Chapter 39 | Liz

Chapter 39

Liz

P regnant.

I’m pregnant. Finally. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. The woman looking back at me looks terrified and ecstatic all at once. Her stomach is as flat as it ever is, which isn’t very flat. She’s going to be a mom. I’m going to be a mom. If my math is right, from the last time Julian and I slept together, I’m between six and eight weeks. It’s hard to gauge since before that, I didn’t have my period for two months, but there was the negative test. I was sufficiently Not Pregnant before I decided to have farewell sex with my husband.

My doctor will confirm at my appointment, but I know. Know deep in my bones with every hour that has passed since the positive result. My whole body and all my senses are now tuned to the new life growing inside me. The baby that I wanted more than anything is here.

I put a hand over my stomach. “It’ll all be okay, peanut.”

Peanut. It came without a thought, but now that it’s out there, I can’t take it back. It’s the name I used last time before it all ended before it ever really began. But it made goodbye that much harder. I breathe deeply. I can do this. It will be fine. I’ll make it out of the first trimester. I’ll hear that wondrous, fast heartbeat, and all will be right in my world. But who is standing next to me? Julian? And if it is Julian, what does that mean for our marriage? For Spencer? Oh god, Spencer. He’s not the father, and I can’t help but believe that’s a good thing because that would be too much. We’re so new. He’s handled all of my baggage, counterweighting it with his own, but there’s baggage, and then there’s an unplanned pregnancy with your not-quite-ex-husband. How am I going to tell him? Either of them?

“Liz?” Zoey pops her head into the room. “Cee is here.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Does she know that Dad”—she mouths the word—“is coming?”

I shake my head. Please let this night not be a disaster. When I planned it in my head, it made sense. There would be an Evie buffer between my sister and our dad. Cecilia would’ve been pissed, but with Evie there... I’m not sure I have enough wine, and I can’t even drink it. “You know how she is.”

“True.” Zoey steps into the room and shuts the door behind her. “How are you feeling?”

It’s a simple question, but it turns me to mush. Tears fall, and I pull her into a hug. Zoey’s become my lifeline this summer. How unexpected. How amazing. “I love you.”

An odd expression colors my sister’s face—a bit of happiness, a bit of loneliness. Because we don’t say those words often enough.

“I love you too,” she says, giving me another squeeze.

“ C ee!” I squeal as I pull her into a hug. “I can’t believe you’re here. Again!”

She smiles warmly before hanging her purse on the rack. “You know I would fly one thousand miles for you and then fly one thousand more.”

Zoey snorts from the kitchen, where she’s transferring a store-bought vegetable tray onto a platter that matches the plate set I used for the dinner. “Your age is showing.”

Cecilia’s eyes narrow, but her usual irritation is not there. “And yet you got the reference.”

Zoey grins. “Touché.”

My mom arrives next, and we all filter into the dining room. Laughter fills the space. It’s been a common sound with Haley and Zoey in residence the last week, but tonight it’s different. This is my family—my mom and both my sisters—at the same table, breaking bread, and laughing. Never in the last seventeen years has this happened. Not even at my wedding. This summer has changed us. Even my mom is at ease. She’s always been good with Zoey—better than anyone could expect—but tonight the air feels clear and our baggage handled. When I told her I wanted to have a dinner with everyone, she simply asked if Zoey was still allergic to strawberries, a fact I didn’t even know. And probably should have, considering all the times I babysat her.

“Zoey dear, how are you doing? I hear it’s been quite the summer.”

Zoey blushes at Mom’s question but shrugs. “I’m okay. Going back to school will be hard in the same way that coming home was. There are memories everywhere.”

“Yes, there are. But you’ll get through it.” She looks at each of us, stopping for a long moment on me. “We all do.”

“I know,” Zoey says. “And I have a great support system now. It would’ve been a really different summer without Liz.”

“I don’t doubt that.” My mom’s tone is off, but her smile is real. I’ve seen her act for clients for years, and this is no act. She’s interested in what Zoey has to say, cares about her well-being. “And how is your father?”

What a strange question. My mom almost never asks after my dad, except in that perfunctory way when she knows I’ve been with him. I watch the two of them, and it’s like they’re having a silent conversation, but about what?

Zoey’s gaze shifts to me and then to Cecilia before coming back to Mom. “He’s well. Eating on campus a bit too much now that I’m in school most of the year, but sometimes I think he likes it that way. Keeps him from getting lonely.”

“He’s hardly lonely.”

“What?” Zoey and I say at the same time.

“Your father is a highly esteemed law professor at a top-rated university, ladies. He’s quite the catch in certain circles.”

I think about speed dating Guy 3, the professor who reminded me too much of my dad. Now Mom is saying that’s exactly who my dad is for “certain circles.” I can’t picture it. My dad has literally never dated in all these years. Sometimes I’m convinced he’s still in love with my mom even though she’s had several serious boyfriends over the years.

“Are you saying”—Zoey swallows, and her faces distorts in dread—“that someone caught him?”

