by Amy Hatvany
“I think we’ll just have spaghetti,” Natalie told Hailey as they pulled up in front of Henry’s preschool. It was three thirty, and she was right on time to pick him up. Hailey liked to accompany Natalie inside so she could say hello to her old teachers. “You can help me make the salad.”
“Okay,” Hailey consented, and a moment later she and Natalie got out of the car, and together ran through the rain toward the building, holding hands.
• • •
Later that night, after the kids were tucked in and Natalie and Kyle were in their own bedroom, Natalie told her husband about Hailey’s family tree project. “It really made me think about my birth mom,” she said, curling up to her husband, draping one of her legs over his.
At five foot nine, her husband was seven inches taller than she was, built like a wrestler with thick muscular limbs. Name a sport and Kyle had played it, but his personal favorite, the one he still made time for, was racquetball. Any day he wasn’t in court, he’d spend his lunch hour with his friend John at the gym, sweating out the stress from his job. While Natalie supported her husband’s devotion to this activity, the only competition she wanted to participate in was being a contestant on Cupcake Wars; the only workout she enjoyed was speed-rolling hundreds of molasses cookies in crunchy, sparkling sugar for the PTA bake sale at Hailey’s school. Unlike her mother, Natalie was blessed with a metabolism that allowed her to eat whatever she wanted and didn’t require her to exercise in order to maintain her weight—another characteristic she wondered if she had inherited from the woman who’d given her up.
Kyle kissed the top of her head, then ran his fingers up and down her bare arm, giving her goose bumps. There was no place she felt safer than being tucked up against him. “I’ll bet,” he said. “You okay?”
“Sort of,” she said. Kyle knew any discussions of her birth mother dredged up emotions Natalie would rather not feel, and questions she’d probably never have answered. She turned her head to look at him. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown than hers, like copper, flecked with bits of green. Besides his big heart and great sense of humor, they were among the things Natalie loved most about him.
They had met nine years ago, when he was thirty and she was twenty-six. He’d joined her father’s practice about four months after she had, but as they never were assigned to the same case, their interactions were limited to the passing-each-other-in-the-hallway, head-bobbing, hi-how-are-you variety. She knew her father liked Kyle—he’d even gone so far as to say that the younger man was one of the top up-and-coming lawyers in the firm. She’d witnessed more than one female in the office lingering around him, asking insipid questions, and laughing too loudly at his jokes. Like them, she couldn’t help but notice his good looks—in contrast to the well-cut, buttoned-up suits he wore, he had longish, wavy, dark brown hair, full lips, and an easy smile—and while dating among associates wasn’t strictly forbidden as long as it was reported to Human Resources, Natalie preferred to keep her relationships in the workplace on a professional level.
Her and Kyle’s first substantive conversation occurred at the beginning of her second year at the firm, when she was asked to do some research for a first-degree murder case in which he was defending a woman accused of killing her husband.
“Do you have a minute?” she’d asked, standing in the doorway of his dark wood-paneled office, holding a file in her right hand. He sat at his desk, staring at a stack of photos in his hands.
Kyle lifted his eyes to hers when he heard her voice. His face held a haunted, haggard look. “Sorry . . . what?” he said, clearly distracted by whatever it was he’d been looking at.
“I penned an opinion for the case,” she said, taking a few steps toward him. “Do you have time to review it with me? Make sure I didn’t miss anything on what you wanted to say about PTSD-induced psychosis?” Kyle’s argument was self-defense, based on the fact that the husband had been violently abusing his client for ten years and in the moment she’d shot him, she’d been under the influence of ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Sure,” he said, dropping the pictures onto the blotter. He glanced at them again, then blinked rapidly, as though he were trying to erase the images he’d seen. He gestured toward one of the well-padded, black leather chairs on the opposite side of his large maple desk. “Have a seat.”
