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Maybe going to the party together will get us back on track. Seeing all the kids will remind Kyle how much he wants to be a father and convince him we should try one more time.“I’ll be ready in a half hour.”
Cars filled the driveway and lined both sides of the street. Kyle reversed direction in the cul-de-sac and parked two houses away from Sharon’s. “How many people did she invite?” he asked.
“Cameron’s entire first-grade class.” Twenty-four reminders.
“Seems excessive.” He walked around to my side of the Jeep and waited for me to remove my seat belt. I took a deep breath and braced myself for the onslaught of mixed emotions. Kyle reached for my gloved hand with his bare one. I wished it were a gesture of support:We’re in this together.But I knew him enough to understand that hewas afraid I would slip on the mushy layer of snow and slush covering the street.
The driveway was clear down to the shiny black pavement. When we reached it, Kyle released my hand.
Sharon’s husband, Rick, greeted us at the door and took our coats.
“Thanks, Fr ...” I stopped. I always wanted to call him Freddie. His full name was Fredrick, and all through elementary, middle, and high school, he’d gone by Freddie. He’d attended college in Georgia, where he apparently rebranded himself. When he returned to Stapleton, he insisted on being called Rick, wore crisp oxfords instead of flannel shirts, and spoke with a slight twang. Every time I saw him, I was shocked that little Freddie Grey had transformed into handsome Rick Grey and was the man Sharon vowed forever with. He’d had a crush on her when we were teenagers, but she hadn’t given him the time of day. On a wintery Saturday night almost a decade after graduation, Rick was drinking at the same bar we were. He spotted Sharon and me across the room and made his way toward us. As he worked his way through the crowd to the corner where we stood, bumping shoulders with people he passed and spilling his beer, she scrunched her nose. “Would you look at this putz,” she said. He told her he’d gone to school with us, but she didn’t remember, insisting she had never seen him before, even though we’d known him since kindergarten.
My heart broke for him, but Rick was unfazed. He asked Sharon out a dozen times before she agreed to a first date. Once they started dating, she dumped him at least four times. She even turned him down when he proposed. Good ole Rick had persisted, though, and here he was, married to the woman of his dreams, the father of her two sons. I bet a few failed IVF attempts wouldn’t have stopped him like they had stopped Kyle.
In the playroom, a group of boys and girls stood around an air hockey table while their parents engaged in friendly conversationsoff to the side. Kyle and I paused in front of a cluster of mothers sipping white wine who were dressed in black stretch pants and designer sweatshirts like they’d all come from a yoga class. I didn’t know any of them. I scanned the area, looking for Sharon, but didn’t see her.
Cameron lit up when he saw us. He dropped his paddle and raced across the room, screaming, “Aunt Nikki! Uncle Kyle!”
I sank to my knees to hug him. He kissed me with sticky lips that smelled like grape.
“Hey, little big man. Happy birthday,” Kyle said, bumping Cameron’s fist.
“Look what I got!” Cameron excitedly pointed to the air hockey table. “Play with me.” He pulled on Kyle’s arm and led him away.
I stood by myself, not making eye contact with anyone. Pieces of conversation floated toward me.
“Chelsea got the lead in the school play.”
“Brandon’s playing Little League this spring.”
“Meghan’s applying to University of New Hampshire.”
These women were all talking about their children. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. I folded my arms across my chest, trying to think of something to say. The three mothers standing closest to me broke into laughter, and one of them smiled at me. “The kids are having a great time,” she said.
“Sharon knows how to throw a party.”
She jutted her chin toward the kids. “Which one is yours?”
My face heated up the way it always did when I was asked questions like this. I forced a smile. “None.” The corners of her mouth slanted downward. “I’m a friend of Sharon’s.” She blinked fast. “We’ve known each other our entire lives.” No response. “We were next-door neighbors growing up.” I could have kept going, pummeling her with useless information until she forgot her original question. It was a strategy I had used before.
“How nice,” the woman finally said. She inched back toward the other mothers and turned her back to me again. I swallowed hard, feeling judged and, worse, invisible because of my childless status. My heart raced, and my shoulders rose until they were parallel with my earlobes. I fled the playroom to look for Sharon in the kitchen.
As soon as I walked through the threshold, my shoulders relaxed and my heartbeat slowed. Love and warmth oozed out of the gray walls. Sharon’s kitchen always smelled like cookies, brownies, or muffins. I inhaled deeply to take in the aroma and wondered if when her boys were older, the scent of baked goods would remind them of their mother’s love the way garlic and basil did for me.
The trays of cupcakes sitting on her counter looked like they’d been bought at the popular bakery in town, but I knew Sharon had been up all night baking. She crouched over the table, putting the finishing touches on a cake. Her blonde hair was pulled away from her face and tied in a short ponytail. She wore a sweatshirt I guessed was Rick’s by how baggily it fit her. I stood less than a foot away, watching her do her magic, but she was so focused on her work she had no idea I was there. Her sixteen-month-old son, Noah, sat in a high chair next to her, sucking a pacifier. Seeing me, he bounced in his seat and banged his fist on the tray. The pacifier tumbled from his mouth. “Nik, Nik,” he squealed, raising his arms toward me. My insides turned warm and gooey.
“You made it.” Sharon paused to greet me. With the pastry bag still in her hand, she pulled me into an embrace. “So sorry,” she whispered. The night of the blood test, I had called to tell her I wasn’t pregnant. “Next time,” she had said, but I could tell by how tight she hugged me now that she, like Kyle, had run out of hope.
Sharon returned to decorating the cake while I extracted Noah from his chair. His almond-shaped blue eyes stared into mine. I had been looking into them for my entire life because they were exactly like his mother’s. He pulled on a strand of my hair until itstraightened and released it, watching it curl again. He giggled and did it again. If I let him, he would spend hours doing that. I hugged him tighter, loving the feel of his soft, chubby arms wrapped around my neck. For just a second, I pretended he was mine. The warmth in my belly threatened to turn into a red-hot flame of yearning that burned me alive. I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth.
Sharon watched me with her eyebrows knit together. We had known each other so long that I had no doubt she could feel my yearning. I smiled at her so she wouldn’t worry.
“The first cake I made burned to a charcoal-like consistency because somehow the little beast got hold of the bag of flour while Rick was watching him,” Sharon said. “I didn’t hear the timer go off over the sound of the vacuum cleaner.”
I cringed at Sharon’s nickname for her younger son and pulled him even closer. “You’re not a little beast.”
“Oh, he is.” She reached for her phone. “What do you think?” The cake was decorated like a skating rink, with nets on each end and players with hockey sticks battling for the puck at center ice. Sharon planned to open her own bakery one day and had even put a deposit down on a storefront before she found out she was pregnant with Cameron. I suspected the reason she baked so much was to keep her skills fresh. Once Noah started school, she planned to pursue her dream.
