Kelli was almost three months pregnant when she and Victor stood together in a small church and said their vows. Victor’s mother, Eileen, was thrilled when Kelli asked her to be the matron of honor.
“Are you sure your parents can’t come, dear?” Eileen asked as they shopped for a wedding dress. Eileen was a loving and kind woman, and while she was a little concerned that Victor and Kelli were marrying so young, she was as smitten with Kelli as her son had been. Eileen hadn’t married again after Victor’s father left them—she’d worked hard and raised Victor on her own.
“I’m sure,” Kelli said, pulling a dress off the rack and holding it up for Eileen to see. “What about this one?”
“It’s lovely, but maybe a touch too much lace here?” Eileen said, fingering the edge of the bodice. She looked at Kelli with the same warm gray eyes she’d passed on to Victor. “I just hope they don’t regret missing all of this.”
“They won’t,” Kelli said as she hung the dress back up. “We’re not close.” She hadn’t spoken to her parents since leaving California and couldn’t fathom having them in her life. They wouldn’t have recognized her, anyway. She’d built a new version of herself since arriving in Seattle—bubbly and fun. She knew they’d be too much of a reminder of what went wrong, of the mistakes she’d made and the pain she’d suffered through. It was easier to simply tell people they were estranged.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eileen said, giving Kelli a quick hug. When she pulled back, Eileen smiled at her. “Well, you have me now, so that’s something.”
Kelli smiled and nodded in return, imagining that Eileen would become the mother figure she’d always wanted. While it made Victor happy to see her spend time with his mom, he too expressed concern that Kelli never talked with her parents.
“They’re your family,” Victor said. “Don’t you miss them?”
“Don’t you miss your father?” Kelli retorted, knowing full well that Victor wanted nothing to do with the man who’d abandoned him. Her point hit home, and Victor let the subject go.
For the first few years, being married to Victor was everything she’d dreamed it would be. He couldn’t wait to become a father. He placed headphones on Kelli’s stomach every night, playing a wide variety of music for Ava—Talking Heads, Bach, and the Beatles. “We don’t know what she likes yet,” Victor told Kelli. “So we need to let her hear a little bit of everything.”
He put his lips on her stomach, too, talking to their baby girl, telling her how much he couldn’t wait to meet her. Kelli relished every kick and turn of Ava inside her body, calling her obstetrician a couple of times a week to make sure everything was okay. “She hasn’t moved for almost eight hours,” Kelli told the doctor once, waking him at three in the morning. “What if something’s wrong with her?”
“She’s sleeping, Kelli,” her doctor said in a tired but patient tone. He was accustomed to the panic of first-time mothers. He knew how to talk them off the ledge. “If she doesn’t move in the next couple of hours, then you can call me back, okay? Everything’s fine. You have a very healthy baby girl on the way.”
Kelli knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help it. This baby meant the world to her—being a mother, a wife, living the kind of life she’d always dreamed of having. She worked up until her eighth month, when her belly made it impossible to carry the heavy trays at the restaurant. “Is it all right if I stay home with her?” Kelli asked Victor. “Will we be okay?”
Victor smiled at her, reaching out to cup her belly. “It’ll be a little tight, but I think we can make it work. I might have to work a few more shifts, though, to make ends meet.”
She’d nodded, wanting nothing more than to spend hours every day cradling her baby girl, loving her, not letting her out of her sight. When her labor began, the doctor warned her it might be a long one, but Ava arrived after only four hours. Ava screamed atop Kelli’s bare chest, and Kelli cried. Eileen, whom Kelli had asked to be in the room with them for the birth, wept, too, clutching Victor as they gazed upon this small miracle. They were a family.
Not long after Ava was born, Kelli found herself missing her mother; the longing to talk with her became a palpable ache in her chest. After a few weeks, she worked up the courage to call and tell her parents about their granddaughter. “She’s perfect,” Kelli said to her mother, who answered the phone. “Do you want—” Her voice broke on the words, so she had to start again. “Would you like to come see her?” She wondered what it would be like to share Ava with her parents. To see the joy and pride on their faces when they saw the beautiful life she had with Victor.
Her mother was quiet a moment. Kelli could hear her breathing, a lightly raspy sound, as though she was getting over a cold. “I think that might be too hard,” she finally said. “And you know how your father doesn’t like to travel.”