Natalie sat down and was about to hand him the papers she held, but instead, concerned by his demeanor, she kept them. “I don’t mean to pry,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm, unsure whether or not she should continue. “But are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” He nodded toward the pictures in front of him. “The police took these when she filed her restraining order against him. Her third restraining order. He broke her collarbone and her arm, that time. And gave her two black eyes. The first time, he fractured a rib that ended up puncturing her lung.”
Natalie stayed silent, watching him drum his fingers on the edge of his desk. She could see what had happened to his client pained him, and it made her think there might be more to this talented litigator than just his handsome face.
“I’d kill him again myself, if I could,” Kyle said. “Fucking bastard.”
Natalie waited a beat before speaking. “I’d help you hide the body,” she said. He smiled, their gazes locked, and the air between them took on an electric, butterflies-in-the-stomach quality. Later, the two would agree that in that moment, it felt as though they were seeing each other for the first time.
That night over drinks and more conversation at a local bar, Natalie learned that despite Kyle’s in-control, polished-lawyer demeanor when he was at work, he was a man who felt things on a deep level. He was just careful about to whom he revealed this part of himself. “My dad was big on not showing your opponents any weakness,” he told her during a discussion of their families. “He drilled it into me and my brother to be tough, so I learned to push down any sign of how I might be feeling in order to come out on top.” He paused and gave her a wry smile. “Unfortunately, that tendency hasn’t worked well for me in my personal relationships.”
“Are you telling me I should get out now?” Natalie asked with a playful edge, suspecting that she understood Kyle better than he might think. She’d dated over the years, of course, but none of her relationships lasted more than a few months, her partners typically calling things off before they got too serious. The comment she’d heard most often was “You’re hard to get to know.”
Kyle stared at her a long moment before answering. When he did, he reached over and took her hand in his. “Please don’t,” he said, and her heart skipped a beat inside her chest. Later, he walked her to her car, kissed her, and suddenly, all of Natalie’s resolve to avoid romance on the job disappeared.
They reported their relationship to HR, and to Natalie’s father, who was thrilled with the match. Only a few months after that, they got engaged. They’d been married just over a year when she got pregnant with Hailey and quit the firm, Natalie’s father conceding that if he couldn’t one day hand his legacy over to his daughter, his more than competent son-in-law was the next best choice.
Now, lying in bed with him, Natalie burrowed her face into her husband’s chest, and her next words came out muffled. “Do you think I should try to find out more about her?”
“Your birth mother?” Natalie nodded, and felt her husband inhale before speaking again. “Do you want to?”
She hesitated only a moment before answering. “Yes.” She paused, and then went on. “But my mom will freak.”
“Your mom’s the most insecure person I know.”
“Yeah,” Natalie agreed, but she drew out the word, hesitant, feeling a little protective of the woman who had raised her. “You know she just has a hard time dealing with any kind of loss.” Kyle understood that a few years before his mother-in-law and Natalie’s dad decided to adopt, Natalie’s mom had suffered a life-endangering ectopic pregnancy that resulted in a full hysterectomy—something Natal
ie was aware of only because her father had told her. Her mother’s health issues and the lost baby were other subjects she refused to discuss.
“That was more than thirty years ago, Nat,” Kyle pointed out, pulling away from her. “And she wouldn’t be losing you. She has mothered you, loved you, taken care of you, and now you’re an adult, well within your rights to want to know more about the woman who gave birth to you.”
Natalie sat up and looked at her husband. He’d sounded very lawyerly with that speech, as though he was giving emphatic closing arguments to sum up his case to a jury. “Guess what?” she said, teasing him with their children’s much-used phrase.
He shook his head and pretended to scowl. “What?”
“You’re right,” she told him. “Completely and totally right.”
“Was that on the record, Counselor?” Kyle asked with a grin. Natalie gave him a playful push, and he grabbed her, tickling her ribs. She squealed, and he put his hand over her mouth to keep the noise from waking the kids, who both slept just across the hall.
