Never

by Lulu Pratt

  “I hope we can get some kind of routine set up pretty quickly,” Ethan says.

  “Yeah, that’s what would be best for Riley,” I agree, distracting my niece for a few moments with one of her toys while Dad’s getting her a cookie.

  Looking at the darling toddler girl, I can’t help but remember my first reaction to finding out her name. I take a deep breath to keep myself from crying. I’d wanted to rip the hair out of my own head when I’d gotten the news.

  Before we’d broken up, Ethan and I had actually talked about our future, about settling down and having kids like high-school sweethearts do, about what we wanted to do with our lives. Ethan had still had no clue what he would do for work, but he’d told me that he wanted to name our first daughter, if we had any girls, Riley, and I’d loved the name even after we’d broken up. It had felt like an even bigger betrayal when I’d learned that my sister was going to name my niece the name that Ethan and I had planned for our daughter.

  “I want you to know, I don’t expect you to financially contribute or anything,” Ethan says, and I look up, confused.

  “I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

  “I just, I mean, the thing with you taking care of Riley. It’s not about money. I thought you should know.”

  I shrug. “Ethan, I figured that if it was about money, there’d be something more specific in the will,” I tell him. But in truth, I hadn’t thought about it at all. I hadn’t even imagined what an expense a baby would be, especially now that Riley would need daycare.

  “I can still support her financially,” Ethan says firmly.

  I look at him again. I don’t want to have an argument with him under my father’s roof, not when I know Dad is still gunning for me to take full custody of my niece.

  “I believe you,” I say, holding his gaze to signal as best as I can that the discussion on that issue is over. I can’t wait to be back home, away from all this stress.

  Chapter Nine

  Ethan

  I get up early to see Lara off, hoping against hope that Riley will stay asleep. I’d decided the night before that I needed to get myself and my daughter out from under Nathan’s roof as quickly as possible after my sister-in-law leaves. It’s clear to me that in spite of his insistence that Riley and I stay for a few days, Nathan’s still no fan of me.

  “Are you seriously putting together a full breakfast for everyone?”

  Lara looks up from the stove and gives me a weak smile. Her father isn’t even awake yet.

  “I figured that would make everything easier,” she says with a shrug. She frowns slightly. “What are you doing up?”

  “I think I’m going to head out a few hours after you leave,” I say.

  Lara thinks about this for a moment and then nods. “That makes sense,” she says.

  “You’re sure that you’re really okay with this,” I say, almost making it a question. There’s so much that’s gone unspoken between the two of us for the past few days, and I don’t even know how to get on the right topic. I don’t even know how to feel about the woman currently standing in my fatherin-law’s kitchen stirring a pan of scrambled eggs.

  “I’m really okay with this,” Lara says, not quite looking at me. I can’t believe that neither Alexis nor I really thought about the burden that we were going to be putting on Lara, asking her to be part of Riley’s life in the event that Alexis died. Of course, we thought that there was no real chance of it ever coming up, it was supposed to almost be symbolic.

  “I know you don’t really want to have anything to do with me, but we’re going to have to talk to each other a lot to make this work,” I point out, taking a seat at the breakfast bar.

  Lara nods her head slightly from side to side, her back to me.

  “I know,” Lara says quietly. The nightgown she has on falls to her knees, and her dark hair is pulled back into a neat little bun, and it reminds me of the way she was in high school. That was her no-nonsense hair style, the way she wore her hair when she was going for a big study-binge or trying to write a paper, so it wouldn’t get in her way.

  “Maybe we should talk about our…” I can’t make myself finish the sentence.

  Lara turns around and looks me dead in the eye, and shakes her head.

  “No, we shouldn’t talk about it at all,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  Lara sighs. “Because right now you’re hurting, I’m hurting, and the only thing that matters is making sure Riley gets through this without being like, permanently scarred or something. At least as much as we can,” Lara says.

  “But if things are tense between us, how is that going to help her?”

  Lara shakes her head and turns her back on me once more, presiding over the stove. I can see a plate of pan-fried sausage patties on the counter next to her, and I wonder just how long she’s been awake.

  “We need to just… forget the whole situation. We need to not talk about it,” Lara says, barely glancing over her shoulder at me.

  “Are you even able to do that?” I don’t even know if I’m able to. I don’t know if I can ever forgive the fact that Lara pushed Alexis out of her life.

  “It’ll be a lot easier to do now,” Lara says with a voice so dry a desert would envy it.

  “Are you glad?” The idea of it brings up a wave of shocked anger and I almost want to take back whatever it was that Alexis wanted, I almost want to go to the probate lawyer and tell him that we need to undo the will.

  “No, I’m not glad,” Lara says.

  “What, then?”

  I hear her take a deep breath and exhale on a sigh, see her shoulders rise and fall with it.

  “Whatever the issue is between us, it’s in the past, and Riley should never, ever, know about it,” Lara says quietly.

  “I guess that makes sense,” I say.

