Waiting Fate

by Kinnette, W. B.

  “I thought we’d never get here!” Ivy exclaimed as she unbuckled Desee. The baby tumbled herself out of her car seat and sat up, grinning.

  “Oh, look how big she is!” Ivy’s mom, Beverly, scooped Desee up off the floor of Ivy’s car, holding her out so she could get a good look, happy tears running down her cheeks.

  “Tiny little thing.” Ivy’s dad, Jack, crooked a finger at Desee and she latched on, guiding it to her mouth to bite.

  “She’s teething. Back molars coming in, I think,” Ivy said with a grin as her dad grimaced in pain.

  “Sharp teeth,” Jack muttered, but his smile didn’t fade.

  Ivy hadn’t been home for over a year, and the last time she’d been able to come home had been briefly for Vick’s grandfather’s funeral.

  Her dad hadn’t changed, but then he hadn’t changed in the last twenty years. Almost seventy-five years old and he looked sixty. He was balding, but still had short, spiky grey hair on the sides. Ivy secretly snickered at the fact that he had more hair on his face than he did on his head. She planned to tease him about it as soon as she got the chance, but she’d be polite for at least thirty seconds first.

  Bev was almost sixty-five, but it seemed both of them had stopped aging at sixty. Her wild gray hair was in disarray, as it always was, and she would complain about it and perm it and try to tame it into place, but always she lost the battle and Ivy loved it. She was tall — clearly Ivy hadn’t gotten her lack-of-height genes from her mom.

  No matter how young they both looked for their ages, Ivy worried. Jack had high blood pressure and Bev fought all kinds of health issues. They hid them well, her sneaky parents, but Ivy knew enough to know that if she wasn’t careful with all her drama, she could be the death of them. It was a thought that had haunted Ivy since she’d asked if she could come home.

  “Kate and her family are on their way. They left Scottsdale as soon as the kids got out of school last night. Your big sister should be here in a few hours,” Bev said, not taking her eyes off her granddaughter. Desee stared at her with big hazel eyes. She had trust issues and didn’t speak to anyone but Ivy and Sadi. Ivy hoped it was a phase.

  If Ivy had any energy left, she would bounce on her toes and maybe squeal a bit. She hadn’t seen Kate in forever, and she missed her big sister.

  “Well, come on inside.” Jack waved them toward the house. “No point getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.” Ivy hid a grin. The mosquitoes here had nothing on the bird-size nightmares in Alaska.

  They hadn’t made it ten steps inside before a grey pickup roared into the driveway. “Is she here? Is she home?” Kim, Ivy’s middle sister, burst into the house like a tornado, enveloping Ivy in a hug. Kim was the same size as Ivy, but her presence was so much bigger. “Don’t you ever go so far away again.” Kim’s voice was muffled in Ivy’s hair. “Do you understand me?”

  Ivy nodded through tears. “Yes, ma’am.” If Ivy didn’t know better, she’d think Kim was crying, too. But Kim was tough. She never cried.

  Her family didn’t know about Vick’s violent side, but it didn’t matter. The baby of the family was hurting, and they flocked to her side, ready to protect her from forces they didn’t even know existed. That was how her family worked, and that was how Ivy would heal. They surrounded Ivy and Desee and even Sadi in a protective circle of love. The pain eased, the fear subsided. Hope bloomed on the horizon.

  ****

  “So what are you going to do with yourself now?” Jack asked one night. It was early July and they were having an easy meal at home. Quiet. Safe.

  “I’m going to get my degree. I’m almost done… I think,” Ivy said, trying not to choke on the mashed potatoes that suddenly seemed too thick in her throat. “I need to register because classes start at the end of August, but I’m not sure what to take.” Overwhelmed? Why yes, that would be an understatement, Ivy thought.

  “Well, let’s go talk to your academic adviser. I’ll take you tomorrow.” Jack nodded. The situation was settled before she could get a word in and Jack moved on to other topics. All Ivy could do was smile. In all the time she’d been away, her dad hadn’t changed a bit.