As her mother spoke these words, the door that had cracked only slightly open inside Kelli slammed shut. It was a mistake to have called, a mistake to believe that anything might have changed. As soon as she hung up the phone, Kelli swallowed her tears, pushed down her hurt, and turned her focus toward Ava. Toward her beautiful, perfect daughter whom Kelli knew she would love no matter what. She adored nursing, seeing her own blue eyes look back at hers, feeling the warmth of her daughter’s body cocooned against her skin. Even though it thrilled Kelli that he wanted to be such an involved father, she was reluctant to let Victor change Ava’s diapers or rock her to sleep. For the first year of Ava’s life, Kelli was never away from her daughter—never left her with a sitter. Not even Eileen, who offered time and again to watch her granddaughter. “You need to get out,” she told Kelli. “Have an afternoon at the spa or lunch with your girlfriends.”
“I can’t stand to leave her,” Kelli said, cupping Ava’s dark head with her hand. “Why don’t you stay for lunch and hold her while I make us something?” She didn’t want her mother-in-law to think she didn’t trust her. It wasn’t that at all. There was something deeper inside Kelli that made it feel impossible to be away from Ava. Something she wasn’t ready to explain.
Then one afternoon, when Ava was only thirteen months old, Victor called Kelli in a panic. “My mom had a stroke,” he said. His words were jagged with tears. “I’m at the hospital.”
“Oh no!” Kelli said. “Is she going to be all right?”
“No,” he sobbed. “She died.”
“Oh, honey,” Kelli said, closing her eyes, suddenly regretting her unwillingness to let Eileen spend time alone with her granddaughter. “I’m so sorry.” Hearing him weep like that unsettled Kelli. She didn’t know how to manage that kind of grief—she was better practiced at pretending it didn’t exist.
As Victor processed the loss of his mother, Kelli went about her days, attempting to work up the courage to chat with other mothers at the park, wanting to make friends, but she felt awkward and shy, worried they wouldn’t like her because she was so young. They all seemed so confident with each other and their children—Kelli was afraid she wouldn’t fit in.
Then one afternoon, a slightly chubby woman with dark messy hair sat down beside Kelli on the bench as Ava played. “I’m Diane,” she said. “And that’s Patrick.” She pointed to a little boy a few years older than Ava, who was climbing on the monkey bars.
Kelli smiled gently and introduced herself. “We just bought a house over on Lilac Street,” Diane explained. “I thought I’d bring Patrick to the park and check it out.”
“Lilac Street?” Kelli said. “That’s where we live. You bought the house next door to us!” They’d only been in their house a few months; Eileen had left it to her and Victor in her will. A true gift, since there were only five years left on the mortgage.
“Well, what do you know?” Diane said. “I guess this friendship was meant to be.”
Kelli smiled. Diane was plain—she didn’t wear makeup and her gray sweatshirt had some kind of red stain on the arm—and Kelli liked her immediately. She reminded her a bit of Nancy, her best friend in ninth grade. She wondered briefly what had happened to Nancy but resigned herself to the idea that she’d likely never know. Nancy was another thing she had lost.
Now, though, having a friend next door helped the days go by much more quickly. Over the next few years, she and Diane spent almost every morning together, letting the children play, talking about their husbands, and gossiping about the other women they still saw at the park. Victor worked long hours at the restaurant, but Kelli did everything she could to give him a wonderful life. She cooked and cleaned and made sure his favorite beer was always in the fridge. She took long walks with Ava, staying in good enough shape to wear the lacy lingerie he loved. He adored her body; he touched her gently and was as focused on her pleasure as he was on his. They still wrapped around each other every night, murmuring about their dreams. “I think I might have an investor to open a restaurant next year,” Victor told her one night when Ava was five.
“Really?” Kelli said, verging on the edge of sleep. “Who?”
Victor proceeded to tell her about a regular customer he’d gotten to know—an executive at Amazon who was looking to back a local business. “We went and looked at a space downtown today,” Victor told her. “It’s perfect. I can’t wait to show it to you.”
