The Night Olivia Fell

by Christina McDonald

  Up close she didn’t look quite as much like me as I’d thought. Even though her eyes were the exact same shade of green as mine, hers were slightly wider spaced. The dimple in her chin wasn’t as pronounced as mine, her cheekbones not as sharp, her nose a little smaller. Still, she made me uncomfortable.

  She’d dried her hands, then leaned casually against the sink.

  “I’m Kendall Montgomery,” she said. She flipped her long blond hair over one shoulder in that way bitchy rich girls did.

  “I’m Olivia,” I replied.

  There was an awkward pause. “My dad’s dead,” I blurted, afraid she was going to say something about how alike we looked. “Just in case you thought we might be related. And there’s no way we have the same mom.”

  “That’s too bad.” She smirked. “My parents are assholes. It’d be awesome if I could replace them.”

  I laughed, a rush of surprised air bursting out of me. At least I was always glad my mom was my mom. Her entire life was dedicated to me. Sometimes a bit too much.

  “Where do you live?” she asked.

  “Portage Point. It’s this tiny town just south of—”

  “I know Portage Point. That’s where my mom’s from.”

  There was a heavy silence as we both realized what she’d said.

  “Your mom?” My palms suddenly felt hot and damp.

  “Well, not from. . . .” She hesitated. “That’s where she lived when she was in high school, I guess.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Anyway,” Kendall said, heading for the door, “it was nice meeting you, Olivia.”

  “Yeah, you too. See you around.”

  She’d waved, a little flick of her fingers, and left.

  On the bench, I turned to Madison and shook my head. “Naww. I don’t think I’ll look her up. What would be the point? I already know she isn’t related to me.”

  “You don’t know know that,” Madison countered.

  I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what if you have a long-lost dad out there and a whole other family? What if your mom had, like, some illicit affair or something?”

  The idea was so ridiculous I laughed out loud. I couldn’t imagine my mom having some passionate affair. She was like a study in self control—she frowned but never yelled; she smiled but never laughed too loud; her makeup was always lightly done, her clothes neatly ironed.

  Mom was as steady as a statue. There was none of that flighty, hyper-gossipy vibe that some of my friends’ moms had. She was the type of mom who was always there for me, ready with a tissue if I needed to cry or sitting in the stands cheering me on at swim meets.

  “Yeah, right!” I snorted. “She wouldn’t know how to flirt, let alone have an affair. Plus, she’d be all worried she’d get an STD or something.”

  Madison laughed too. “Okay, maybe that girl’s your dad’s daughter.”

  “My dad’s dead, Mad.”

  “I know, but maybe he had another family before he died? Or he was cheating on your mom? Or”—she widened her eyes dramatically—“maybe he isn’t dead.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You really need to lay off the soap operas.”

  “Get woke, Olivia. You’re so naïve. Sometimes people lie, and you don’t even know why,” Madison replied.

  I flinched as the insult hit me. “I really don’t think my mom would lie to me about my dad.”

  “How do you know? Sometimes the truth hurts.”

  “So do lies,” I said under my breath.

  × × ×

  That night, Mom came home with an armful of groceries and announced she was going to cook. I cringed. Martha Stewart she was not. Usually her cooking experiments ended in disaster.

  Once she tried to bake these Cornish game hens with this gross, gloopy sauce, but she turned the oven on broil instead of bake. Within a half hour the whole house was filled with a smoke so thick you could almost chew it.

  I wished we could just order pizza.

  “So, what’re we making?” I put my game face on and started unpacking ingredients from the paper bags. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or anything.

  “Spaghetti bolognese.” She reached for the other bag and pulled out fresh basil, a bulb of garlic, an onion, one carrot.

  I smiled. Mom hated carrots, but I loved them. She always got one and cooked it up to put on the side for me.

  “Okay, I’ve got a good one,” she said, peeling the skin from an onion. “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Puma.”

  “Puma who?”

  “Hurry up or I’ll puma pants.”

