by Amy Hatvany
“Oh?” Again, I tried to keep my tone light.
“She admitted she took the money. She needed it for her dance uniform and she was afraid to ask me because I’ve been so stressed. She shouldn’t have taken it, of course, but I can’t help but feel like it’s partially my fault for not remembering they’d need an allowance.” He shook his head, and I could see the guilt he felt scribbled across his face. I had to remember that I wasn’t the only one in this situation struggling with feelings of inadequacy. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, Grace. I just couldn’t believe that my little girl would do something like that.”
“I know,” I said gently, my fears beginning to evaporate. We could find a way to make this all work out.
“We can talk about it more later, if you want, but I told her she has to apologize to you, okay? So you need to let me know if she doesn’t, and we’ll deal with it when I get home.” I nodded, and he pulled me to him, his long arms tucked tightly around me, his chin resting on the top of my head. “I love you so much, Grace. Please forgive me.”
I hugged him tighter and then pulled back enough to look up at him. “Of course I forgive you. We just have to make sure we stay on the same team.”
“I told you on our first date I don’t get sports analogies,” he said with a wink, then inched his face toward mine. The kiss was soft and sweet, long and slow, and it awoke something in me I hadn’t felt since before Kelli died. Having children around, I’d realized, was arousal’s kryptonite.
When he finally pulled away, I had to catch my breath. He pressed his hips against me and groaned. “Okay. You should go, or I’m going to be in danger of violating a few health codes right here in this office.”
I laughed, and he held my hand as we walked back into the kitchen to face the kids.
* * *
Melody told me she had to run to the bank and deposit a check before coming over to our house, so the kids and I climbed into the car and headed home. The drive was quiet. Max hummed along with the radio, but other than a couple of perfunctory answers to my questions about how his day at school had been, he wasn’t his usual chatty self. He raced inside after I parked the car in our driveway, but Ava sat still in the backseat. I trusted that Victor actually had talked with her, but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring up what she’d done. “Everything okay?” I asked her. “Do you need help carrying your bag?”
She shook her head, staring at her lap. I turned to look at her and saw that she was clasping her hands together so tightly, her knuckles were white and she was digging her fingernails into her skin. The tips of her nails were ragged, and the edges were lined in blood, as though she’d been gnawing on her cuticles. “Ava, honey, don’t do that,” I said as gently as possible, feeling the same rush of tenderness toward her as the other night when I’d watched her sleeping.
“I’m sorry I stole from you, Grace,” she whispered. “I just . . .” She trailed off and took a deep breath before continuing. “I needed to pay for my dance uniform and I didn’t know how to ask for it, and the money was there in your wallet and I just took it. I’m so sorry. I know it was really, really wrong.” Her voice broke on her last word, and I felt my throat swell.
“I forgive you, Ava. We all make bad choices sometimes . . . me included.” She nodded, so I went on. “But I also need to say that I’m a little concerned about how you jumped on Max. You could have really hurt him.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I don’t even remember doing it, really. I just remember being mad.” She paused, looking up at me with wide eyes.
“What is it?” I asked, sensing there was something else she wanted to say.
“I just . . .” she began, and bit her bottom lip.
“You can tell me, whatever it is,” I said. “I want you to be able to talk with me.”
“I called my grandparents last week,” she said softly. “On Thanksgiving. After we found that letter from the doctor?”
“Okay . . .” I tensed slightly, wondering what else she had been hiding from us. “Did they talk with you?”
She nodded. “My grandma did, a little. I asked her if she could send more pictures or the rest of Mama’s yearbooks and she said there weren’t any.” Her voice began to shake. “She said Mama was never a cheerleader. That they sent her away to a school for troubled girls. She said it was better to forget the past.”
“Ava,” I said, drawing her name out. Everything she was saying made sense with what I’d confirmed earlier—that Kelli had gotten pregnant and was sent away to have the baby. I couldn’t tell Ava this, of course, not without talking to Victor first. “I think we need to tell your dad about all of this. I never told him about going to your mom’s house to get the recipe or finding the letter, which was totally not the right thing to do. And now with you talking to your grandparents . . .” I sighed. “We need to tell him the truth.”
“He’s going to be mad at me, though.” Ava’s voice trembled again.
“Because you called your grandparents?”
She shook her head. “No. Because going to my mom’s house with you wasn’t the first time I went there after she died. It wasn’t the last, either.” She explained how she and Bree had gone through her mother’s computer and found a list of private investigators and, as I’d suspected, how Diane let it slip about me and Victor being engaged when they visited Kelli’s house again. “I’m so sorry I lied, Grace.”
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching my hand through the space between the front seats to squeeze hers. “I think your dad will understand. None of us are perfect.” I paused. “And no matter what happened in your mom’s past, she loved you and Max very, very much.”
“I loved her, too,” Ava whispered.
“I know you did, sweetie,” I said. “I have no doubt she knew that much was true.”
