. Do you want a cup of coffee?” I turn off the oven and the stove and pull out the sandwiches to cool a bit before turning my attention onto Ethan, hopefully looking more composed.
“Coffee would be great,” he says. I take a deep breath and try to focus on what’s going on around me, instead of Giselle.
“I’ve been calling to make sure everyone’s getting their invitations,” I say absently, as I pour Ethan and myself both some coffee and get Riley’s dinnertime drink for her.
“I actually booked the face painter and the pony guy during my break today,” Ethan tells me.
I nod my appreciation. “So, this is coming together pretty well,” I say, finally sitting down. I need a few minutes to breathe before I deal with Riley and dinner.
“What’s going on? You look like you’re just a couple of minutes away from panic,” Ethan says, looking me over.
“Nothing big,” I say, shaking my head. I won’t — I can’t — tell him why I’m so on edge.
“Just remember, it’s not going to ruin Riley’s life if her second birthday hits some snags,” Ethan tells me, grinning. He takes a sip of his coffee and rises to his feet.
“She’s got another ten minutes or so on her nap,” I tell him.
Ethan shrugs. “It won’t make a huge difference, besides, I can take ten minutes waking her up.” He leaves the room and I try to regain my composure, putting everything about what Giselle said out of my mind. There was some tiny part of my brain that heard her assertion that Ethan and I would get back together with a kind of joy. But that was the part of me that had never quite gotten over the breakup, that couldn’t stand the thought of being without him, surely. I can’t listen to that teeny part of myself.
The much bigger part of me is glad that I laid down the boundary that I did after Ethan and I had sex. I need to keep my head clear. I need to keep my feelings what they should be, not just for Riley’s sake but for my own.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ETHAN
Lara and I are out to dinner. Nathan has Riley for the night, as part of my parents’ and his insistence that Lara and I both get an occasional break from minding Riley. The party is still two weeks away, but it’s more or less prepared. As prepared as it’s going to get, anyway, until the day of.
“I’ve gotten just about all the RSVPs,” Lara says, taking a sip of her sangria. We’ve both, maybe without thinking about it, avoided drinking alcohol since the time we had sex. Neither of us was drunk that night, but there’s something about drinking that sort of lowers inhibitions, and I don’t think either one of us is anxious to repeat that.
“All the stuff is booked. I think I’ve got the final order for the cake to send,” I say.
Lara wanted to do the cake herself, but I talked her out of it, saying that I’d foot the bill for the whole thing if I had to. Alexis had insisted on making the cake for Riley’s first birthday. I can still remember, all too clearly, how stressed out it made her when she couldn’t get it perfect, and how many tears she cried over it until she got it as right as it could be. That’s not an experience I want to repeat, even if I have my doubts that Lara would get that stressed, or that upset.
“What flavor did you end up choosing?”
I grin. The cake is a little nod to Alexis, not much of one, but enough that people who know her well will appreciate it.
“Strawberry-vanilla,” I say.
Lara’s eyes widen, and I know she’s caught it, but I hope she’s okay with it.
“I think that’s great,” she says.
I’d tasted the sample cake at the bakery, a simple vanilla cake with buttercream and strawberry preserves, and it reminded me of the wedding cake that Alexis and I had had. It was simple, and it was delicious, and it had given me one of the first really pleasant reminders that I’d had of Alexis since the terrible night she’d passed.
“It’ll be good to have a little… not a tribute, but at least something,” I say. I feel awkward about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Lara sets aside her sangria and the waiter comes with our appetizer before she can say anything. We both thank the guy serving us, and Lara grabs a fried mushroom out of the basket.
“That makes sense,” she says quietly.
“If it bothers you, I can have them change it,” I say.
Lara shakes her head.
“No, I just wasn’t even thinking about it. People will think it’s weird if we don’t have any kind of reference to Alexis at the party,” Lara says.
“Yeah,” I agree. I hadn’t even thought about that in the moment that I’d told the bakery what I wanted. I’d just wanted it, for my own reasons. I’d wanted something that I could have as a reminder of the mother to my daughter.
“It should be a nice party,” Lara points out.
I nod my agreement and pluck a fried pickle out of the appetizer basket, dip it in some horseradish ranch, and pop it in my mouth.