  “Eww, yuck, Mom!” I laughed. “That’s totally gross!”

  She chuckled. “Thought you’d enjoy that.”

  “So. What’s the occasion?” I waved at the ingredients.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged and laughed. “I’m off work early, and you’re going to be a senior in high school pretty soon, and I’m just so proud of my girl.” She pulled me in for a hug and kissed me on the forehead.

  My mom was a toucher. She patted my shoulders, stroked my hair, kissed my cheek, hugged me. She held my hand when we crossed the road until I was ten and started getting teased about it. Once I asked her why she always touched me and she said, “I guess it makes me feel more connected to you.”

  Sometimes it felt weird hugging my mom, like I was too old for hugs, but it was nice, too.

  “How was your day?” she asked as I minced garlic.

  “Good. I got an A on my history test, and we finished the layout for the yearbook.”

  She’d stopped chopping onion and looked at me intently. She had this way about her where she really listened, even to the most trivial things.

  Soon the scent of garlic and onion sizzling in butter mingled with the rich smell of hamburger. The diced carrot was boiling in a small pot on the stove. Mom popped the french stick in the oven to warm, and we piled our plates high with pasta and took them to the dining room table.

  “Mom.” I dumped my carrots over my sauce and stirred them in, trying to seem casual. “Can I ask you some stuff about my dad?”

  A noodle slid off the edge of Mom’s fork and landed with a soft plop on her plate. She stabbed at it and cleared her voice.

  “Sure, sweetie. What do you want to know?”

  “Well . . .” My mind whirled.

  Usually she didn’t want to talk. Not that I asked often. She’d always get this funny frozen half-smile on her face, like she was in pain. But since seeing that girl Kendall, I don’t know, I guess it got me thinking more about him.

  “How far along with me were you when he died?”

  Mom took another bite of her pasta and screwed up her face into her thinky look—lips twisted to one side, eyebrows down, eyes up.

  “Only a few weeks. I never got the chance to tell him.”

  “Was he hot?” I smiled slyly. “You know, when you first met him, did you get all fluttery inside?”

  “Very!” She fanned her face with her hand and laughed. “He made my knees weak. All that blond hair and those brown eyes. I could just fall into them.”

  I paused, my brain jamming on that one word. “Brown?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stared at her hard. She’d told me before that his eyes were green, just like mine. I remembered the day, the very moment she said it. I’d held that nugget of information in my heart since I was thirteen, proof that I was connected to the father I never met in some tangible way.

  I waited for her to retract it, to assure me she wasn’t lying. But she didn’t.

  I stared at her, scrambling to untangle the threads overloading my brain.

  “Did he have, like, another family?” I asked finally.

  Late-afternoon sunlight flooded in through the open curtains and beamed across the dining room table. The light fell on Mom’s face, landing in lines carved so deep she suddenly looked twenty years older.

  Mom b
urst out laughing. “No, of course not! What on earth gave you that idea?”

  I watched her carefully, looking for any cracks.

  “Well, like, maybe I have brothers or sisters out there I don’t know about.”

  For a moment the prospect of her reply opened under me like a gaping hole. What she said now, I knew, could change everything.

  Suddenly she jumped up, eyes wide. “Oh my goodness! The bread!”

  She threw the oven open and a cloud of black, acrid smoke billowed out. I slipped the oven mitts on and grabbed the charred french stick, tossing it in the garbage while Mom threw open the sliding glass door and started fanning the air with a kitchen towel. Chilly spring air blew through the house, dissipating the smoke. But the bitter smell of something burning remained.

  Mom pushed at a lock of blond hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I guess we won’t be having bread with our pasta.”

  “It’s okay. It wouldn’t be a homemade dinner if we didn’t burn something,” I joked.

  She laughed sheepishly. “Why don’t you tell me about school? Not too long and you’ll be a senior. How does that feel?”

  Her words tumbled out too fast, her voice edgy as a serrated knife.

