Chapter Eleven

ETHAN

I hand Riley her doll back to keep her from fussing as we wait for Lara to get to the restaurant we agreed to meet at to discuss how we’re going to make things work between us. Part of me thinks it would be easier in some respects to have had this meeting at one of our houses, but as I can see why it would be weird for her, it’s probably for the best to meet somewhere public.

It’s been a stressful week between arranging for Riley’s care and trying to take care of things at home without Alexis there. While part of me is glad to have the excuse of a break on the weekend, a lunch with Lara, even if I know it’s going to be strained and uncomfortable, another part of me wishes that she could have already taken on her role in helping raise my daughter.

“Hey, sorry, I got caught on a phone call,” Lara says as she walks up to the table I’ve taken outside.

“Don’t sweat it,” I say, gesturing to the other seat at the table.

“Hey Riley-baby! How’s my favorite girl?” Lara’s attention is all on my daughter, and I can’t help but smile for what seems like the first time that day. I can remember the first time Alexis and I saw Lara after she cut us out of her life. She’d only barely agreed to come to her dad’s house for Thanksgiving the year before, after her mother died, and only because her father was so insistent on it.

And when she’d met Riley for the first time I’d seen it click. I’d seen it happen. All the tension melted out of her and even though she ignored Alexis and me the whole visit, she was all about our little baby girl. Alexis had gone on and on to anyone who would listen about how perfect it was that Riley would bring the family back together, that Lara was just amazing with our little girl.

“Riley cries even less with Lara than she does with me!” I can hear Alexis in my mind, gushing to the friends we still had from high school, the ones who’d sided with us instead of Lara. I have no idea if Lara would have eventually come around to forgiving Alexis for falling pregnant with our child, but when Alexis had suggested making her sister Riley’s guardian along with me in her will, I’d gone along with it because I’d seen right from the start how much my sister-in-law loved my daughter.

“What can I get you folks?”

I grab the menu on the table in front of me and try to remember what it was I wanted before Lara arrived.

“I think I need a glass of water and maybe a cup of coffee to start,” Lara says, and I nod along that I’d like the same.

“Pot of coffee for the table?” I glance up, the waitress looks a little like Alexis. At least, how Alexis looked when we first started dating, with blonde hair and blue eyes and the cute look that all high-school girls seem to have, and for a second that shakes me. Although I am getting used to this new normal, my life without Alexis, I still find myself thinking of her all time. For a few moments yesterday I forgot she was dead. When it hit me, I just stood there numb. I wanted to cry but I think I have no more tears left.

I snap to the present and remembered that the waitress was waiting for me to say something.

“Yeah, yeah, that’d be great,” I tell her.

“Any idea if you’d like an appetizer?” She looks from me to Lara and then at Riley. “Maybe something for this beautiful little girl?”

“If you’ve got maybe some chicken fingers, something like that?” I know I looked at the menu, and I know I picked something out for Riley while I was waiting for Lara, but all of that is completely out of my head how.

“Right here,” the waitress says, leaning in and pointing out the little squared-off section on the menu marked “For Kids.” I glance over it quickly — there’s not much to choose from, thankfully.

“Yeah! Good. Uh, chicken fingers, that sounds good, and the fruit cup,” I say. What the hell is wrong with me? I try to shake off how stupid my brain has suddenly gotten.

“I’d love the Nicoise salad,” Lara says.

“No appetizer then?”

I search the menu to try to find the appetizers, and finally begin to calm down, without even really remembering why I was even thrown in the first place.

“The chips and dip sampler sounds good to me,” I say, barely looking up. I need to focus.

“I’d be fine with that,” Lara says.

I glance at her for just a second, and she looked so completely in control of everything, reaching over to distract Riley with another of the toys I brought with us, that it just underscores how badly I’ve been dealing with just two weeks of being Riley’s only parent. Even with my parents’ help, it’s been one thing after the other.

“And I’ll have the steak sandwich,” I tell the waitress, handing her my menu.

“Very good choices,” the waitress says, making a note. “I’ll bring you a pot of coffee and a carafe of water, and get this pretty little thing’s food out as quickly as possible.” She bounces off and some more of the pressure I’ve been feeling goes away.

“How are you doing, Ethan?” Lara asks.

“It’s been an interesting week,” I say, as soon as the waitress is gone.

“Yeah, for me, too,” Lara says quietly, and I can hear the tiredness in her voice.

Riley starts playing with two of her toys and she’s finally distracted enough that Lara and I can actually start talking.

“How are we going to make this work? I mean, I know you got the approval to work from home three days a week, or whatever…”

“Right. Yeah. So, I worked it out with my bosses during the week, and I’ve got everything set up at the apartment to make it happen,” Lara says.

“I’ve got some freedom in my schedule too,” I tell her. It took a lot of politicking with my boss, and a lot of poor-me talk, but I convinced the company I work for to give me Fridays off in exchange for me working a few extra hours the rest of the week.

“So, I guess I can pick her up from your place, or you can drop her off with me. Whichever works better,” Lara suggests.

We talk about the details, and the waitress brings the chips and dip platter, there’s some kind of spicy one that’s supposed to go with the sweet potato chips, a creamy onion one that goes with blue potato chips, and something else that I don’t even know. She brings Riley’s food at the same time and I break up the chicken fingers into smaller bites, while Lara gives her some chips without the dips.

“So, one day a week, Mondays, she’ll be either with your parents or my dad, and then I’ll pick her up on Tuesday mornings,” Lara says.

“I’ll pick her up from your place after work on Tuesday, and drop her off on my way out to work on Wednesdays,” I add.

“And then I’ll pick her up on Thursday morning, and keep her overnight to Friday morning?”

The waitress brings our main meal, my sandwich and the weird-looking salad that Lara ordered, and I think about the arrangement. It’s going to mean a lot of driving for both of us, but with us living apart that’s the only real way to make it happen the way it should. I’m just glad that Lara’s happy to keep my daughter overnight one night a week. It’ll give me a chance to catch up a bit on the stuff that Alexis normally did around the house.

With all that decided, Lara asks about how things have been, whether I’ve been able to juggle shit with taking care of Riley and working.

“I’m thinking I might need to hire a maid,” I admit.

Lara laughs a little. “Well, I guess that’s fair,” she says, but there’s that look in her eyes that I remember from when we were still going out, that look that says that she’s judging me a little bit.

“I’m working an extra hour and a half a day, or I will be, to get Fridays off,” I point out, feeling defensive.

“I get it,” Lara says with a shrug.

“You seem to be pretty okay with everything,” I say, looking her over again. I can’t help myself. The only times I’ve seen Lara in the past two or three years, I’ve been with her sister, or it’s been in the shadow of Alexis’ death. It’s only been two weeks, and I still miss the woman I married, the mother of my child and the one who helped me figure out the man I want to be. But I can’t deny that without Alexis around, it’s easier to see, again, how pretty Lara is. It’s the most terrible thought I could probably have, but I can’t help it.

“I’m good at pretending to be pretty okay,” Lara says with a little smile.

“I mean, if this is going to screw up your life or something, we don’t have to follow the will,” I say. I don’t really mean it, not from the perspective of Riley, at least. I know I’m going to need more help, and my parents and my father-in-law aren’t going to be able to watch Riley the whole time I’m working.

“No, no, it’s just that we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, and I didn’t really think about that,” Lara says.

I hadn’t really thought about it either, just that I absolutely need help raising my daughter with her mother gone.

“I guess I see where you’re coming from,” I say.