Chapter Forty-Nine

Olivia woke up to an empty bed.

She checked the time; it was eight in the morning. That meant she’d gotten about five hours of sleep. Even that slumber had been broken; she’d woken up intermittently due to Marco’s tossing and turning. They’d both had too much to drink.

After the spectacle at Amelia’s party, the entire Barros family dispersed. Lidia and Manny ushered Jaci home while Marco fled to Old Colony Tap. Olivia followed him to the bar, trying to talk to him, but he said he needed a few shots of vodka first.

By one in the morning, they were huddled in a booth at Spiritus Pizza, and still he didn’t want to deal with Jaci’s bombshell. Actually, Olivia was in no rush to push the issue. Any in-depth discussion would require her to admit she’d known the truth for weeks. She couldn’t have a lie between them.

But now it was a new day, a new reality. Olivia pulled on sweatpants, Marco’s Long Point hoodie, and a pair of flip-flops. She headed out back, where she found him sitting on the deck with a cup of takeout coffee.

“Hey,” she said. “You went out for coffee?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said, reaching down for another cup by his feet. He handed it to her. “It might be cold by now.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“A couple of hours,” he said, gesturing for her to grab one of the other chairs. She pulled it up next to him. “You feeling okay?”

“I really should know better than to try to keep up with you at a bar,” she said.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “That was a lot even for me.”

“It’s understandable.” She reached for his hand.

“I just can’t believe Jaci would get herself into this situation and then handle it in such an outrageous way.” He shook his head. “I’m shocked. I’m just…really disappointed in her.”

“Oh, Marco. She’s still a kid. And this whole thing with Elise and Fern…I think she meant well.”

“She made such a big deal about not wanting to work on the oyster farm and about wanting a career. She was the first woman in our family to go to college. Did you know that? Princeton, no less. And now what?”

Olivia took a deep breath. “Now she goes back to school, like she planned.”

“With a baby?”

Olivia shook her head. “Not necessarily.”

“Yeah, right. The only way around that is if my parents—who have already worked so hard and should be slowing down—step in to take care of an infant full-time. It’s not fair.”

“Or…” Olivia said. This was it, the point of no return. “Or I could stay in town for a while and help you take care of Mira.”

He took off his sunglasses.

“Olivia,” he finally said. “That’s a really generous thought. A really selfless offer. But I don’t know if it’s realistic, given, well, given how little time we’ve actually had together. The last we spoke about things, you were seriously considering heading back to New York to start that company. I don’t think you could have changed your mind so drastically overnight.”

“I didn’t change my mind overnight,” she said. “I’ve been caught between my feelings for you and my belief that my real life is in New York City. If I have to pick one over the other…I’m saying I pick you.”

Marco stood up and pulled her into his arms. Holding her tight, he said, “I love you. I do. But we can’t make a major decision based on my sister’s crisis.” He stepped back, took both of her hands in his. Looking into her eyes, he said, “I think we need to sit with this for a few days.”

Olivia nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She knew that everything he was saying was reasonable. And that maybe she had been overly influenced by her mother’s impassioned speech last night and the dramatic events that followed it. Still, it felt like a rejection.

It felt like he was saying goodbye.

  

Elise could not go to sleep. Sleeping meant time away from Mira. Time, she now knew, that was borrowed. Had been borrowed from the very beginning.

She sat awake until dawn in the office that would never truly be transformed into a nursery. She watched Mira curled up in her bassinet, fed her a bottle at three in the morning, and held her in her arms long after Mira had fallen back to sleep.

In her mind, she replayed the events of the past few months. It was like a foreign film that suddenly had subtitles. Jaci had had an unwanted baby and she knew Elise had been trying desperately to get pregnant, so in her childish logic, this solved everyone’s problem.

It explained her interest in hanging around the house all the time, her offers to babysit, and her insistence that she didn’t want to spend her days out on the water. Jaci might not have been ready to be a mother, but she felt a mother’s pull toward her infant.

Was there any way Elise could have seen this? Had she been willfully blind to the reality? She didn’t think so. She remembered the day she thought Cynthia might be the mother. But it had never crossed her mind that Jaci Barros—Jaci, whom she’d known since she was in middle school—would be in that predicament.

In the end, what difference did it make? Once again, she was losing her chance at motherhood.

“Elise,” Fern said from the office doorway. “Don’t cry. Don’t do this to yourself.”

Fern was dressed in a lavender tunic, her hair already done. What time was it?

She pried Mira from Elise’s arms, returned her to the bassinet, and knelt in front of the rocking chair. “It’s going to be okay.”

Elise sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “It’s not,” she said.

“I know it seems like it won’t,” said Fern. “But trust me—it will. You need to hold it together.”

The doorbell rang. Neither one of them was expecting anyone.

“I’ll get it,” Fern said. “Will you be okay here for a few minutes by yourself?”

Elise was relieved to have the privacy. She didn’t want to “hold it together.” She was done holding it together. This was the final loss, the one from which she would never recover.

She heard Fern talking to someone, a female. She probably could have figured out who it was if she’d opened the office door and listened, but she didn’t bother. She didn’t care.

Mira let out a small sigh. Elise stood and peered into the bassinet, watched her hand find its way to her mouth. She’d been sucking her thumb lately, a new development. Mira would change so much in the next few weeks and months, and Elise wouldn’t witness it.

A knock on the office door.

“Elise, we have a visitor,” Fern said from the hallway. A visitor? Why on earth would Fern let someone come inside at a time like this? Elise pulled her robe more tightly closed and opened the door.

Lidia Barros.

Of course Lidia would come over. Lidia, Mira’s grandmother.

Elise felt a surge of anger, then reminded herself Lidia had not asked for this to happen. She was just as much a victim of circumstance as Elise. Still, Lidia would leave with Mira. She had a new granddaughter, and once again, Elise’s arms would be empty.

“I don’t mean to intrude,” Lidia said, stepping into the room. Fern followed behind her.

“Of course. I…we should have called you this morning. I’m sorry,” Elise said, looking at Fern, who nodded.

Lidia shook her head. “I actually came by to apologize. Jaci explained to me what she did and why, and although it might have been well intentioned, I can’t imagine the pain it must be causing you. So there’s no rush to bring Mira to our house.”

And yet, her eyes darted to the bassinet.

Elise stood there, woozy from sleep deprivation. Her eyes, bleary from crying, could barely focus. She walked over to the bassinet and found Mira awake and staring at the mobile they’d recently installed. Elise picked her up and cradled her against her shoulder. She stood still for a minute, her eyes closed, cementing the moment in her mind for all time.

She turned to Lidia and handed Mira to her. Lidia, surprised, took the baby with a reflexive ease.

Mira looked up at Lidia and smiled, the smile that had been so rare that Fourth of July weekend but that now delighted everyone who came in contact with her.

Elise turned away from grandmother and grandchild, choked back her sobs, and walked into Fern’s waiting arms.