  “Mom, you haven’t answered my question. Did my dad have other kids?”

  A puff of clouds rolled over the sun, shifting the light and casting sporadic shadows over Mom’s face. I felt a quiver in the air, a vibration like electricity that weaved its way through the burnt toast smell.

  Mom met my gaze, her blue eyes innocent. “Nope,” she said. “Your dad died before he even knew about you and he most certainly didn’t have any other children.”

  I stared at her smooth face, trying to get a handle on the emotions rolling through me: fear, panic, confusion, anger. Mostly anger, because something told me she was lying.

  A dark horror slid into my heart. I’d always trusted my mom. Trusted everything she said, obeyed everything she told me to do. I’d never thought twice about questioning her.

  But now I felt that trust disappearing like evaporating mist. If she could lie to me about something as fundamental as this, what else had she kept from me?

  5

  * * *

  ABI

  october

  As the hours bled into each other, I alternated between numbness and sorrow, each as intense and debilitating as the other.

  “I need to know what happened,” I said to Sarah.

  She was so still, barely moving since we’d settled in the family waiting room the doctors gave us. I couldn’t hold still, pacing the floor, counting the ceiling tiles, pouring water from one cup to another. I needed to move, to do something. My analytical brain needed to make sense of things, to question the facts and frame the story, to make the columns align, the numbers add up.

  “You should go home. Get some rest,” she replied.

  I glared at her. “I’m not going anywhere.” Olivia and I were linked by birth, by life. I wouldn’t leave her in death.

  More time passed. “Why does she have bruises on her arms?” I asked Sarah, slamming an empty cup to the ground. I sucked my lips over my teeth, trying to steady myself. “Do you think somebody hurt her?”

  Sarah looked startled. “I don’t know. The police—they’ll investigate.”

  Tears tumbled down my cheeks, sliding into the hollow of my neck. I could barely breathe, whimpers racking my body as I sank into a chair. Sarah came to me, slid her arms around my shoulders. We held each other like that for a long time, our bodies shaking.

  “I wanted to keep her safe!” I sobbed.

  “This isn’t your fault, Abi,” she replied, her voice raw with pain.

  I pulled away and looked into her reddened eyes.

  “What if it is?”

  × × ×

  Night washed over Olivia’s room. The hospital lights turned on one by one, and still I didn’t move from my seat next to her bed, the intermittent bleeps and swooshes keeping Olivia connected to this world a bizarre lullaby to my pain. Despair swirled inside me, a relentless fog that made me incapable of anything: eating, drinking, moving.

  I stared, lost, at the bruises circling Olivia’s wrists. They were ringed with blue and purple, as if someone had grabbed her, staining her beautiful skin with the color of anger.

  I laid my forehead on the edge of her bed, grateful to be alone with her. All day the doctors had encouraged me to go home, get some rest. Sarah had brought me a ham sandwich, left untouched and eventually tipped into the garbage, and then relentless cups of coffee. But it just made me need to pee, and I didn’t want to leave Olivia. So I stopped drinking altogether.

  My head pounded from tears and dehydration, but I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I felt like I was living inside a tear in the fabric of time, the real world outside on pause.

  Two days had passed since my dash to Olivia’s broken body, time shuffling past with excruciating slowness. More doctors trundled in, more reports, another CT scan, an ultrasound showing a fetal heartbeat. Cautionary whispers that she might miscarry and more whispers that if her heart held up long enough, they could save the baby.

  Save the baby? I wanted them to save my baby.

  I slept in fits and spurts, my forehead pressed against Olivia’s stomach. Night inched by. Alarm bells rang intermittently, and I imagined the people being told their loved one hadn’t made it. I imagined what would happen when it was Olivia’s turn.

  I awoke with a start when somebody shook my shoulder.

  “Mrs. Knight?” Dr. Griffith held a cup of water out to me. “Why don’t you have a drink?”

  “It’s Miss,” I corrected him. “I’m not married.” My voice rasped, my throat barren of any moisture. But still I refused the water.