Kelli
Kelli tried not to be worried about how dizzy she felt. She didn’t want Ava—who’d noticed it that morning—to worry, either. As it was, Kelli put her daughter through too much. She knew she relied on Ava to do the things Kelli should have been doing herself—paying the bills, cleaning the house, making sure Max brushed his teeth and didn’t wear the same pair of boxers two days in a row. She’d been such a good mother when Victor was still with them. She knew she’d taken excellent care of her children then, but now she felt scattered and loose. God, she loved them. She needed to get help.
After dropping them at school, she drove home, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. She was shaky and nauseous and wondered if she should go straight to her doctor’s office. What would she say, exactly? That she was heartsick? That every time she thought about Rebecca, her body rebelled and wouldn’t allow her to eat? Seeing Ava about to enter high school had started to bring everything back. She was terrified that her daughter would make the same mistakes she had, but she didn’t know how to talk with Ava about it without telling her the truth about what she’d done. When she did manage to sleep, she dreamed of her lost child. Her thin cries, the gaping, empty wound she’d left in Kelli’s body. She dreamed of the pain, but also of her first daughter’s kicks inside her, of the potential life that God had simply erased.
As she pulled into her driveway, her phone rang. “Hey, Diane,” she said, trying to sound normal.
“Hey! Are we on for eleven?” It was their ritual, coffee and gossip at the kitchen table on the days Kelli didn’t have to work the lunch shift.
“I don’t know . . . I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Again? Honey, get thee to the doctor. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Kelli said, unable to keep the exhaustion she felt from the words.
“Um, I’m pretty sure you’re not.” Diane paused. “Are you eating?”
Kelli was silent, and her friend sighed. “What’s going on with you? Is it Victor’s engagement?”
Kelli hesitated, wondering how to put all her jumbled feelings into words. “I’m just . . . sad.” Her voice finally broke. “I can’t st
op thinking about Rebecca,” she whispered.
“Oh, sweetie,” Diane said. “Have you thought any more about hiring a private investigator?” Her friend had been the one to suggest that Kelli try to find the doctor who delivered her daughter. She said that if Kelli found out the details of exactly what happened that day, she might be able to finally move on.
“I can’t afford it,” Kelli answered with a heaving breath. “And what if it doesn’t make a difference? What if I’m just always going to be . . . broken?”
“You’re not broken, Kelli. You’ve suffered through some seriously painful circumstances in your life. You’ve lost a lot. But you also have two gorgeous children who need you. I know it’s hard, but maybe you can try to stop focusing so much on the past and look at what’s right in front of you.”
Kelli was quiet a moment, sniffling back her tears. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll try. But I think for now, the best I can do is sleep for a while. Can I take a rain check on coffee?”
“Yes. I’ll come check on you later. But if you don’t make an appointment with your doctor next week, I’m going to drag you there again. And that’s not just a threat, it’s a promise.”
Kelli laughed, grateful for the support of her friend, one of the very few people she’d told about losing Rebecca. They hung up and Kelli made her way into the house, forgetting to lock the front door behind her. She stumbled her way to the bedroom, past the kitchen, where she glanced at the toast she’d made for Ava, thinking that maybe she should try to eat it herself, but even the thought of taking a bite made her stomach roil, so she continued down the hall.
Once safely ensconced in her bedroom, Kelli stripped down to her bra and underwear, amazed that even with all the weight she’d lost, her chest size hadn’t diminished. She remembered how Jason first touched her there . . . how enamored she’d been with the thought that he might love her. Tears flooded her eyes again as she thought back to the girl she’d been, so naïve, so alone.
Spurred by this memory, Kelli made her way into her closet and dug behind a stack of boxes, pulling out the two things—other than clothes—that she had taken with her when she left her parents’ house: a photo album, which she’d taken from her mother’s dresser, and her freshman yearbook, which her mother had given her even though Kelli had been at New Pathways when it came out.
Now she ran her hands over both of them, thinking it was finally time for Max and Ava to see a little of who she was growing up. Maybe then Kelli could work up the courage to tell them the truth about what happened between she and her parents, why they still wanted nothing to do with her.
Climbing into her bed, Kelli closed her eyes for a few minutes, feeling waves of exhaustion swelling throughout her body. She didn’t know if a doctor would be able to help her. But Diane was right—her children needed her. Something had to change.
She forced herself to flip through the pages of the album. She saw the misery behind her blue eyes. She saw a child trying to appear happy when inside, she was slowly withering away. Her parents appeared even older than she remembered them, and she imagined them now, in their late seventies, frail and cold. She wondered if they were as miserable without her as she had been without them. Family was family, after all. She didn’t understand how they could simply erase her from their life, because no matter how hard she had tried to let go of them, they popped up in her mind at the most unexpected moments—while she washed the dishes or served a man at the restaurant who was wearing a bow tie like her father’s.
Her heart fluttered unevenly as she shut the album and turned the pages of her yearbook. How young everyone was, how inexperienced. Looking at her own picture, she couldn’t fathom that that child had climbed into Jason’s truck and let him do the things she’d allowed him to do. How desperate she’d been for love. She wondered if Ava ever felt that way and again, Kelli knew she needed to step up and start being the kind of mother Ava could be proud of.