Mom rolls her eyes. “Many times. Currently, it’s a short brunette from the history department. I believe she teaches American History circa the late eighteenth century.”

There’s no need to clarify that one. Constitutional law is the one thing that gets Patrick Reid excited. And now he’s apparently found a peer who can talk the intricacies. I glance at my sister, who looks like she’s about to puke up dinner. It’s clear she didn’t know, which makes sense. Dating seems like something he would keep close to the vest. He’s all Zoey has, and he knows it. He feels that responsibility and honors it every day.

“How do you know this?” Cecilia asks, her voice brisk. She was so quiet during all this that I almost forgot she was there.

Zoey’s eyes widen and swivel back to my mom, who shrugs. Something passes between them again, and my stomach twists. I’m missing something important here.

“We had dinner recently, as we do from time to time.”

“What?” Cecilia and I exclaim together. While our mother has most certainly moved on, I would never suspect that she still has any communication with our dad other than their public interactions.

Cecilia is a ball of fury across the table. This is not good. She fixes my mom with an incredulous look. “But you hate Dad.”

“I do not hate your father. I never hated him.” Mom takes a sip of wine. “Did I have to divorce him? Yes. Did it break my heart? Absolutely. But seriously, Cecilia, I forgave him years ago.”

In the silence that follows, I can hear the echo of my mother’s unsaid words— as you should have.

“Why?” Cecilia’s hands are clenched so tightly her knuckles are white. I want to do something to quell her anger, but my head is still reeling from what my mom revealed.

Mom waves her hand noncommittally, as if she hasn’t rocked our understanding of the last decades of our lives. “Anger isn’t good for your health.”

“Mom,” I say before my sister jumps across the table and strangles her.

“For you kids, of course.” Her eyes move past all three of us. Three of us. Not two. “Who do you think your father called about Zoey? Certainly not her mother. No offense, dear.”

Zoey’s laugh is bitter at the mention of her mother, but the look she gives my mom is easy and familiar and holds a history I know nothing about. She glances at me as if in apology before turning back to Mom. “I remember when I wanted a training bra. I thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head.”

“Yes, and when you got your period,” Mom adds. “Your first boy-girl party. When you met Andrew. It takes a village, and I was all your father had.”

None of what’s being said computes. My mom and Zoey shopping for training bras? Where was I? In college and getting back together with Julian, but still. How bad were things that my dad would ask his ex-wife to help his love child instead of me? And why didn’t they tell us? All these years of tiptoeing around each other, and they were having dinners.

No, I can’t get mad about this now. My dad is literally on his way, which Mom knows. Why she’s doing this now, I don’t know. Cecilia is rage incarnate, and if Patrick Reid walks through the door, she is going to lose it. How do I defuse this situation? I can’t. I can’t even keep my own frustrations down. Because everything about my life could’ve been easier.

“Why didn’t we know this?” I mean to ask my mom, but my gaze slides to my younger sister, who won’t look at me. Because she kept it secret too.

“You never asked,” Mom says at the same time Zoey says, “I asked her not to.”

“Really?” Cecilia pushes back from the table, her fork clattering against her plate. “We never asked?”

Mom fixes Cecilia with a glare only a mother can give. I haven’t seen that face in ages. “What exactly would it have changed? Your anger is your anger. It has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you!”

Mom shakes her head. “Maybe it did at first, but no, Cecilia. It hasn’t for a long time. I’m happy. I’ve been happy. You’ve seen me with your father and Zoey at things. Did I ever seem heartbroken?”

“Only all those weekends you spent in my apartment crying so Liz couldn’t see.”

Too much is happening and coming out at once. I don’t know where to look and who to shut up. What weekends are Cecilia talking about? I have no memory of my mother being anything but stoic and stolid after the divorce. Of course I knew she was grieving and heartbroken, but she always put on a brave face. It was like one day all my dad’s stuff moved to Ardena, and my weekends went from trying to escape the house to see my friends to alternating weekends with a toddler I barely knew. But through it all, my mom encouraged me to get to know Zoey, to visit my dad, to carve my own path when Cecilia walked away.

Cecilia and Mom continue to go back and forth until the doorbell rings. Fuck . I meet Zoey’s eyes across the table. She’s pale and worried, but she stands and goes to answer the door.

“Who’s that?” Cecilia asks, her voice still tinged with anger. Her eyes follow Zoey to the door. There’s no stopping this train.

Zoey lets him in, and they stand side by side, Zoey a ball of tension and our dad completely oblivious to what he’s walked into. And it’s now, in this moment, that I realize my mistake. We’ve never all been alone in a room together without other people. Maybe this would’ve worked in a public setting, but even an Evie buffer would not have been enough to wrangle this in. I’ve spent years making accommodations for Cecilia and, I thought, for our mom. But our parents are friends, and Zoey has been using Anna as a temporary mom when needed. It was all for nothing. All that trouble and stress and drama for nothing.

My dad smiles at me before his gaze settles on the daughter he hasn’t seen in five years. “Hello, Cecilia.”