  “She shouldn’t even know we ever had a relationship,” Lara tells me and looks over her shoulder at me.

  “Why not?”

  Lara rolls her eyes. “Because that will just make everything a hundred times more complicated, once she’s old enough to understand it,” she explains. “It’s just better to pretend that it never happened, and it’ll be easier to pretend that it never happened if we never talk about it again.”

  I can see her point, but at the same time, I can’t see any way for us to move forward without at least addressing the situation, without ever hashing out everything that happened. On the other hand, what possible good will it do either of us right now? Everything is still so raw, everything hurts so much, that there’s no way that either of us can have a good conversation about it.

  Before I can argue the point any more, I hear Nathan coming out of the master bedroom and down the stairs, and I know better than to try to keep going at Lara with him in the room. I start thinking about how I can get my daughter and myself out of my fatherin-law’s house without sounding rude.

  Chapter Ten

  Lara

  “My boss just confirmed that I can work from home on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, at least for the next six months,” I tell Ethan over the phone as I get into my apartment.

  I feel weird that I have his number in my phone once again, but we agreed before I left that it was necessary. I feel exhausted to my bones from the long day I’ve just had. I went directly from my father’s house to work, and had to play catch-up on four different projects that had been pending when my sister died.

  “That just leaves Monday and Friday for me. That’s amazing,” Ethan says.

  “And I think I remember you said your parents can take Riley a couple of days a week,” I point out, setting down my purse and locking the door behind me. My apartment feels weird after the long stay at my dad’s house and the hotel before it.

  “Yeah, that’ll work out kind of perfectly,” Ethan agrees.

  I kick off my shoes and sit down on my couch, looking around my living room. There’s a stale smell that I don’t like, and I know that in spite of how tired I
am, I’m probably going to end up cleaning the whole little place before I finally get to sleep.

  “How did you fare at your job?”

  I have to admit that I’m kind of shocked to find out that Ethan is so stable and dependable, apparently. The major reason I’d broken up with him was that he hadn’t had any clue what he wanted to do with his life. He hadn’t had the slightest idea of what kind of career he was going to go for, and even more to the point he had lied to me about applying to schools.

  “I can work my schedule around a bit,” Ethan says.

  “That’s good,” I tell him.

  Suddenly the whole thing seems completely overwhelming, and I’m wondering if Alexis hadn’t decided to make her request in the will more out of a desire to curse me than to actually make some kind of gesture of peace.

  “I’m really grateful that you’re working your schedule the way you are,” Ethan says.

  I shrug, even though, obviously, he can’t see me. “I’m a good employee, and everyone understands it’s a family thing,” I explain. My boss had been dropping hints about me settling down for months, not knowing the whole situation with my sister and me and my ex-boyfriend, so I privately kind of think she figures that Riley will somehow spur me to have what she calls a “real life.”

  “Yeah, my boss was pretty chill about it. I have a suspicion that if I don’t make this work though, he’ll find someone else,” Ethan admits.

  I consider that. An electrician probably has a lot more need to be on-site than a graphic designer and web developer. I can do my job pretty much anywhere I have electricity and internet access.

  “We’ll make it work for her,” I say. I feel more tired than ever. “Hey, I need to take care of some things around the house and I’m beat. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I won’t be able to actually put my new schedule into effect for a week. The whole business of being out of town for so long has put a bunch of things out of joint in the office, and I need to work through the weekend and be in the office all week to get caught up.

  “Oh, I totally get it. The house here’s a wreck,” Ethan says.

  I can only imagine. I doubt my sister or her husband had been thinking much about cleaning the house before the car accident, and there hasn’t been much time since then for any cleaning to get done.

  “I’ll get in touch with you and we’ll figure something out for next weekend,” I tell him.

  Ethan agrees, and I hang up the call, letting the phone almost fall out of my hand onto the couch. I rub at my eyes and yawn, trying to work up the energy to begin cleaning. I know that if I don’t get it started, I’ll sit around feeling sorry for myself and not sleeping.

  It doesn’t take as long as I thought it would, and after about an hour and a half, I’m in the shower, cleaning the residue from the different cleaners off my skin along with the dried sweat and the stress of the day. As I stand under the flow of hot water, it hits me that the biggest single problem with my apartment is something that no amount of cleaning will fix — it feels empty. Even with me in it.

  I tell myself that since Riley will start being in the apartment three days a week, that won’t be an issue for very long, and then I start thinking about all that I’m going to have to do to baby-proof the place. That makes my tired brain focus on the fact that I need to find a secure hidden place to put away the couple of sex toys I own, where Riley won’t ever find them, and I have to laugh.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ethan

  I hand Riley her doll back to keep her from fussing as we wait for Lara to get to the restaurant we agreed to meet at to discuss how we’re going to make things work between us. Part of me thinks it would be easier in some respects to have had this meeting at one of our houses, but as I can see why it would be weird for her, it’s probably for the best to meet somewhere public.