  He slid a chair across the room and sat next to me, the cup clasped between both hands. “Miss Knight. You need to take care of yourself. You need to eat, drink, get some rest.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I burst out. Pain ripped through me, undiminished by the passing hours, and I pressed my fingers hard into my temples.

  “You have a long road ahead of you.” He glanced at Olivia. “All three of you.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, tried to lick my cracked lips.

  “Olivia isn’t coming back,” he said gently. “But there’s a chance your grandchild could survive.” It hurt him to say this, I could tell by the tightening of his eyes, and it made me like him. Or at least respect him.

  “How long?” I finally said.

  “How long what?”

  “How long does Olivia have to be on life support for the baby—” I broke off, the words skewering my heart.

  “We’d aim to get her to thirty-two weeks’ gestation.”

  I did the math quickly. Eighteen more weeks on life support.

  “Is it possible?”

  Dr. Griffith hesitated. “As far as I’m aware, it’s never happened before. But I think it’s possible.”

  I tried to breathe, but a solid lump had formed in my chest, squeezing all the oxygen out. I clenched my eyes shut, then opened them.

  “Why haven’t the police come? Where are they?”

  Dr. Griffith looked surprised. He took his glasses off and polished them on his lab coat.

  “The hospital doesn’t report . . . accidents.”

  “Accidents? This wasn’t an accident!” My voice pitched high, anger and pain surging through my body. “You’ve seen the bruises on her wrists!”

  “My apologies.” Dr. Griffith shook his head vigorously. “I just mean that the hospital isn’t legally required to report anything other than gunshot or stab wounds, and this is likely why you haven’t heard anything from them.”

  I pressed my palm to my forehead, a tingle of panic buzzing in my fingertips. But this time I won, pushing the anxiety away. I would report it myself.

  “Olivia’s a good girl. What happened?” I asked.

  I heard myself using the present te
nse, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want her to slide into the past yet. She was still here.

  His eyes were kind but calculating, the eyes of a lawyer rather than a doctor.

  “I don’t know. But I promise you this”—he held the cup of water out to me—“you’ll need your strength to find out.”

  I took the water and gulped down every drop.

  × × ×

  It started raining as soon as I left the hospital. It was almost night, black clouds edging over the horizon.

  I turned onto my street, slowly rolling toward my Victorian-style three-bedroom. Mine was the smallest house on the street, perched at the end of a row of grander ones.

  My neighbors were middle-class professionals, lawyers, doctors. Their wives stayed home and raised chubby-cheeked toddlers. They had playdates and did hot yoga and went for coffee dates. I, a single working mother, pregnant at eighteen, stuck out like a sore thumb.

  I never would’ve been able to afford the house on my own. But everything I did was for Olivia, to give her a better chance in life: middle-class neighbors, a good school, low crime rate, and right by the beach. I wanted her to have all the things I’d never had. So I couldn’t regret any of it. Not now, not ever.

  I imagined Olivia on our last morning together. I’d watched her swaying to silent music in the living room, her eyes closed, the earbuds of her iPhone pressed deep into her ears. A scarf I’d never seen before was draped around her neck. It was silk, scarlet, like a flame around her throat. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt, loose-fitting sweats. Dark circles were smudged like half-moons beneath her eyes, her face pale as a tissue.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I’d pressed the back of my hand to her forehead, concern washing over me. It was smooth and cool. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and drew her close for a hug.

  “I’m fine. Just studying.” She pulled away sharply, her brow crinkling.

  I caught the undercurrent of her words: Would you ever just stop asking? My mom used to tell me that I never let things go. Sarah said that too.

  I almost started questioning Olivia. Everything was something to be worried about. She was sick, she had cancer, she was being bullied. My stomach gave a panicky spasm. I did that sometimes: worried and questioned and analyzed until I found a rational reason. I needed the whole picture to understand the details. The problem was that it never changed anything. Like when my mom died.