by Amy Pine
“Bex,” was all that finally came out of her mouth when she found her voice again.
Becca straightened on her rolling stool and cleared her throat. “I should have the results of your glucose test by tomorrow afternoon.”
The baby fluttered inside of her in response, and Alissa sucked in a breath, both hands covering her belly in the hope of feeling the movement again, her first instinct to grab Matt’s hand and place it under hers. But Matt wasn’t here. And if she kept pushing the way she had been, he might not be the next time either.
“Is everything okay?” Becca asked, her tone cool and clinical.
Alissa swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “All good,” she lied without as much as a scoff. Maybe she did have a poker face after all. “Are you good? Because I can shut up about me if you need to talk about you.”
Becca checked her watch and then handed Alissa her chart. “Sorry. I’m late for my next patient.” Then she rose and strode toward the door before Alissa had a chance to move.
A weight heavy in her chest, Alissa made her way to the checkout desk, took care of her co-pay, and then headed back to the waiting room.
Even though Matt was gone, on the chair where he’d been sitting was a small red umbrella with a sticky note on the handle.
Meant what I said about staying dry. I’ll get this back at Thanksgiving or the next appointment, whichever comes first.
She picked up the umbrella, gripping it tight against her chest, her sister’s words replaying themselves in her head.
Was it too late to finally tell Matthew she wanted him to stay—not just for the baby but for her as well?
For a woman who, according to her sister, was such a rockstar in the having-it-all category, the one thing she didn’t have was the answer. She’d have to get past twenty years of fear and missteps—and maybe a little stubborn pride—and ask.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabi let out a long, shaky breath and then opened the dressing room door. This was the moment of truth. But before she stepped foot out into the viewing area, subjecting herself not only to the three-way mirror but also to six sets of critical eyes, she heard Grandma Ev’s voice.
“Really, Alissa, a mall bridal shop? This is just where she’s getting her design idea, right? Then we can go to that adorable boutique I was telling you about in—”
“Mom,” Alissa interrupted in a whisper-shout that really was nothing close to a whisper at all. “Why does it even matter? It’s not your dress. Or your wedding. And what Gabi wears is not a reflection on you or your status in society. If this is what Gabi wants, this is what Gabi gets. It’s her wedding and the only reason we are here is to support her, okay?”
Gabi’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open, though she was still hidden behind her partially opened door. Things had been off between her and her mom ever since the cake tasting disaster, but it helped to hear that she was in Gabi’s corner no matter what the two of them still had to figure out.
And go Mom for going up against Grandma Ev!
Gabi’s mom’s question was followed by a beat of silence, which meant it was now or never.
“Are you all ready?” she called in warning so the talking behind her back that wasn’t exactly behind her back would cease.
“Yassss!” Miriam called back. “Get your soon-to-be-married bootie out here!”
Gabi took one more steadying breath, tucked her hair behind her ears, and grabbed a fistful of tulle in each hand so she wouldn’t trip over the trumpet skirt that was several inches too long, especially since she wasn’t wearing heels. But other than that, the dress fit her like a dream. She’d found it that first night with her dad and had come back week after week with him, trying it on again before he’d take her out to dinner, a ritual that had been born when Gabi needed to connect with her mom and she’d found her dad to be available instead. A happy accident that had given her something she hadn’t ever had before—a routine. With her dad.
“Wait!” she called from the fitting room. “Mom? Can you come in here a second?”
Seconds—no milliseconds—later, Alissa Adler was throwing open the dressing room door.
“What is it? What do you need? Is everything okay?” But she stopped short, grabbing the tasseled end of the scarf around her neck and dabbing at the tears leaking out of the corners of both eyes.
“Oh, Gabi…”
Gabi’s heart leapt into her throat. “Yeah? You like it? I wanted you to be the first to see. Well—second.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Second?” her mother asked, a tiny crack in her voice.
Gabi took a couple of steps closer to her mom, then dropped her handfuls of tulle. “The night I came looking for you…The night you hurt your ankle after your date? I ended up here with Dad that night.”