Kelli loved the space, too, and before she knew it, Victor had signed the paperwork and together, they began figuring out the design. It was just like they’d talked about that first night when he drove her home. They weren’t just building a restaurant together—they were building a future. They were building the rest of their lives. Once Ava was in first grade the following year, Kelli imagined she’d work during the day at the Loft, helping Victor with their dream. She’d wait tables or serve as hostess. Whatever Victor wanted, she’d do. But just as Victor processed all the permits to begin renovation on the space, Kelli began feeling sick in the mornings, just as she had when she was nineteen. “Are you pregnant?” Victor asked her as Kelli stumbled out of the bathroom the morning they were supposed to meet with the general contractor.
“I think so,” Kelli said, nodding. “I’m a few weeks late.” She hadn’t thought much of missing her period at first. She’d always been a little irregular, especially when her weight was down.
A flicker of panic sparked in Victor’s gray eyes, but it disappeared just as suddenly. “Maybe it will be a boy,” he said in a soft voice.
“I hope so,” Kelli said just as Ava dashed into their bedroom from the hallway and jumped on the bed with Victor.
“Daddy!” she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Oomph!” Victor said as she hugged him. “Where’s the fire, little girl?”
She pulled back and gave him a serious look. “There’s no fire,” she said. “But if there was, I call a fireman and then stop! drop! and roll! like my teacher taught me at school.”
Victor kissed Ava’s cheek. “Very good. How did you get to be such a smart girl?”
Ava shrugged. “I don’t know. I just am.”
Kelli smiled as she watched them together. She couldn’t remember her father ever holding her so long or with so much affection. She joined them and gave Ava a kiss. “Guess what, honey?” she said. “Mama might have a baby in her tummy. You could be a big sister.”
Ava was quiet a moment, then looked back and forth between her parents. “A girl baby?”
“Maybe,” Victor said. “But it could be a boy.”
“Yuck,” Ava said, screwing up her pretty face. “If it is, can we take it back wherever you got it?” Kelli and Victor both laughed and curled up with their daughter on the bed.
A test soon confirmed that yes, in fact, Kelli was pregnant again. After she began feeling better, she continued to help Victor prepare the restaurant to launch. They lured Victor’s best friend, Spencer, from the restaurant where they’d all worked, giving him a promotion from sous chef to executive chef, and together, the men designed the menu while Kelli worked on the décor. She was less panicky during this pregnancy. She knew what to expect. Max was born after another quick labor just a few days before the Loft was scheduled to open its doors. Money was getting tight, and Victor knew he’d have to spend more hours at the restaurant than he ever had at his previous job.
“I’ll be fine,” Kelli told him as he held their baby boy swaddled in a blue flannel blanket. “Diane can help out, and Ava’s almost seven now. She can help, too.” But then, inexplicably, right there in the hospital room, she began to cry, suddenly missing her mother more than she ever had before. She wanted a mother like Eileen—someone to nurture and help take care of her grandbabies. She wanted a mother who loved her deeply and uncontrollably, the way Kelli loved her own children. How could they not want to see her? Kelli wondered if they were simply relieved that she’d left so they wouldn’t be reminded of what she put them through. She wondered if there’d ever be a time that they might want her back.
Seeing her tears, Victor visibly tensed. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
A nurse entered just then, with Ava in tow. “It’s just a hormone crash,” she told Victor. “Totally normal.” Kelli felt like it was something deeper, something more insidious, but she hoped the nurse was right.
Ava rushed over to Kelli’s side, scrambling up onto the bed to cuddle her mother. “It’s a girl, right?” she asked excitedly. They’d told her as soon as they’d had the ultrasound that she was going to have a baby brother, but she remained convinced that if she just hoped hard enough, she’d get the sister she wanted. “Aw, rats!” Ava said when Victor told her again that Max was a boy. She looked up to her mother, worried. “But you still love me. I’m still your favorite daughter.”
“You sure are,” Kelli said with a smile. She wiped at her cheeks to erase any evidence of her grief. “And Max is my favorite son.”
“Huh.” Ava shrugged. “What about Daddy?”
Kelli looked at Victor, still smiling. “Daddy is my favorite man in the world.” Victor handed Max to her as though their son was a fragile piece of glass. The love she saw in his eyes would be enough, she decided, and at that moment, Kelli knew that after all she’d done wrong, this was as perfect a life as she would get.