  ****

  Ivy’s palms were sweating as she watched her academic advisor, whom she had never met before, look over her file. She’s going to tell me I’m a slacker and I need to get my tail out of her office. She’s going to tell me I’m never going to graduate. She’s going to tell me…

  “Well, it looks like you had a rough start, but the last several semesters you’ve done well. If you could take two full-time semesters, you could get your BA.” She turned her monitor so that Ivy could see her file. “These classes here are the ones you’ve taken. These classes here are all the ones you have to have for your degree.” She dragged her finger down the list. “There are a few you took that you didn’t need. Those are here.” She looked up at Ivy with a smile. “And in this tiny little list here are the ones you need.”

  Ivy leaned forward, studying the list. “I’m so close,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you are. Let me print this for you. Go straight downstairs to registration and get all set up.” She hesitated, then winked at Ivy. “If there are classes you need that are full, come talk to me. I can pull some strings. Good luck on the final leg of your journey!”

  “I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much!” Ivy said as she backed out of the office on shaking legs.

  “I was in your shoes once. Quitting is so much easier than never giving up. But you’ve come so far. I’d love to help you finish.”

  Ivy had been attending college via online classes for the last three years, ever since Vick had joined the military and moved her around the country, but she could only take a couple of classes a semester when she’d had to keep up with a baby and two jobs. And once she’d gotten to Alaska, she hadn’t had Internet, so she’d had to do everything at the local library, which was just awesome trying to manage that with a baby. Now, finally, she could go full-time and get her degree. The thought that she might make it, might see that dream come true, was almost too much to hope for. But she hoped anyway.

  ****

  “I feel ridiculous. No one else on campus is gonna have a baby!” Ivy exclaimed as she tried to feed Desee with one hand and eat her own cereal with the other. Her first class of the semester started in forty-five minutes. To say she was nervous was a massive understatement.

  “Lots of people will have babies. Just not at school. And neither will you, so you have nothing to worry about,” Bev said, prying Desee’s spoon from Ivy’s hand. “Eat.” She nodded toward Ivy’s soggy breakfast.

  Ivy shoveled in another bite, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat.

  “Besides, you look like you’re eighteen. No one’s gonna realize you’re divorced with a kid,” Kim said, leaning a hip against the kitchen counter while she watched Ivy with amusement, her bright blue eyes sparkling mischievously. She played absently with her waist-length brown hair, hair that Ivy had always been just a tad jealous of. It was thick and not stick-straight like Ivy’s. My poor hair is so thin I’m practically balding.

  “I’m not divorced yet,” Ivy mumbled.

  “You’re in the process. Good enough.” Kim shrugged. Ivy pushed her dark brown hair over her shoulder and bit her lip. Kim laughed, rolling her eyes.

  “You’ve gotta go,” Beverly said, taking away the half-eaten bowl and handing Ivy the cereal box.

  “This brings back memories.” Ivy couldn’t help but smile. In high school, she could never wake up on time, but rather than let her youngest daughter skip breakfast, Bev had sent her with a glass of milk and a box of cereal, and Ivy would eat it right out of the box on her way to school. “Good habits die hard,” she said as she snatched her bag up off the floor and planted a kiss on Desee’s cheek.

  “You’re sure you’ll be okay?” she asked Bev as she walked backward toward the back door.

  Bev heaved a long-suffering sigh and rolled her eyes. “Yes. I mana
ged to raise three daughters of my own, you know.”

  “I know, but —”

  Bev held up a hand against Ivy’s objection. “We’ll be fine. It’s three hours.”

  But Ivy hadn’t been away from Desee for more than naptime since she had come home to Utah, over two months ago. Desee was warming up to Grandma and Grandpa. It would be fine. It had to be fine, since Ivy couldn’t very well take a toddler to school with her, so she blew Desee another kiss and raced out the door.

  Climbing in the car, she fought tears, told herself she was ridiculous, and fought more tears. “Hey, on the bright side, I haven’t heard from Vick in months. That’s good, right?” Oh yes, she knew she was having a conversation with an empty car, but hearing herself speak out loud calmed her... which probably meant that she was a complete lunatic. She jammed the key in the ignition. “So yeah. Insane. But that’s our secret, right little car?”

