Chapter Six

LARA

I’m in bed, and in spite of the long bath, my legs still feel heavy and sore, my arms a little achy, but I can’t fall asleep no matter how I try. I’m just too restless. I turn over onto my side and try to not think about Ethan, only a few doors down the hall away from me.

I wanted, and want, nothing at all to do with Ethan. My sister’s request in her will means that if I honor it, which seems like the best decision for everyone, I’ll have to talk to Ethan, and be involved in his life on at least a weekly basis, if not more often than that.

I finally figure that there’s no way I’m going to get to sleep any time soon, and decide that it would be better to just go downstairs to the living room and maybe read or watch TV for a little bit, until my mind is a bit more at ease.

I get out of the bed and pad out of my room, listening hard to make sure that I’m the only one awake in the house. I can’t hear Dad, or Riley, and by now I assume that Ethan has gone to sleep with his daughter, so I should be in the clear. I have no idea what books Dad still has hanging around, but there should be something worth reading.

But as I get to the bottom of the stairs, I see light coming from the living room and sigh to myself. Dad must have left the lamp on, I think as I reach the end of the stairs. Of course, I remind myself quickly, that just means that it’s more convenient for me to read something, and there’s no risk of running into the coffee table or anything like that.

Instead, I see Ethan sitting in the living room, looking at something on his phone. I consider retreating back up the stairs, pretending nothing happened, and maybe taking another bath in the hopes that the second one will make me fall asleep. Ethan looks up from his phone and that option evaporates.

“Hey,” I say quietly.

“Oh, hey,” Ethan says. “I didn’t wake you up coming down here, did I?”

I shake my head. “No, I just couldn’t sleep,” I admit. I sit down on the couch and immediately feel uncomfortable.

“Yeah, same,” Ethan tells me. I look at him and notice how the past week has changed him. Ethan is a tall muscular guy with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. He usually had a smile on his face, but after what he’s been through, I can tell that he is carrying the weight of everyone and everything on his shoulders.

“It’s gotta be hard, after…” I press my lips together.

“I’m just used to her being there, you know?”

I nod at Ethan’s statement because just the thought of it makes me want to cry. I’m not even sure anymore if I’m more upset for him, and Riley, or at the fact that I’m having to relive some of the worst moments of my life, of when I found out that Ethan and Alexis had hooked up.

“Riley’s sleeping okay?”

Ethan picks up a baby monitor and waggles it with a wry smile. “How are you holding up, Lara?”

I think about it for a moment and don’t really know what to say. “I’m… okay, I guess,” I say finally, a little touched that he asks after me considering that his entire world has just been rocked and nothing will ever be the same.

I look around the living room and all I can think of is the day I found out that Alexis had seeing Ethan. I’d come home after getting my degree, and right there in the living room, Alexis and Ethan had been just talking, my sister with my ex-boyfriend on the couch. That was how I found out. No one had seen fit to tell me beforehand.

I found out shortly afterwards that she was pregnant. I never asked, but I was under the impression that it happened very early on their relationship and might not have been planned. By that point, I was not talking to Alexis and or my parents, so I never asked, and it was too painful to bring up. I now realize that, for my parents, their daughter was pregnant and unmarried at the time, and she needed her parents’ support.

A few weeks after learning that Alexis was expecting Ethan’s child, I was invited to their wedding. A small affair that I refused to go to. My parents were furious with me, but I felt betrayed and embarrassed. The rift that had started with Alexis and Ethan dating, and then the pregnancy, grew into an estrangement with the marriage. The only reason I got back in touch with my parents was when my mother told me she was ill and likely not to live to see her granddaughter’s first birthday.

I take a deep breath, this is obviously not the time to rehash any of that. It’s not worth it, even if I had wanted to talk to Ethan about how betrayed I’d felt, how hurt.

“It’s a good thing we don’t live that far apart,” Ethan says quietly, and I shrug. As soon as I could, I’d found a place to live in the next town over, closer to where I work, and when Ethan and Alexis had gotten married, they’d gotten a place the next town over in the other direction. I’d known about that, but I’d never visited them. In fact, from the time I’d found out about them dating, and Alexis and I had our massive fight over it, I’d stayed away from even my parents’ house.

“It’ll make it easier for Riley,” I agree, for the sake of agreeing. Ethan’s going through enough right now, and even if I don’t know if I can ever really forgive him, I don’t really have any cause to make things worse.

“There are just so many things… I can’t even imagine what it will be like, being a single father,” Ethan says, and there’s a sound in his voice like his throat is closing up.

“Yeah,” I say. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to push any thought of what history Ethan and I have out of my mind. If I’m going to do what my sister wanted, if I’m going to help raise her daughter, I’ll have to forget that there was ever anything between Ethan and me at all.

“I shouldn’t be unloading on you,” Ethan says, and I open my eyes. I can’t help but laugh a little.

“You’re the one who lost a wife,” I point out.

“You lost a sister,” Ethan counters.

I shrug. I don’t want to talk about all the complicated feelings that come along with Alexis being dead. “I was just going to grab a book and read for a while since I can’t fall asleep,” I say, and stand up to go to the bookshelf along the wall.

“Yeah, I should probably figure out something to do that won’t wake up Riley,” Ethan says. He looks down at his phone and I can feel the tension between us, but there’s nothing I can do about it.