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So I call reinforcements.
I pick up Mom at the airport, and after hugging me, she brings her hands to my enormous belly, feeling around for movement. Spawn obliges with a little kick, and one of my mom’s hands flies up to her mouth. Her eyes well until the dam bursts, and we are both crying in the airport like a bad nineties movie. I haven’t hugged her in years. I don’t even care if I am a grown woman because damn it, I need my mommy!
“Oh, Sofia,” she whispers, looking at me with awe. “I can’t believe my baby is having a baby.”
I scoff. “I’m not a baby, Mom. I’m twenty-eight.”
“You’ll always be my baby.”
I look away from her and dare to ask, “So you’re not mad at me?”
“What on earth for?” she asks, confused.
“Because the dad’s not in the picture.”
“Hay, mija. Of course I’m not mad. No matter what, this baby is a miracle.”
I sniffle a little and lean into another hug. “Gracias, Mami.”
I wish my nana could be here too, but traveling just wasn’t an option for her, so instead, we hired a stay-at-home care service during my pregnancy and for the first few months after Spawn is born.
Mom wants to help, and I’m so glad for it. But mostly, I’m glad she’ll get to meet her grandchild. I wish we could live together, but Nana has earned the right to spend the last of her days where she wants to.
That first night with Mom home, she tucks me in like I’m a little kid, and I take her hand and kiss the back of it. And I have to ask once again, “Mom, are you sure you’re not mad at me?”
She shakes her head. “Should I be?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. The dad’s gone and—”
“And what? What does that have to do with anything? Your father wasn’t around, and you turned out great.”
I smile at her, relieved she isn’t upset that I’m unwed and pregnant. She also reassures me that she won’t be mad if I don’t want to say who the father is. She understands the need for a single mom’s privacy, and it is nobody’s business but mine unless I want to share.
“I love you, Mom,” I say.
She shuts off the lights. “I love you too,” she says before closing my bedroom door.
TWENTY-FIVE
Bren
I’m staring through the back porch window at the lake past my backyard. It is serene and peaceful—and fucking pissing me off. Every time I look at it, it accomplishes the exact opposite of its intended serenity.
This house is my vacation home away from the city. I bought it so long ago, knowing even then in my youth, with freshIndustrial Novembermoney, that one day, I’d bring my family here to vacation in the country every summer. We’d escape the city and the noise and just be. It’s supposed to be a quiet place for reflection and relaxation, and yet I’ve done nothing but work myself to death since coming here the day after proposing marriage to Sofia a year ago.
My stomach churns every time I picture her beautiful face and her horror at the very word ‘marriage.’ We weren’t meant to be after all. Not like I’d thought. But not a day goes by that I don’t think of that night and wonder how she’s doing and who she’s with.
But I don’t let myself check in on her. Anytime I’m tempted to ask Roger to check in on her, instead, I pull from the whiskey bottle and grab a piece of paper to write a song.
The table in front of me is littered with stacks of paper full of chicken-scratch penmanship and sticky whiskey rings from the many glasses on the table that I never took to the sink. When I ran out of clean glasses, I started drinking straight from the bottle, and that system works infinitely better.
I bring the bottle to my lips and take a pull, thinking of the following line of lyric I want to write, when the doorbell rings. I glance at the clock on the wall: two p.m. I’m not expecting anyone, and I glance down at the robe I’m wearing over my pajama bottoms and try to remember when my last shower was. If it’s reporters or media of any kind, I can’t be seen like this.
I grab my phone and look at the door-cam before making a move to answer it. My eyes roll at the sight of the top of Fritz’s head. He says something, and I read his lips to see what I’m pretty sure isopen up, asshole.
When I open the door, Fritz’s nose scrunches up.
“What do you want?” I ask, not making way for him to come in. I don’t care if he drove three hours to get here from Berlin.