  ****

  Her hands were shaking and her knees were weak when she tried to climb out of her car in the campus parking lot. Since all her classes had been online, she hadn’t actually attended school on campus since her first semester after high school. That was right before she’d made the stupidest decision of her life — and gotten married. Of course, school hadn’t come first, so she had missed… a lot. And failed... a lot. Now she was spending years making up for it.

  She hesitated by her car door, watching kids several years younger than she was hurrying off, their lives full of prospects and hope and not shattered, like hers. “You can do this,” she muttered, slamming the door resolutely. She melded with the other students flooding across the parking lot toward the buildings, grateful for maybe the first time ever for being so short she could blend right in and disappear.

  After hiking all the way down the hill, she found her first class with minutes to spare and snuck into a seat in the back. She dug her book and notebook out and set her pencil on top of them, then leaned forward so her hair hid her face while she tried to control her shaking. The class filled up, and she noticed that most of the students seemed a little nervous — just like her. For one panicked second she thought maybe it was because the professor was some sort of a monster, but the man who breezed in didn’t seem frightening at all. He jumped right into explaining the syllabus for the class, and Ivy sort of stopped shaking. As class neared the end she even dared look around, and noticed a few familiar faces from high school. That’s what happens when the college is in your hometown. She blew out a pent-up breath and let her shoulders relax. I can do this.

  ****

  It took several weeks, but Ivy started to enjoy her classes. She was back home by ten every morning, and did her homework at naptime and at night after Desee went to bed. It had been months since she’d left Alaska, and she still hadn’t heard a thing from her soon-to-be-ex-husband, although the military garnished his wages and sent her child support every month. Between that, her savings, her student loans, and a lot of help from her parents, she was surviving. She hadn’t had a nightmare for weeks, and the only marks left were the scars she was so good at hiding.

  She liked her little routine. Routines were safe and predictable. She was doing well in classes and not neglecting her little angel. Her family, though, worried about her, as it seemed families were supposed to do. “You haven’t done anything fun since you got back from Alaska,” Kate said over the phone as Ivy drove home from school.

  “I have too. We played cards while you were here,” Ivy objected, trying to hold the phone on her shoulder while shifting gears. Whose bright idea was it to buy me a stick shift?

  “That isn’t fun. You’re twenty-three years old. You should be hanging out with friends, going on dates, getting back out into life. Doing the things you missed the first time.”

  Yeah, ouch. That one hurt a little. Ivy had gotten married right out of high school. She’d missed ever being a young adult, being crazy and staying out late and going to parties and living with friends and traveling the world. She’d missed all those things. Instead she jumped right into being an old married lady, a poor old married lady, since Vick had never had a job until he joined the army – which meant she had worked two or three at once to make ends meet. “I can’t do those things, Kate. I have a baby.”

  “Yeah, and you have a mom who adores her and doesn’t mind watching her at all.” Kate chuckled. “Besides, Desee goes to bed at seven. Go out after that.” Kate sounded smug, even over the phone.

  Ivy sighed, trying to check her blind spot and change lanes without dropping the phone mashed to her shoulder. “I have to get up at five-thirty to make it to my seven o’clock class. I go to bed as soon as my homework is done.” Sometimes before, if I fall asleep at my desk like I did last night. She didn’t say that out loud, though. That might give Kate more fuel for her lecture.

  Kate, however, wasn’t easily deterred once she got an idea in her head. She was one of the most persistent people Ivy had ever met. “Everyone needs friends, Ivy. Go out on a Friday. Or better yet, find some friends to do homework with.”

  Ivy smiled. Her big sister was a pain in the butt, but she loved her to pieces. “You aren’t going to give up on this, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “But I don’t want friends.” Friends hurt. Letting people in hurts.

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it.”

  Ivy snorted. “Fine. Fine. Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Promise?” Kate was grinning, Ivy could tell. She never was a polite winner.

