And I don’t know which one scares me more—the fact that it’s true, or the fact that I’ve stopped trying to pretend it isn’t.
Chapter Seventeen
Call Me By My Name
Sydney
I’m cutting grapes at the counter, and Archer is at the stove making scrambled eggs when Lily sets down her crayon and holds up her juice cup.
“Can I have more?”
“Sure, babe.” I take the cup—and pour apple juice before setting it back on the table next to her drawing, which is either a dog or a very ambitious potato.
She takes a sip, sets it down, and picks up her crayon. “Thanks, Mommy.”
The kitchen goes silent.
The kind of silence that has weight—heavy and loaded.
Lily’s crayon stops moving. Her eyes go wide, and I watch the realization hit her in real time—her mouth opens, her face flushes, her whole body goes still in her chair. “I mean Auntie Syd.” Her voice is tiny.
“It’s okay, Lil.” My voice comes out steady, which is a feat of engineering because my chest has just caved in. “It’s totally okay.”
Archer is at the stove, his back to us. His hand is on the spatula, and he hasn’t moved. He heard it—I know he heard it because his shoulders went tight the second the word lefther mouth, and he’s standing very still, like he’s processing something he doesn’t know how to respond to.
He doesn’t turn around.
Lily gives me a wide-eyed, panicked look. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I know, sweetie. It’s fine.” I brush the hair off her forehead and smile at her, the smile costing me everything I have. “Eat your grapes.”
She nods, picks up her crayon, and goes back to the potato-dog like nothing happened, because she’s three, and three-year-olds recover from emotional earthquakes in under thirty seconds. I… I do not.
Luke walks in from the living room holding his shark book. He assesses the room—Lily coloring, me standing at the counter, Archer at the stove with his back turned—and sits down at the table without comment.
“Can I have toast?” he asks.
“Triangles?” I manage.
“Obviously.”
I make the toast, cut it into triangles, and set it in front of him with the butter on the side because Luke likes to apply his own butter in a thin, even layer that covers every square millimeter of bread. Archer finishes the eggs, brings them to the table, and sits down, and we eat breakfast without mentioning what just happened.
I know it was just a slip. But a three-year-old just handed me the one word I’ve wanted to hear my whole life and then took it back.
I’m thirty years old. I want kids. I’ve always wanted kids. I figured by now I’d have them—my own, not someone else’s beautiful twins whom I love so much it scares me.
Bree picks the twins up at four for her midweek overnight.I’ve dressed and packed them—Lily’s bag has Jeffrey the giraffe sticking out of the top because he goes everywhere—and I’m standing at the front door when Bree pulls up.
The handoff is usually quick. Hi, here’s their stuff, Luke had a good day, Lily needs to finish her antibiotics at bedtime. Cordial. Efficient. Two women on opposite sides of a situation neither of them chose.
Today, Lily runs to the car, and I’m buckling her into the car seat when she turns to Bree and says, with the breezy confidence of someone delivering yesterday’s weather report: “Mommy, I accidentally called Syd Mommy this morning, but I fixed it.”
The air in the car changes.
I’m crouched at the car door, my hands still on the buckle, and I watch Bree’s face absorb it. Her jaw tightens. Her eyes shift from Lily to me, and for a second, we’re just two women looking at each other across a three-year-old’s car seat, and there is so much in that look—surprise, hurt, something harder underneath—that I have to force myself not to look away.
“That’s okay, baby,” Bree says to Lily, her voice perfectly even. “Sometimes we mix up our words.”
