I said slowly. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, no reason.’ Her eyes skated sideways, and she set her glass on a table. ‘I’m gonna grab you a plate of food. Then we can catch up. Here –’ She turned to a leggy blonde woman wearing a short sunset-colored caftan and high canvas wedges and pulled her over to me.
‘Marie, this is Abi. Abi, Marie Corbin.’
Before I had a chance to reply, Jen had headed down the stairs and disappeared into the crowd. I frowned, feeling inexplicably abandoned. I tidied a few loose strands of hair behind my ears.
Marie was gorgeous, and I felt my shoulders round as nerves pinched my stomach. She smiled at me, her sapphire eyes crinkling, her blonde hair a sleek mane perfectly framing an angular face. ‘Oh, Abi, yes. I remember you. You’re –’
‘Olivia’s mom.’ I forced a smile.
‘I was going to say an accountant at Brown Thomas and Associates. You did the books for my new interior design company, and I was so pleased at how quickly you got them done.’
‘Oh,’ I said, startled. Usually people only knew me as Olivia’s mom, the mother of the rising star of the swim team. I tried to think of the last time I was anything else, and couldn’t. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Across the yard, Jen’s husband, Mark, raised a hand in greeting. Mark was a square-jawed business type, handsome in an aging frat-boy sort of way. I waved back.
‘I’ll just go say hi.’ I pointed at Mark, glad for an excuse to leave. ‘Nice to meet you.’
I went downstairs, grabbed a Coke from an ice bucket, and huddled next to a tall shrub in the corner of the backyard. If Sarah were here, she’d push me to go talk to people. She said I used work and Olivia as bricks in a wall I’d built around myself.
Sarah was always right and she did everything in the proper order. She’d finished college with a degree in psychology, then got a job, then a husband, a kid, and so on. Now she was a counselor for victims of traumatic cases. Most of her clients were referred from the Seattle Police Department. I was a wrecking ball in comparison: a single mom with a job I’d settled for and no real friends.
Just then something cold splashed against my arm.
‘Hi, Abi!’
‘Derek. Hi.’ Mark and Jen’s son used to call me Miss Knight. I remembered when he was a chubby-cheeked second-grader with perpetually grass-stained knees, and now here he was, calling me by my first name. I suddenly felt rather old.
He grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry about that.’
I brushed the liquid from my arm. ‘When did you get old enough to drink?’ I teased.
‘I’m nineteen now,’ Derek said, proud in that way teenagers get when they think they’re all grown-up.
I smiled fondly at him. ‘Have you seen Olivia?’
His smile faded. ‘No. Why? Is she in some sort of trouble?’
‘No!’ I laughed at the thought. Olivia never got in trouble. ‘Nothing like that. We were planning to meet here.’
‘Oh. . .’ He ran a hand over his jaw and I noticed how much he looked like his mother. He had the same intense beauty: shaggy, dark curls; a narrow, heart-shaped face. His dark-blue eyes were piercing and intelligent. He was a good-looking kid. Probably already breaking hearts.
Somebody – a young woman – came up next to him then, touched his shoulder. He glanced at her, then at me, then stepped back. The entire exchange probably only lasted seconds, but it took me all that time to realize that the young woman next to him was Olivia.
My brain felt like it was spinning in mud. Her long, silky blonde locks were gone, cropped into a pink-streaked pixie cut. Gone also were her usual T-shirt and jeans, replaced with black leggings and a low-cut peasant top that plunged into her cleavage.
I remember looking at Olivia in the fading evening light and feeling like I didn’t know her anymore. I knew then that something had been shaken loose, something I had no power to put back together. . .
‘Whose baby is it?’ I asked Tyler now, my insides tight as a fist.
He didn’t answer. He looked very far away.
‘Tyler. Whose baby is it?’
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t answer. Instead he said: ‘I wish I could’ve saved her.’
‘Saved her from what?’
His eyes crashed into mine.
‘From everything.’
OLIVIA
april
After dinner, Mom went upstairs to take a shower. The house still smelled of burned bread even though all the windows were cracked open. It clawed at my throat and seared my nose, making me feel sick.
As soon as I heard the shower turn on, I ran to the desk in the corner of the living room and shuffled through the neatly organized paperwork and alphabetized, color-coded files. Nothing there. I took the stairs two at a time to Mom’s bedroom. I pushed through electric cords and notebooks in her bedside table drawers. I dropped to my knees and checked under her bed. Just a scattering of dusty, mismatched hand weights, random books that didn’t fit on the bookshelf downstairs, a box with cards and notes I’d given her.
Obviously I’d been in Mom’s room loads of times, but I wasn’t a weirdo. I’d never searched through her personal things. It felt gross. Disgust slithered up my throat, but then I remembered her lie: . . . those brown eyes.
There must be some proof somewhere about who my father was. The minutes crawled by. I was running out of time.
In her closet, I shuffled through clothes and shoes, ran my hand along the top shelf. Suddenly my fingers knocked against something. I stood on my tiptoes and pulled it out. It was an old shoebox, a thick layer of dust across the top. I sat cross-legged on the floor with it on my lap. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. The shower was still going but I knew I didn’t have much time.
The box was light. I almost thought it was empty. But when I took the lid off and pushed a layer of tissue paper aside, I saw a thick piece of paper. It was my birth certificate. I looked at the spot where my parents’ names were listed, but only my mom’s was there.
I put it down and lifted out the tissue paper. Underneath was a hospital ID bracelet with my name in pale blue letters.
And then I saw it: a small square piece of plain white card, the type you might find in a bunch of flowers delivered to your doorstep. On one side it was blank. On the other, in thick capital letters, it said:
SORRY.
G
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The