  “I promise.”

  She waited to make the call until after Desee went to bed. Trying to talk with a toddler squealing — or worse, screaming — was next to impossible. But while a toddler slept peacefully in another room, now that made things easier.

  “Hey, Gigi. It’s Ivy.” Ivy hated the phone. It scared her. In fact, there were times she’d wondered if she had some weird phone phobia, although texting was fine. I should look that up some time. Phone phobias. That’d be fun.

  “Ivy! Hi!” Gigi said, apparently not sensing Ivy’s discomfort. Gigi hadn’t lost any of her enthusiasm since the last time Ivy had talked to her, which had been… five years ago? Ivy couldn’t remember.

  Everything Gigi said was bubbly and exciting, even if the subject wasn’t — her tone made you believe it was. She’d been that way for as long as Ivy could remember. It was hard to believe the world sucked when she was talking to Gigi.

  She paced across the room. She was nervous, even to talk to her friends. She blamed the phone phobia.

  “How are you? What ya been up to?” Gigi asked. Ivy could hear people in the background. Lots of people. So that hadn’t changed either — Gigi was always surrounded by friends. People just loved her.

  “I’m good. I’m… back in Utah.”

  “Serious?” Gigi squealed, “For how long?”

  “For good.” Silence. Ivy swallowed. This is awkward.

  “I’m so glad. We need to get together.” Gigi was suddenly talking over the awkwardness, and around it, smothering it until it didn’t exist anymore.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Um, remember how we used to play tennis?” Ivy had worn a path in the carpet and realized Sadi was following her back and forth. Grimacing, she sank to the floor and let the dog collapse next to her, laying her head on Ivy’s lap. She stroked Sadi’s fur and felt just a little less terrified.

  “We should so go play tennis. Let’s do it! When do you want to?” Gigi asked and Ivy blew out a breath.

  “Uh. Well. Anytime? I guess?” Yeah, Ivy, you sound brilliant. Rocket scientist and everything.

  “Okay. Let me check my planner and I’ll call you right back. Maybe we can go tomorrow. I have class until four but maybe after that,” Gigi said.

  They hung up, and Ivy let her head fall back against the wall. “Not being a hermit is exhausting,” she told Sadi.

  Ten minutes later, Gigi texted her. Tomorrow — six pm?

  Ivy studied the text and frowned. At six meant her m
om would have to put Desee to bed. It also meant an hour more that she would be away from Desee while she was awake. Can we do seven? She wrote back.

  Minutes later and Gigi texted again. Works for me!

  “Okay.” Ivy nodded to herself. Sadi gave her a supportive doggy-grin.

  Chapter Two

  Playing tennis was an adventure, to say the least. Ivy had been playing since she was nine, but having a baby and living in Alaska with no babysitter and no one to play with had made her a little rusty. She felt clumsy and slow and uncoordinated, but Gigi was right there with her. They spent more time laughing at each other than they did playing. Ivy felt her heart heal a little bit more. Maybe laughter was the best medicine.

  “I’m not going to be able to lift a pencil in class tomorrow. Taking notes is gonna be a problem,” Ivy groaned as she shuffled back to her car.

  Gigi was still bouncing, in much better shape than Ivy could even hope to be. “You aren’t going home now, are you?” she asked, pulling her blond hair up in a messy bun.

  Ivy stopped, swinging her racquet back and forth, pretending every movement didn’t feel like a unique form of torture. She nodded her head. “Yeah. I have homework. Lots and lots of homework.”

  “Oh! I have the greatest idea!” Gigi grabbed Ivy’s shoulders and shook her in excitement, and Ivy felt her head bob like a dislocated doll. For a second, Ivy stiffened, panicking before she could convince herself that Gigi was not going to hurt her. She pretended to giggle to hide her discomfort. Gigi continued before Ivy could get a word in. “Remember Jay from high school?”

  “Of course,” Ivy said. She and Jay had always been pretty good friends, at least until graduation, when she’d fallen off the earth.

  “We do homework at his house all the time! You should come with me tonight.”