Her mother nodded, and Gabi had to glance away for a second, the woman’s tear-soaked lashes driving the invisible knife of guilt straight through Gabi’s ribs.
“I was going to bring you here,” she admitted. “And—and show you the dress. I wandered in here one day when I was on a lunch break from the studio, and I fell in love with it. That day—that night—I just needed to put the dress on and to feel connected to Ethan and this wedding.” She swiped at a tear under her own eye. “It worked. So did connecting with Dad. So we’ve kind of been doing this—um—weekly.”
Her mother sucked in a breath, and Gabi’s heart sank.
“You’re upset. I knew you’d be upset, but I just didn’t know how to tell you, especially once things got so weird between us.”
Gabi expected her mother to confirm her assumption, but instead Alissa pulled her into a fiercely tight hug—or as tight as she could manage with layers of tulle in between them.
“You’re not mad?” Gabi blew at her mom’s scarf tassels.
“Mad at your dad being an amazing dad?” Alissa let out a soft, tearful laugh, then stepped back so she and Gabi could see each other again. “He and I made a lot of mistakes throughout the years, and it kills me that any of the hurt he and I caused each other might have hurt you. But he is a good man. One of the best, maybe.” She pressed her palm to Gabi’s cheek. “I see so much of him in you. I hope you know that’s a good thing. A perfect thing.”
Gabi pressed her lips together and nodded. “It really helps to hear you say that. Do you think—do you think Ethan will think the same? If I’m more like Dad than I realized?”
Ever since she’d casually brought up traveling again and Ethan made it clear that his lifestyle couldn’t support more than an extended honeymoon, Gabi had done her best to tamp down her whimsical desires. Sure, she’d been quietly compiling a new portfolio while working at the studio, but she hadn’t yet pulled the trigger on sending out any new résumés—or admitting to Ethan that she wanted to.
Alissa pressed her lips into a smile. “It’s his job to love all of you, just like it’s your job to love all of him. The trick is to make sure that he knows it, no matter how scary it might be sometimes to tell him.”
Gabi’s brows furrowed. “Are we still talking about me and Ethan?”
“Bloom!” Miriam called from the waiting area outside the dressing room. “Are we going to see this dress or what?”
Alissa laughed. “Saved by the impatient crowd.” She nodded toward the door. “Thank you for the private viewing. Now go. Your audience awaits.”
Gabi nodded, then sucked in a steadying breath as she once again grabbed her tulle and strode out of the dressing room and around the corner to where she’d initially left her mom, both grandmothers, her two aunts, and her best friend waiting on a light pink plush couch and surrounding chairs. But when she got there, she found the six of them joined by Ethan’s sister Nora—and Ethan’s mom.
Gabi’s eyes widened.
“Nora.” She cleared her throat. “And Mrs. Harris. I didn’t know—I mean, how nice of you to come.”
“Please,” Mrs. Harris said with a warm smile that Gabi had
not seen directed at her in the three months she and Ethan had been home. “Call me Ruth. And I hope we’re not intruding. Your mother invited us and—well—we were so pleased to be included. I want you to know how happy I am for you and Ethan. And I hope you understand that any hesitancy on our part is because of how much I care about my son and has nothing to do with you—as long as there are no more champagne cork incidents, of course.”
Gabi smiled back at her future mother-in-law, her heart quadrupling in size as she looked over her shoulder at her mom. She’d reached out to Mrs. Harris. To Ruth. For the first time since meeting Ethan’s parents, she believed they truly would feel like family—soon.
Alissa pressed her lips into a smile that was both apologetic and triumphant and shrugged.
“Okay, okay,” Miriam said, breaking into the conversation. “We’re happy everyone is here, but oh my God can we please talk about how stunning our little Gabi is in this dress? She’s like a—a marshmallow mermaid!”
Gabi snorted. “Is that a compliment?”
“The most beautiful marshmallow mermaid under the sea!” Alissa said, rejoining the group.