  It’s been a stressful week between arranging for Riley’s care and trying to take care of things at home without Alexis there. While part of me is glad to have the excuse of a break on the weekend, a lunch with Lara, even if I know it’s going to be strained and uncomfortable, another part of me wishes that she could have already taken on her role in helping raise my daughter.

  “Hey, sorry, I got caught on a phone call,” Lara says as she walks up to the table I’ve taken outside.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I say, gesturing to the other seat at the table.

  “Hey Riley-baby! How’s my favorite girl?” Lara’s attention is all on my daughter, and I can’t help but smile for what seems like the first time that day. I can remember the first time Alexis and I saw Lara after she cut us out of her life. She’d only barely agreed to come to her dad’s house for Thanksgiving the year before, after her mother died, and only because her father was so insistent on it.

  And when she’d met Riley for the first time I’d seen it click. I’d seen it happen. All the tension melted out of her and even though she ignored Alexis and me the whole visit, she was all about our little baby girl. Alexis had gone on and on to anyone who would listen about how perfect it was that Riley would bring the family back together, that Lara was just amazing with our little girl.

  “Riley cries even less with Lara than she does with me!” I can hear Alexis in my mind, gushing to the friends we still had from high school, the ones who’d sided with us instead of Lara. I have no idea if Lara would have eventually come around to forgiving Alexis for falling pregnant with our child, but when Alexis had suggested making her sister Riley’s guardian along with me in her will, I’d gone along with it because I’d seen right from the start how much my sister-in-law loved my daughter.

  “What can I get you folks?”

  I grab the menu on the table in front of me and try to remember what it was I wanted before Lara arrived.

  “I think I need a glass of water and maybe a cup of coffee to start,” Lara says, and I nod along that I’d like the same.

  “Pot of coffee for the table?” I glance up, the waitress looks a little like Alexis. At least, how Alexis looked when we first started dating, with blonde hair and blue eyes and the cute look that all high-school girls seem to have, and for a second that shakes me. Although I am getting used to this new normal, my life without Alexis, I still find myself thinking of her all time. For a few moments yesterday I forgot she was dead. When it hit me, I just stood there numb. I wanted to cry but I think I have no more tears left.

  I snap to the present and remembered that the waitress was waiting for me to say something.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’d be great,” I tell her.

  “Any idea if you’d like an appetizer?” She looks from me to Lara and then at Riley. “Maybe something for this beautiful little girl?”

  “If you’ve got maybe some chicken fingers, something like that?” I know I looked at the menu, and I know I picked something out for Riley while I was waiting for Lara, but all of that is completely out of my head how.

  “Right here,” the waitress says, leaning in and pointing out the little squared-off section on the menu marked “For Kids.” I glance over it quickly — there’s not much to choose from, thankfully.

  “Yeah! Good. Uh, chicken fingers, that sounds good, and the fruit cup,” I say. What the hell is wrong with me? I try to shake off how stupid my brain has suddenly gotten.

  “I’d love the Nicoise salad,” Lara says.

  “No appetizer then?”

  I search the menu to try to find the appetizers, and finally begin to calm down, without even really remembering why I was even thrown in the first place.

  “The chips and dip sampler sounds good to me,” I say, barely looking up. I need to focus.

  “I’d be fine with that,” Lara says.

  I glance at her for just a second, and she looked so completely in control of everything, reaching over to distract Riley with another of the toys I brought with us, that it just underscores how badly I’ve been dealing with just two weeks of being Riley’s only parent. Even with my parents’ help, it’s been one thing
after the other.

  “And I’ll have the steak sandwich,” I tell the waitress, handing her my menu.

  “Very good choices,” the waitress says, making a note. “I’ll bring you a pot of coffee and a carafe of water, and get this pretty little thing’s food out as quickly as possible.” She bounces off and some more of the pressure I’ve been feeling goes away.

  “How are you doing, Ethan?” Lara asks.

  “It’s been an interesting week,” I say, as soon as the waitress is gone.

  “Yeah, for me, too,” Lara says quietly, and I can hear the tiredness in her voice.

  Riley starts playing with two of her toys and she’s finally distracted enough that Lara and I can actually start talking.

  “How are we going to make this work? I mean, I know you got the approval to work from home three days a week, or whatever…”

  “Right. Yeah. So, I worked it out with my bosses during the week, and I’ve got everything set up at the apartment to make it happen,” Lara says.

  “I’ve got some freedom in my schedule too,” I tell her. It took a lot of politicking with my boss, and a lot of poor-me talk, but I convinced the company I work for to give me Fridays off in exchange for me working a few extra hours the rest of the week.

  “So, I guess I can pick her up from your place, or you can drop her off with me. Whichever works better,” Lara suggests.

  We talk about the details, and the waitress brings the chips and dip platter, there’s some kind of spicy one that’s supposed to go with the sweet potato chips, a creamy onion one that goes with blue potato chips, and something else that I don’t even know. She brings Riley’s food at the same time and I break up the chicken fingers into smaller bites, while Lara gives her some chips without the dips.