But first, Kelli thought, I need to sleep. She closed the yearbook and set it next to her on the bed, thinking she might show the kids that one first. She took the album, got up, and tucked it onto the shelf next to the ones of Max and Ava, knowing it might take her a bit longer to let them see their grandparents and explain why the pictures of her just stopped at fourteen.
There was a painful, sudden buzzing in her head, and the room began to spin around her. She threw an arm out to grasp the edge of the bookcase so she wouldn’t fall over. Staggering back to her bed, she opened the bottle that she kept in the nightstand drawer and popped the remaining three pills in her mouth. The doctor had told her they would reduce her anxiety and insomnia, and Kelli figured that since she had an abundance of both of those things, taking more than the prescribed dose was okay, just as long as the kids weren’t around when she did it. She’d sleep the day away, waking in time to pick them up from school. She set her alarm, just to be sure. Max didn’t have basketball that night and Ava usually wanted to stay home on the Fridays before she went to her dad’s house. They’d put on some music, make homemade pizza together, and later, watch a movie. Kelli would tuck her children in, telling them just how much she loved them, how everything would be just fine.
Kelli pulled the blue comforter up to her neck, snuggling into its warmth, letting the drugs course through her system and gradually calm her mind. Her parents had told her she simply needed to begin again. And so, with that thought, with the hope that she could find the strength to shape her life into whatever she wanted it to be, Kelli closed her eyes and waited for sleep to finally come.
Ava
I was nervous the whole next morning, especially as I sat in social studies, totally unable to focus on the quiz Mrs. Philips had passed out at the beginning of class. I hadn’t studied at all; in fact, I’d failed to turn in three of the last four assignments, so I knew even trying to answer the questions was pointless. School didn’t seem important right now, especially knowing that Grace and I were going to sit down with Dad tonight and tell him everything we’d done. Me more than Grace, I supposed. She’d kept the secret from him about taking me to Mama’s house, but it was me who’d snuck back there two other times and me who called my grandparents without saying a word about it. He had already forgiven me for taking the money from Grace’s purse, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t get off as easily for lying to him and sneaking around behind his back.
I was especially worried that once he found out the reason I’d done it all in the first place—to find out more about Mama’s past—that would be the end of it. I’d never discover what actually happened to her. I pictured how Dad would look when I confessed—the deep cut of his frown, his dark eyebrows cinched together over his nose, the disapproving shadow hanging in his eyes—and was certain he’d instantly forbid me from doing anything else that might explain why her parents sent her away.
It made my stomach clench to think that I’d never find out why Mama’s parents disowned her, who it was she’d written about missing in that note, or why she contacted Dr. Stiles. How could I live my entire life not knowing? I felt a deep-seated pang for Mama then, sharp enough to steal my breath. Tears welled up in my eyes, and even as I tried to fight them, images of her floated in front of me. She was supposed to be here for me in moments like this. Moments when I felt lost and scared, unsure of what steps to take. Tell me what to do, I thought. Please. Help me.
I waited. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I was expecting to happen, but there were no voices in my head, no eerie response from wherever she might have gone. But then suddenly, a seed of an idea took root in my mind, and during the last few minutes of class, as I marked down a random assortment of answers on the quiz, I started to piece together a plan, knowing exactly what had to happen next.
* * *
In the lunchroom, Bree was sitting alone at our usual table, picking through a pile of French fries to find her favorite extra-crispy ones. I hurried over and straddled the bench.
“Hey,” she said, taking a sip of h
er chocolate milk. “What’s up?” She knew Grace was making me talk with my dad tonight and was a little worried that meant she would get in trouble, too.
“I want to go to California and see my grandparents,” I said, then quickly explained why. “After my dad finds out what I’ve been up to, there’s no way he’ll let me keep trying to find out more about my mom . . . right?” She nodded, and I continued. “If I don’t go now, I’ll never be able to. It’s the only way.”
Bree didn’t look convinced. “Can’t you just call them again? Why do you have to go all the way down there?”
“Because, Bree. My grandma barely spoke to me when I called before. If I just show up, there’s no way she can ignore me. What’s she going to do, shut the door in my face?” I swallowed the fear that that might be exactly what she would do. I paused, waiting for my friend to say something, but she didn’t, so I forged ahead with what I needed to ask her. “So, I was wondering if I could borrow some money for a bus ticket. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“I don’t know,” Bree said slowly. “Your dad is already going to be mad at you. I don’t think taking off to California is going to help.”
“Then you shouldn’t go to California,” I snapped, then immediately felt bad for it. “I’m sorry. God. I’m so sorry.” I waited, but she was still quiet, stung, I was sure, by my sharp words. “Bree,” I started again, my voice cracking on her name. “You’re my best friend. Please. I don’t have anyone else to ask.”
“Okay,” Bree said, releasing a heavy sigh. “When do you want to go?”
“Now. I don’t have dance squad today and Max is going to Logan’s house this afternoon so Grace will be looking for me outside the school right at three thirty. I need to be out of the house by then.”
She hesitated a moment, shredding the napkin she held, then spoke again. “We need to be out of the house, you mean.”