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I never asked, but always wondered why Carrie went ahead with the pregnancy. At first I just assumed that despite her faults, she believed that keeping the baby was just the morally right thing to do. So I figured Carrie would take to it—that once the baby was born she’d love it and hopefully change some of her own wild child ways. But Carrie didn’t even want to hold Olivia in the hospital.
She looked beyond depressed, which scared the living hell out of me, and she didn’t smile unless her friends came by the house with cute little baby gifts and bottles of prosecco to toast the new mom. She’d dress Olivia up on those days and put on a show, but behind closed doors when it was just us, she wouldn’t get up off the couch even if Olivia was screaming bloody murder from her crib. Carrie would sit there like a stone, her face an impassive mask.
One night I broke down and shouted, “Just this once, could you get off your ass and check on your daughter?” because I’d basically been changing every diaper and doing every midnight feeding since I brought the two of them home from the hospital.
She looked to me, put her wineglass down and then leisurely made her way to the stairs. But I had to follow. I was already so attached to Olivia that I didn’t trust Carrie around her. Didn’t trust that she’d clean her thoroughly, didn’t trust that she’d strap her onto the changing table, didn’t trust her to do anything where my child was concerned.
She was never a warm and affectionate person, but I think having the baby broke something inside of Carrie. Maybe I should have moved us back to Cincinnati to be closer to her family like she asked. Maybe I should have made sure she had a good nanny to help her from day one. Maybe I should have pushed her to go to therapy sooner.
But I was twenty-five years old, not much more than a kid myself. I didn’t know jack shit about postpartum depression, about marriage, about anything.
And it’s hard to have sympathy for someone who started to run out on her kid any chance she could get. She was like a zombie when she was home with us, but when one of her old friends called with an invite for a girls’ night out she morphed into her old party girl self.
She was back to her pre-pregnancy size within a month because she barely ate, so wine soaked nights left her coming home in a taxi too drunk to exit the car without me and the driver having to carry her in. Not a good look. And, no surprise, Carrie would be useless the next day.
By the time Olivia was six months old I wanted out for me and my daughter. I’d stopped caring about my wife, figured that if she wanted to drink like a sorority girl and then lay around hungover all day, I could manage on my own because that’s essentially what I was doing anyway.
My parents were too old to help in any real way, and Carrie’s mom came to visit only once in the early days and was no help whatsoever.
Like mother like daughter, the only thing my mother-in-law did during her visit was to cheer her little girl up by taking her shopping all day, or to lunch and the spa on my dime. The two of them practically wore out the strip out on my credit card that week.
Carrie went home to Cinci when Olivia was around ten months old, and when she got back she sat me down with a look of cold determination. By then we were barely on speaking terms. It was like working an office job stuck in a cubicle next to that one coworker you just can’t stand. She threw out the termtrial separationbut I knew she wanted a divorce. I wanted one too. But then she told me she was moving back home and taking Olivia with her.
I’d just secured my first really big patent the year before, and foolishly bragged to Carrie that the licensing deals alone would set me up with royalties for the rest of my days. Explaining the concept of mailbox money to her, I felt like a big shot, when in reality I was a colossal dumbass. Two months later I was married with a baby on the way, too shellshocked to even think of a pre-nup.
And that’s how low my opinion of Carrie was at that point. Custody of Olivia meant fat child support payments for my ex-wife. Clever girl would be getting her own mailbox money after all. I think I laughed in her face and said something original like:Over my dead body.
But it was her dead body I was standing over in the morgue only a few short weeks later. She died in a drunk driving accident. A passenger in some guy’s car.
They left a club and were heading in the opposite direction of our house. After the accident one of her friends fessed up and confirmed what I already suspected. The man who survived the crash but would ultimately wind up serving two years for vehicular manslaughter was someone from Carries’s past. Yeah, a real stand-up guy.
Hate is a strong word, but that’s what I felt in the days and weeks leading up to her death. Hated her just as much or even more in the weeks and months that followed, as every new lie and deception came to light.
It’s been over three years now, so I’m ashamed to admit there are times when I still hate her.
I hate that I have to speak about her in glowing terms to our daughter. Hate that I have to see her picture on Olivia’s nightstand every time I tuck her in. Hate what she put me through, torturing me from beyond the grave when that piece of shit boyfriend of hers demanded a paternity test in a bid to garner some sympathy from the judge before he was sentenced.
Yeah, I still hate everything about Carrie except the miracle she gave to me.
Chapter Eighteen
Skylar
Sienna is folding some laundry, I think, and she’s speaking to me but I’m finding it hard to listen.
Beautiful.
The word seems inadequate, but it’s all I can think of when I look down into my nephew’s face. His little body is so warm and soft, and it’s as if he’s nestled into my arms in a way that feels perfect—like God made babies to fit just so.
“He’s perfect,” I say to no one in particular.
Sienna stops what she’s doing and sits at the foot of the bed where I’m lying. “I know. I feel like I spend most of the day just staring at him like you are now.”
“I can’t believe he’s four weeks old already.”
“Right? I feel like this month has flown by and I’ve barely left the house. You’d think I’d be stir crazy by now but I’m not.”
“It’ll be so nice when you can take him out for a walk.” Looking to the window, I shake my head. “It’s April second and there’s still snow on the ground.”