“What are you going to do now, huh?” he said, as she wiggled inside the circle of his strong arms. This kind of roughhousing often led to a session of passionate lovemaking, but tonight, when he finally let her go, instead of climbing on top of him, Natalie fell back against her pillows with a heavy sigh.
“Now,” she said, “I’ll have to go talk with my mom.”
Brooke
Standing beside a table tucked in the darkest corner of the bar, Brooke was certain she was about to be sick. She clutched her pen, pressing it into her pad as she tried to ignore the rolling, twisting queasiness in her gut. The symptoms had come out of nowhere, and her first thought was that she probably ate something that didn’t agree with her. She thought about asking to go home, but couldn’t afford to leave work—it was Friday night and the place was packed. It would be her best tip night of the week.
Located in Pioneer Square, the Market had opened a year ago. It wasn’t the cleanest or fanciest place to work—it was dingy and dim, catering less to Seattle’s rampant hipster population and more to the blue-collar, grease-under-their-fingernails crowd. But the owner was nice enough and didn’t try to get Brooke to sleep with him, which in her experience, was an anomaly. In her twenties, she used to apply for jobs at more upscale bars and restaurants, but when she interviewed and the owners saw her list of experience at biker bars and intermittent stints at Applebee’s, they always passed on hiring her. Now thirty-nine, Brooke had accepted a career as a cocktail waitress, taking pride in the fact that after aging out of the foster care system at eighteen, she’d never taken another penny from the state. At times, she worked two, sometimes three different jobs in order to stay afloat, which was fine by her. It could be worse, she always told herself. She could not have a job at all.
Brooke wove her way to the servers’ station at the bar and quickly punched in a ticket for her newest table—two double Jack and Cokes. She turned around, ready to walk the floor and check on her other customers, but then the gorge rose in her throat and she ran to the women’s bathroom, hand over her mouth, barely able to shut the stall door behind her before she was over the toilet and heaving.
What the hell? she thought as she was finally able to stand up, wiping her lips and chin with a handful of toilet paper. She mentally reviewed what she’d eaten that day: a bagel with the last of the cream cheese, and a double cheeseburger off the McDonald’s dollar menu on the way to the bar. It was likely the burger that did it, and Brooke immediately vowed to never again eat a fast-food meal.
She exited the stall and then stood in front of the sink, cupping water in her hand and washing out her mouth as best she could. Smoothing her black curls, she wiped away the mascara smeared beneath her eyes and applied a fresh coat of red lipstick, then popped three Altoids. The door swung open, and her coworker Tanya entered.
“Hey,” Tanya said. “I just delivered your order to table twelve.”
“Thanks,” Brooke said, turning to look at Tanya, a short black woman with a heart-shaped face, a multitude of shoulder-length slender braids, and an enormous rack. “Tits equal tips,” she liked to claim, completely unashamed to exploit her sexuality to make money.
“No problem,” Tanya said, taking a minute to glance in the mirror. She reached into her tight, blue V-necked T-shirt and adjusted her breasts for optimal cleavage exposure. She looked over at Brooke and frowned. “You okay? You look like hell.”
“Think I ate a bad burger,” Brooke said. “I’m fine, now.” After making her ill, her nausea had vanished.
“Hopefully not the kind of burger where you wake up with a baby nine months later,” Tanya said with a grin. Her teeth glowed white against her dark skin.
“Oh, god, no,” Brooke said, but something inside her dropped a few floors at what Tanya’s joke implied. A pregnancy scare was not what her relationship with Ryan needed. They’d met a year ago, when he was newly separated and living on his own, and twelve months later, he had yet to pull the trigger on making the end of his marriage legal. This bothered Brooke less than it might have someone else—when she’d told Tanya about his circumstances, her coworker shook her head and made clucking sounds to indicate her disapproval: “Girl, that man has more baggage than a European vacation. You need to cut him loose.”