“Oh, Gabi,” Grandma Ev said, pushing herself up from the couch and striding toward her granddaughter. “Look at you!” She swiped at a tear under her eye and then cupped Gabi’s cheeks in her palms.
Gabi let out a nervous laugh. “I haven’t had a chance to yet—look at myself, I mean. I wanted to see what everyone thought before I subjected myself to the three-way mirror. You really like it, Grandma Ev?”
Her grandmother sucked in a breath and nodded. “You’re a princess. A marshmallow mermaid princess.” She kissed Gabi on the forehead and dropped her hands to her granddaughter’s shoulders. “Look for yourself.”
Gabi closed her eyes and held her breath as her grandmother slowly spun her to face the mirror. She felt with her toe for the pedestal on which she was supposed to stand and climbed onto it, holding her marshmallow mermaid tulle in her hands.
Sure, there was a mirror in the dressing room, but neither the space nor the mirror itself was big enough for Gabi to truly see what she looked like in the gown. Even in all the times she’d come to try the dress on with her dad, she hadn’t let herself see the big picture. Despite the rift between them, Gabi didn’t want to do this without her mom. Now here she stood on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, with every important woman in her life here to share in what would be one of the biggest moments in her life to date.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” Grandma Ev whispered.
Gabi let go of her skirt, letting it pool over the pedestal, and did as her grandmother asked. Her heart caught in her throat, and her eyes pooled with tears. It felt like everyone else in the room was holding their breath, waiting for her to respond.
“Oh my God,” Gabi said, her voice breaking. “I am a marshmallow mermaid princess.”
“Is that a good thing?” her mom asked from behind her.
Gabi nodded, staring at her reflection. “It’s a perfect thing.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alissa watched through the front door’s window as Gabi set the timer on her camera then ran to join Ethan, T.J., and Miriam where they stood on the leaf-strewn sidewalk in front of Gabi’s childhood home.
“Does she carry that tripod with her everywhere now?” Alissa’s mother asked from over her shoulder.
Alissa laughed. “That’s my girl,” she said. “Capturing all of life’s greatest moments so we don’t forget that they happened.”
“Will she be capturing your big moment coming up in—what—twelve weeks?”
She spun to face the older woman behind her, her stomach leaping into her throat.
“Mom,” she whisper-shouted even though they were the only two in the house. Her dad had run out for extra ice, and Gabi and her crew were the first to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner—the last big family get-together before the wedding.
Evelyn Adler raised her perfectly penciled brows, then dropped her gaze to Alissa’s growing belly that was strategically covered by the loose-fitting apron she was wearing over an equally loose-fitting black sweater. “It’s getting harder to hide what you’ve been hiding.”
Guilt threatened to choke her, so naturally Alissa lashed out in defense.
“Jesus, Mom. It’s always something with you, isn’t it? Some reason to judge me for every single mistake that I make instead of trying to understand how or why.” She groaned. “Okay, we both know how this happened.” She palmed her belly that was round and firm beneath the layers of cotton and knit under which it hid. “But the why, Mom. Don’t you care about why I haven’t told her yet? Why I haven’t wanted to pull the rug out from under my daughter while she’s planning a wedding and figuring out her dreams and her future?”
Both things Alissa never got to do, at least not when she was her daughter’s age. Her and Matt’s wedding was a rushed civil ceremony, neither family wanting to get a synagogue or rabbi involved in order to save face in the community—even though everyone knew the teens had learned about the small percentage of times that condoms didn’t work.
Twice now.
And Alissa’s career? She’d put it on the back burner for Gabi. For Matt to chase his dreams. And she hadn’t regretted her choices, not for one single second, until realizing she’d maybe pushed Matt out of her life more than he’d meant to be out of her life. She’d been so afraid to lose him for all these years that she’d never let him be found.
She realized her mother hadn’t answered her. She just stood there waiting for an explanation Alissa knew would never satisfy the other woman enough.
“Forget it,” Alissa said. “Nothing I say is going to change your mind anyway.”
