Riley turns her attention onto her grandparents, and I try to get her to get back to eating, pulling her attention onto the cranberry sauce I know she loves, or the turkey. My parents and Lara’s father are still eating, but the sheer level of the tension in the room is making even me uncomfortable.
“I have to say, I’m really grateful we could do this,” Lara says, trying to do her best to get through it, and I have to admire her ability to just keep going.
“Why Gramma mean?”
My mother pauses in her eating to look at my daughter.
I look sharply at Riley.
“What do you mean, little lamb?”
“Gramma mean face,” Riley insists, frowning at my mother. I know what she means, but of course, none of us can say anything about it. It’s that sour look that Mom gets every few moments, glancing at either Nathan or Lara.
“Why don’t we get you a little bit of pie, sweetie?” Lara says trying to change the course of the conversation.
Riley’s eaten just enough of her actual dinner to justify giving her dessert, and I want her out of the room as quickly as possible. In any case, she needs a nap, and she needs to get away from the tense atmosphere.
Lara gets her some pie, and we manage to get through the next few minutes as Riley makes pumpkin and pecan paste on her plate and finally gets some into her mouth. Mom and Dad talk about everything but the family, and Nathan is silent. Lara and I have to just try to focus on Riley without making it weird.
“Isn’t it good?” Riley nods in response to Lara’s question.
“Yummy!” She beams at Lara and I catch just the briefest glimpse of that sour look on my mom’s face again before she asks Dad about one of his clients at work.
“Can you say ‘pumpkin’, Riley?” I ask.
Riley screws up her face into a twisted expression of concentration, as she thinks about my question. “Punkin!”
“That’s pumpkin, that’s pecan,” Lara says, pointing them out.
“Punkin! Pee-kin!” Riley giggles, and I’m starting to think that we might just get through this, that things might be getting back to normal at least for an hour or two, long enough for us to finish the Thanksgiving meal.
Riley finishes her slices of pie and Lara looks at me as she finishes her own plate of food. We’ve been taking turns eating and supervising Riley’s eating, and I’ve managed one helping of the dinner. I want a little more, but first we need to get Riley down for her nap.
“I’ll take her if you want,” Lara says, once we’ve got Riley cleaned.
“Let’s both go,” I suggest. I know it’s probably not that great an idea, leaving my parents alone with Nathan, but I need to get out of the room as much as my daughter does, even if I understand the situation while she doesn’t.
Lara gives me a look, but after a moment, she nods for me to follow her into Alexis’ old room. Riley’s already looking sleepy, and as soon as we’re out of the grandparents’ company, she begins to relax in a way she hasn’t since we arrived.
“Nap time?” Riley yawns hugely, in spite of the tone in her voice that tells me that she wants to argue.
“Yes, it’s time to have a little sleep,” Lara tells her. Riley frowns but then yawns again, and I think to myself that it’s only going to take a few minutes to actually get her down.
We get her onto Alexis’ old bed. It’s awkward again for a minute or two, and I’m pretty sure that Lara is thinking of her sister, just like I’m thinking of my wife. But the moment passes as Riley asks for a story. Lara looks at me and then curls up on the bed next to my little girl, relaxing.
“There once was a smart, beautiful little girl named Haley,” Lara says, starting in on a story. I’ve heard her tell Riley stories before, but every time I see it, it’s just beautiful to me. Alexis would read to Riley, but never made up stories like Lara, just out of the blue.
It’s a little bit of magic in a stressful day, watching Riley’s eyelids get heavier and heavier, listening to Lara while I sit at the foot of the bed, watching them both. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that Riley was Lara’s daughter, instead of my wife’s. That opens up a thought that I should probably not be thinking. What would my life be like if Lara and I never broke up, or if Alexis and I hadn’t got together years after Lara dumped me?
Before too long, Riley’s given up any fight with nap time, and she’s not quite snoring, sprawled out on the bed with a little blanket covering her. I silently put up the barrier to keep her from falling off the edge while she naps, and Lara and I creep out of the room as quietly as we can.
By the time we get downstairs, though, it’s obvious just how bad an idea leaving our parents alone was, we barely get to the bottom of the staircase and I hear my mother’s voice, raised almost to a shout, and Nathan’s voice cutting through hers. Obviously, we’ve been away just long enough for them all to get into a fight.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lara
“You are not going to take our granddaughter away from us,” I hear Ethan’s dad saying, and I know before we even get into the dining room that he’s talking to my father.
“I am not going to let your son get away with destroying my family again,” Dad says in response, and I look at Ethan. We both know that we can’t let something like this just slide, but we also both know that there’s no real point in trying to stop
