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Leaning toward me, she reached out her hand and opened her palm in supplication. “I want you to think about it. It’s a lot of responsibility. I’ve no doubt you can handle the work, but I’d like you to consider if you want to marry yourself to this job.” Her professional mask dropped entirely, and she regarded me seriously with her shutters open. “You’re young and beautiful. Full of life. This job demands all your attention at times. You have a child to consider. It would be no failing on your part to pass it up.”
She stood and smoothed her straight skirt over her slender thighs. “However, it would be a failure on my part if I did not extend the opportunity. You’ve earned it.”
I opened my mouth to assure her of my earlier decision, but she raised her hand to stay my words. “Hope. Please think it through. I’m not ashamed to say I’d like more for you than this.”
With those shocking words, Maeve recomposed her face and glided across her office. Shutting the door quietly, she left me to think.
Perhaps too much.
Because Maeve’s parting words opened the door to those girlhood dreams of love and family. I wanted it so badly I talked my best friend into giving it a go.
A mishap that resulted in a tiny miracle.
But I had no control over finding love. The men I’d dated in recent years reminded me too much of my father. Set in their ways. Demanding. They had certain expectations of a wife, especially one who looked like me. I wasn’t bragging. My looks had been more of a detriment than an advantage.
As enticing as Maeve’s dreams for me were, if I wanted to change my life for the better, I needed to focus on something I could control.
Like my career.
Pity
Hope
“Grammy? Grampy? We’re here.”
I walked into my childhood home and took in its’ utter sameness. Nothing ever changed here. Not the paint color on the walls, the pictures lining the hallway, or the rugs on the floor. I swear my mother found those rugs three decades ago, bought them in bulk, and simply replaced them every year or two.
Speak of the she-devil, she rounded the corner from the laundry room, the place where she spent half her life. The other half she spent in the kitchen.
Her eyes lit on Brayleigh, and she opened her arms. “Duckie!”
Brayleigh wiggled to get down. She ran to my mother who scooped her up and nuzzled into her sweet, baby neck, eliciting wild, baby-belly laughs.
Brayleigh’s coordination had improved over the summer. All those hours spent running around at the park with Lucky and Minty strengthened her.
My mind began to whirr. Should I get her into some lessons? Maybe dance? Soccer? Gymnastics? Definitely swimming.
My mother’s face, far too close to mine, interrupted my reverie. “Hello, darling.” She looked up at me, her big eyes liquid with suffocating love. She smiled hopefully and raised up onto her toes to kiss my cheek and wrap her free arm around my waist.
I allowed myself to lean into her softness for just a moment. Her perfume filled my nostrils, and the little sigh that escaped her lips told me just how much these little moments meant to her.
They killed me.
A part of me, a larger part than I wanted to admit, longed to rest in her softness and follow her lead. It would be so much easier to meet the single men I imagined lived in her friends’ basements and ‘find someone’ to marry. I could push out another kid or two. Spend my time divided between the laundry room and the kitchen. Cater to ‘my man’ by making his coffee in the morning, cooking his favorite meals from his mother’s recipes, and spend my days carting kids to doctor’s appointments and dance classes. He would work late and collect awards and accolades while I got chubby, forgot to do my nails, and allowed my roots to grow out.
I studied my chipped nails and made a mental note to make an appointment.
“How are you, darling?” Her words brought my attention back to her round, pretty face, but her eyes searched for something over my shoulder. “Is Lucky with you?”
I huffed out a breath of irritation and extracted myself from her arms. “No, Mom. Lucky is at home with his live-in girlfriend.”
Probably fucking her lights out seeing as I’d just picked up Brayleigh. I didn’t share that part though her next statement made me wish I had.
“I wish you could have made that work. I love that boy.”
“I love him, too. Too much to saddle him with a woman he doesn’t love in that way.”
Her wary eyes fixed on my face. “Do you love him in that way?”
