“So, one day a week, Mondays, she’ll be either with your parents or my dad, and then I’ll pick her up on Tuesday mornings,” Lara says.
“I’ll pick her up from your place after work on Tuesday, and drop her off on my way out to work on Wednesdays,” I add.
“And then I’ll pick her up on Thursday morning, and keep her overnight to Friday morning?”
The waitress brings our main meal, my sandwich and the weird-looking salad that Lara ordered, and I think about the arrangement. It’s going to mean a lot of driving for both of us, but with us living apart that’s the only real way to make it happen the way it should. I’m just glad that Lara’s happy to keep my daughter overnight one night a week. It’ll give me a chance to catch up a bit on the stuff that Alexis normally did around the house.
With all that decided, Lara asks about how things have been, whether I’ve been able to juggle shit with taking care of Riley and working.
“I’m thinking I might need to hire a maid,” I admit.
Lara laughs a little. “Well, I guess that’s fair,” she says, but there’s that look in her eyes that I remember from when we were still going out, that look that says that she’s judging me a little bit.
“I’m working an extra hour and a half a day, or I will be, to get Fridays off,” I point out, feeling defensive.
“I get it,” Lara says with a shrug.
“You seem to be pretty okay with everything,” I say, looking her over again. I can’t help myself. The only times I’ve seen Lara in the past two or three years, I’ve been with her sister, or it’s been in the shadow of Alexis’ death. It’s only been two weeks, and I still miss the woman I married, the mother of my child and the one who helped me figure out the man I want to be. But I can’t deny that without Alexis around, it’s easier to see, again, how pretty Lara is. It’s the most terrible thought I could probably have, but I can’t help it.
“I’m good at pretending to be pretty okay,” Lara says with a little smile.
“I mean, if this is going to screw up your life or something, we don’t have to follow the will,” I say. I don’t really mean it, not from the perspective of Riley, at least. I know I’m going to need more help, and my parents and my father-in-law aren’t going to be able to watch Riley the whole time I’m working.
“No, no, it’s just that we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, and I didn’t really think about that,” Lara says.
I hadn’t really thought about it either, just that I absolutely need help raising my daughter with her mother gone.
“I guess I see where you’re coming from,” I say.
Chapter Twelve
Lara
I take a few bites of my salad, drink a few sips of water and coffee. I knew that this meeting was going to be hard, but the hardest part of this has been the fact that I actually feel almost friendly to Ethan. I tell myself that it’s because he is hurting, but we were polite yet cold the few times we saw one another after the breakup and before I learned that he was with my sister. Fundamentally, he was a good guy who just make some questionable choices. I don’t know how to deal with that.
“Is there anything you can think of that I’d need to keep around the apartment for her?” I can barely even look at Ethan. I’m torn between trying to understand why I feel like being friendly to him, and the reminder of why I shouldn’t feel friendly at all. It’s stupid, and I know it. I shouldn’t be so mixed up. I shouldn’t be so confused, but I just have to deal with it.
“Well, you’ll have her diaper bag and all that,” Ethan says.
“She… obviously she isn’t getting milk anymore,” I say. “Or did you switch to formula or something?” I knew that Alexis had been supplementing Riley’s normal food with breast milk she pumped, but obviously without my sister there was no source for that anymore.
“I figured it was kind of… as good a time as any to completely wean her,” Ethan says.
I nod.
“She’s eighteen months or close enough,” I agree.
“She still asks for Alexis sometimes, but not as much,” Ethan tells me. I think I hear his voice crack a little. I look up and he shakes his head and blows slowly through his mouth.
I’m not sure if I’m more relieved for his sake, or saddened by the fact that he has to be thinking that Riley’s forgotten her mother already, or at least, that she’s realized that no amount of asking is going to bring her mother back.
“It’s got to be hard on her, even if she doesn’t really understand, especially because she doesn’t,” I say, looking at my niece.
Riley’s completely focused on her chicken and fruit and chips and she is as interested in making a mess of everything as she is in getting it into her mouth. Ethan takes a break from his sandwich to help Riley make some progress on actually eating her food, and after a few moments I take over from him, leaving my salad on the sidelines.
“I didn’t really realize how much Alexis did around the house until…”
I know what Ethan is saying even though he just lets the sentence die off.
“Well, she was home, wasn’t she?” It occurs to me that I don’t even really know what my sister’s life was like before she died. I’d cut her and Ethan out of my own life so completely, so ruthlessly, that even Mom, who never quite gave up on the idea of one day seeing me and Alexis reconcile, knew better than to broach the topic of my sister beyond the most basic news.
“Yeah,