“I don’t think Alexis could have planned anything better,” I suggest.
Lara winces, it lasts less than a second, just long enough to make me wonder if I’ve imagined it, and then she smiles.
“I’m glad that I’ll be around for it, that I won’t miss it the way I did her first birthday,” Lara says.
“You know… Alexis was sure, when she had Riley, that you’d come around eventually,” I tell her cautiously.
“She was?” Lara looks up and takes another quick sip of her sangria, following it with a longer sip of her water.
“She was really…” I press my lips together. We’re getting into dangerous territory. No matter how things have changed, I can’t quite fight the lingering sense that all along, so much of the pain my wife, and I, went through could have been avoided.
“If we’re going to talk about it, we might as well actually talk about it,” Lara says with a sigh.
“She never stopped wanting to mend the breach,” I tell Lara.
“She shouldn’t have caused one in the first place,” Lara says tartly. She sighs. “I know, I know.”
“She didn’t intend to hurt your feelings, and neither did I,” I point out.
“We’ve been over this,” Lara says, looking at me levelly.
“The important thing is this, from pretty much the moment you cut her off, she wanted to be… she wanted to get close to you again. She said it was wrong for you to never be around the family.”
Lara shrugs. “I didn’t want to be the cause of a bunch of drama,” she says.
“You created drama by insisting on never coming to any family events,” I counter, and I can hear the bitterness in my own voice. How many nights did I have to deal with Alexis crying because her mother informed her over the phone that yet again, Lara wasn’t going to be there? Or that she’d called Lara and gotten no answer, not even voice mail?
“I would have created much more drama if I’d made myself go,” Lara insists.
“How?” I pop a fried mushroom into my mouth and ignore the stinging burn of it as the hot liquid squirts out.
“Every time I would have seen the two of you together it would have ended up in a fight. Do you really think it would have been good for anyone, especially Riley, for that to happen?”
I roll my eyes at that argument.
“You managed not to start a fight with us at Thanksgiving or Christmas last year,” I point out.
“Only because I was trying really hard, and only because I didn’t pay any attention to either of you,” Lara counters. She takes a deep breath and exhales on a sigh.
“You could have done it before,” I say.
Lara shakes her head.
“I couldn’t have. It was because Mom was dead, and Dad was desperate, and all that,” she says. She sighs again and snags a deep-fried pickle.
“So, you didn’t want to cause level-ten drama, and
instead just caused constant level-seven drama,” I say bitterly.
Lara scowls at me. “Do you have any idea how badly the two of you hurt me? Really and truly. You’re going on about how much Alexis was in pain, but do you even realize how bad it was for me?”
“We went over this. You broke up with me. What I do after that isn’t anything to do with you,” I say firmly. “And it definitely doesn’t have to do with Alexis.”
Lara sighs and shakes her head. “It was like being stabbed. It really felt that way. When I left the house that day… it felt as if I had two knives in my back. I wasn’t even sure I could breathe. Do you really think I should have been forced to go through that every time I went to a family gathering?”
I try to imagine it. As much as Alexis’ pain over losing her sister got to me, I have to admit that neither of us, really, ever thought that Lara had really, truly been hurt. Or at least, I didn’t. I’d thought that Lara was just being petty, that she was bitter and resentful. That she was trying to make Alexis pay.
Even now I can’t quite believe that it could have possibly hurt Lara that much to see her ex-boyfriend with her sister. I can’t imagine it, really. But obviously she believes it.
“We wanted to reconnect with you all along. Alexis especially,” I say.
“Well, want in one hand, spit in the other. I think you wanted the impossible…” Lara smiles wryly, and we both lapse into silence.
“Let’s talk about something else for a while,” I suggest.
Lara agrees, and we start talking about Riley’s new words, about the traffic on the expressway, about anything — anything, except the complicated mess that our relationships have become.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LARA
“You can set up your station right over there in the shade,” I tell the face-painter. I figure that since all her patrons, the guests at Riley’s party, are going to be sitting for a long time, the shade will be a better idea. It’s unseasonably warm for fall, and with the first spate of autumn rain thankfully behind us, it’s bright and sunny for Riley’s party.