Evelyn Adler threw her hands in the air. “And there it is. My daughter painting me as the evil queen. So sure of my unwavering judgment that she’s shut me out of her life again.” Tears pooled in her mother’s eyes. “I stood by you when Matthew left. I helped you raise that girl under my roof. I loved you both with every ounce of myself. And what did I get in return? Locked out of my daughter’s life the second she didn’t need that roof anymore. And here we are again—me wanting to help and you shutting me out.”
Alissa’s eyes widened as her mother swiped at a tear that had spilled onto her cheek. “Mom,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m grateful for everything you and Dad did for us, but do you hear yourself? What did you get in return? Why has your love always been so conditional? Why have I always felt like I owe you for what I would give Gabi in a heartbeat, no questions asked?”
Alissa heard someone yelp outside, and she sucked in a sharp breath, spinning back toward the door in time to see Ethan’s roommate T.J. running up the driveway with a squealing Miriam on his back.
“I’m scared,” Alissa admitted, still staring out the front door’s window. “I’m scared of doing this alone again. Of my daughter being disappointed in me. Of her not understanding how her father and I could let this happen. Again.” She sucked in a steadying breath and squared her shoulders, ready to open the door and play the perfect host. “Matthew Bloom was the love of my life, and I’ve lost him time and time again. I feel like I lost my mom the second I told her I was having a baby instead of heading off to college. And now I might lose my daughter if I don’t have the right explanation for what’s happening now, so cut me some slack, okay? Matt and I will tell her tonight.”
Silence rang out, but a second later she heard the click of her mother’s heels against the wood floor as she left Alissa to greet Gabi and her friends alone.
She’d laid all her fears on the table for the one woman who should be able to wipe them away and tell Alissa that everything would be okay, and instead her mother had walked away.
Or had Alissa pushed her too? Had her fear of heartbreak kept not only Matt at arm’s length but everyone else too?
She didn’t have time for all the self-revelations to hit her at once. She was a Thanksgiving hostess, after all, so she painted
on her best smile and swallowed the rising sob in her throat as she threw open the door.
“This young woman needs a homemade dinner roll ASAP,” the young, ridiculously good-looking blond man said as he lowered the pink-pixied Miriam to the ground.
“Sorry, Mrs. A,” Miriam said, her big, charcoal-lined eyes pleading. “I haven’t eaten all day. Can I please sneak one little best-tasting-buttery-carb-loaded treat before the festivities officially begin?”
A tiny weight lifted from Alissa’s chest at the mere mention of her baking and how much Miriam loved it. She grinned and winked at her daughter’s best friend. “I made an extra batch just for you. They’re hiding in the microwave so no one else finds them before you do.”
Miriam threw her arms around Alissa and kissed her on the cheek. “I knew I was your favorite child!”
Alissa laughed and hoped Miriam didn’t notice the hug wasn’t as tight as the ones she usually offered, the fear of Miriam noticing her baby bump outweighing the affection she had for the girl who had been like a second daughter to her since she and Gabi were barely out of preschool.
“T.J.,” Alissa said as Miriam bounded past her and straight for the kitchen. “It’s nice to officially meet you.”
T.J. held out a hand for her to shake, but she laughed and pulled him into a hug instead, careful to adjust her stance so that her torso pivoted to the side, her hidden belly avoiding any contact with the tall, lean, muscled man because yes, even through his fleece, sweater, and button-down, she could feel the corded muscles on his back as they tensed and then released.
“Sorry if I caught you off guard,” she said, releasing her embrace. “We’re just big huggers around here.”
T.J. cleared his throat. “No need to apologize, Mrs.—”
“Alissa,” she said, interrupting him. “The whole Mrs. thing with Miriam is more of a nickname. Formality is not a part of my DNA.”
T.J. flashed a grin that would have made Alissa a little weak in the knees had she been a couple of decades younger. “Well then it’s nice to officially meet you, Alissa. I can already tell where Gabi gets her best traits from. Thanks for letting me crash the party.”