But the truth was, Brooke was happy with how things were. Ryan didn’t push her to move in with him and she didn’t ask him where their relationship might be headed. Instead, the two simply kept each other company. They went out for dinner a few times a week, always ending up at his beautifully furnished downtown apartment, which overlooked the glittering lights of Elliott Bay, where they had the kind of passionate, mind-numbing sex that felt as necessary to Brooke as taking a breath. They kept things simple. Uncomplicated. Which was exactly how Brooke liked her relationships to be.
On the days she didn’t see Ryan, she’d read the books she checked out from the library or binge-watch Scandal or House of Cards on Netflix. She’d go to the grocery store, noting the other shoppers with their big carts piled high with family-size bags of chicken breasts, pot roasts, and bulk packages of hamburger and boxes of macaroni and cheese—purchases that promised loud and happy meals around a dining room table, parents bribing their children with the reward of ice cream if they ate at least three forkfuls of green beans. The kinds of meals Brooke had never had. She’d stand in the frozen food aisle, watching these scenes play out, finding herself wishing that she, too, had grown up with a mother to nag into buying Double Stuf Oreos, Doritos, and pouches of sugary juice. She wished for any kind of mother other than the one who’d given her away.
“See you out there,” Tanya said.
Brooke watched as Tanya spun around and headed back out the door, then a moment later followed her. As she worked the rest of her shift that night, Brooke tried to forget what Tanya had suggested. But after the bar closed and she sat at a table, tallying up her tips, she couldn’t help but count backward to the last time she’d had her period—five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight weeks. She was late. Panic flooded her body in a cold rush, causing her skin to sprout goose bumps.
Calm down, she told herself. It could be anything. It could be stress. It could just be her, being irregular.
But even so, after she said good-bye to Tanya and Fred, the bartender, she drove toward her studio apartment on Capitol Hill, a voice inside her head reminding her that she was never irregular. She was on the Pill, but there were a few times this summer when she’d forgotten to take it and had to double up the next morning. If she was carrying Ryan’s baby, she had to know. And so, on her way home from the bar, she stopped at a twenty-four-hour Walgreens and bought two early-detection pregnancy tests, along with a box of saltine crackers and a six-pack of ginger ale, in case she started to feel queasy again.
As she made her way back to her car, Brooke thought about the night Ryan first came into the bar and sat down at one of her tables with a group of his employees. Brooke had
found herself doing a double take when she saw him, appreciating the strong angles of his jaw—the ruddy, lined map of his face. He had light brown hair, brown eyes, and a mischievous smile that hinted at a good sense of humor. She was attracted to him immediately.
“Can I get you another drink?” she asked him after he’d already had two. She lifted her eyebrows and put one of her hands on her jutted-out hip.
“No, thanks,” Ryan said. “But when can I buy one for you?” The line could have come off as cheesy, but he spoke the words with such confidence, she found herself laughing and giving him her number.
They went out the next night she had off from work. From the beginning, he was up front about the fact that he and Michelle were still married, but only in name. “Before I finally left, we hadn’t slept in the same bed for five years,” he told her on their first date. He took her to the Metropolitan Grill, a landmark restaurant where the steaks were legendary, and the bottle of wine Ryan ordered cost more than Brooke’s monthly grocery budget.
“That’s awful,” Brooke said, wondering why people bothered to get married at all, if fifty percent of those couples ended up hating each other, fighting over who got to keep their CD collection.
“She wants everything,” he continued. “Half of our retirement and half the business, plus child support and spousal maintenance. I’d have to pay her seven figures to buy her out, then close to ten thousand a month. I’ve worked too hard for too long to just hand it all over to her.”
“I don’t blame you.” Brooke knew that other women might be bothered by Ryan discussing his almost-ex on their first date, feeling like it was in bad taste, but Brooke didn’t mind. In fact, she appreciated knowing exactly where Ryan was coming from. It made her certain he wouldn’t ask more of her than she was able to give.
