Heart Like Mine (37 page)

The tension in my chest relaxed a bit hearing this, knowing our argument had spurred him to this kind of action. “That’s great,” I said, still feeling like a bit of my guard was up. We still had the issue of Ava’s stealing to deal with, so I wasn’t ready to forgive him completely. Of course, I had my own transgressions to admit and I was fairly sure he wasn’t going to be happy with me, either. “Have they eaten?” I asked Victor.

He nodded. “They helped me prep first, but I just fed them so you won’t have to worry about making dinner.” He was trying, that much I knew for sure.

Melody squeezed my hand. “Want some company tonight? My boyfriend is busy for a few hours and I don’t have any clients, so I can come hang out.”

“Boyfriend?” I said before I could help myself. I threw a glance over to Spencer, who blushed furiously but smiled. Melody laughed and walked over to stand next to him, giving him a quick peck on his cheek.

“Can I see you a second?” Victor asked me. “Before you go?”

I nodded, and he glanced over to his actual prep cook, Rory. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and we walked together to his small office in the back of the building. The space was a mess of paper and boxes of wine; his desk was covered in seating charts and half-drunk glasses of water.

“You need a house cleaner,” I said, trying to keep the air light between us. This was not the time to delve into our problems, in earshot of the kids and his entire staff.

He blew a long breath out between his lips, making a puttering sound. “I need a lot of things,” he said. “To get my head out of my ass, for one.”

I laughed out loud at his unexpected pronouncement, clapping my hand over my mouth. He reached over and gently clasped
his long fingers around my wrist, pulling my hand away. “Don’t cover your smile. It’s one of the things I love most about you.” He paused but didn’t let go of my wrist, running his index finger back and forth over the sensitive skin at the base of my palm, causing me to shiver. “I talked with Ava this morning.”

“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 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 stop 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.