The Sweet Spot

by Ariel Ellman

  “Of course, I feel the same way and would never want anything else from you. You’re her father,” Ani choked.

  “Yes I am, and Sebastian will never replace me in her life, do you understand that?” Jordan asked. “You can’t substitute my daughter for the one that you lost and go live happily ever after.”

  “Oh my God Jordan, never!” Ani exclaimed in horror, walking over to her husband to put her arms around him.

  “Don’t,” Jordan held up his hand to keep Ani at bay. “I can’t Ani,” he choked. “I can’t feel you in my arms again, I can’t do this much longer. I need you to pack your stuff and go.”

  “Okay,” Ani murmured, backing away from Jordan and running out of the kitchen and up the stairs to their bedroom.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ani sat in front of her bakery in her car filled with suitcases, and she realized that she didn’t even know what was in them. Once Jordan had asked her to leave, she’d run blindly to their room, stuffing clothes and toiletries into suitcases that were meant for family trips to Disney World and the Caribbean. The last time she’d packed anything in them was when they’d all gone to Hawaii for Raffi’s birthday, and the three of them took surfing and diving lessons together.

  “Oh my God,” Ani whispered to herself, lowering her head against the steering wheel of her car and giving into the sobs that wracked her body. She could still smell Jordan on herself. The scent of the Calvin Klein cologne she’d given him clung to his clothes and had rubbed off on her neck when he’d held her against his chest. His smell was comforting and familiar and filled her heart with a nostalgic longing.

  As she sat in her car crying, Ani’s mind flooded with memories of her last ten years with Jordan. She could see him standing in their foyer covered with snow after triumphantly dragging their first Christmas tree into the house. She could feel the intensity with which he’d kissed her the first time they’d made love. She could see the fire and tenderness in his eyes as he’d slipped inside her. She saw the day that she’d told Jordan she was pregnant, the tears of joy in his eyes as he told her she’d just made him the happiest man in the world.

  She half laughed/half sobbed at the memory of the first time he’d made her breakfast. He was such a horrible cook that she’d choked on his stiff pancake and he’d had to give her The Heimlich maneuver. “Thank God, you’re a doctor,” she’d teased afterward, and Jordan had carried her back to the bedroom promising that he had other more useful talents, which he’d spent the afternoon proving to her.

  “Oh Jordan, what have I done?” Ani wept to herself, finally opening the door to the car and dragging her suitcases into the bakery. She’d agreed that Jordan should pick Raffi up from his parents’ house and then drop her off at the bakery in an hour. She needed to talk to her daughter and she didn’t know where else to go. Her bakery was a second home for her and it was the only place that she could think to go right now.

  After changing into clean clothes, Ani washed her face and put makeup on her red eyes. Then she stuffed her suitcases into the tiny closet in the kitchen on top of the mop bucket and stack of unfolded bakery boxes. She took a deep breath, made a pot of almond coffee and plopped down on the stool by the counter with her laptop to search through the apartment listings on Craigslist.

  Twenty minutes after scrolling through the endless listings, Ani realized that she had absolutely no idea what she was looking for. What kind of place did she need? What did her future hold? Would she be living alone forever? Sharing her apartment with Raffi half the week and staying at Sebastian’s the other half? Would she ultimately be living with Sebastian? Would they get married and have more children? Ani was so overwhelmed she felt like she was going to throw up and pass out.

  When her phone rang interrupting her wandering thoughts, Ani glanced at the unfamiliar number and answered it hesitantly.

  “Hello?”

  “You okay?” Sebastian’s soft voice asked in her ear.

  “Oh my God Bast. I didn’t even recognize your number. What does that even mean?” Ani gasped miserably.

  “It means in the last week since you’ve seen me after fifteen years, I haven’t had the chance to give you my phone number,” Sebastian replied mildly.

  “I’m a mess Bast,” Ani confessed, sniffling into the phone.

  “I know baby,” Sebastian whispered back.

  “Jordan is bringing Raffi to the bakery in a little while and I don’t know what to say to her,” Ani admitted.

  “Tell her the truth A,” Sebastian replied softly. “Tell her you love her and make sure she understands that you’ll always still be there for her. Make sure she knows that whether you live with her dad or not, you’ll still be with her.”

  “Do you have any idea where your mum is?” Ani asked Sebastian softly.

  “My mum died when yours did A,” Sebastian replied quietly. “Remember what you said to me the first time you and your mother baked me a birthday cake?”

  “I said not to be sad that you didn’t have a mom to bake you a birthday cake because you could share my mum,” Ani whispered, her heart aching at the memory of that day. She had only been five and Sebastian seven. “Does your dad ever talk about her?”

  “Only to remind me that the O’Reilly men don’t have good luck with women,” Sebastian laughed softly. “You know the legacy of the O’Reilly men A. My mother was a poor girl from County Galway who took off only four days after Raffi was born, with the milk still leaking from her breasts.”

  “And the only thing she left you two to remember her by was her book of Catholic Saints,” Ani murmured, remembering the tattered book that Sebastian used to carry around in his back pocket; the chapters on St. Sebastian and St. Raphael highlighted in orange. “And your poor grandfather didn’t do any better with your grandmother dying in childbirth,” Ani recalled softly.

  “Losing my grandmother just about killed my granddad,” Sebastian murmured, “that’s why he sent my father to her family to be raised in Ireland, he couldn’t bear to look at him and be reminded of what he’d lost day after day.”

  “But your father came back with you and Raffi after your mom left, he came back and started fishing with his dad,” Ani whispered wonderingly. “And here you are, fishing with your dad after fifteen years away, the sixth generation O’Reilly lobsterman come home.”

  “We may have bad luck with women, but we’re damn good lobstermen,” Sebastian laughed softly.

  “Do you think Raffi thinks I’m going to abandon her?” Ani choked.

  “You’re not,” Sebastian replied simply. “You wouldn’t have run away from our daughter at sixteen, and you’ll never run away from Raffi.”

  “Of course not,” Ani gasped.

  “We’ll figure this out A,” Sebastian promised, and Ani wished that she could reach through the phone and pull Sebastian into her arms and hold him against her heart.

  “I know we will,” she agreed, taking a deep breath and feeling a calm settle over her. “I missed you so much Bast. I ached for you all these years. I felt like a piece of me was ripped out.”

  “I used to open up the scar on my hand just to see your blood flow out of me,” Sebastian whispered back, referring to the scar they’d made on their palms when they were six and eight, and had sworn a blood friendship oath to each other. Sebastian had taken his father’s serrated fishing knife and cut their palms, and they’d rubbed them together joining their blood as one. Then Raffi discovered them bleeding on the kitchen floor and told on them, and Sebastian’s father beat Sebastian with his belt and sent him to his room with no supper.

  “Jaysus!” he’d exclaimed when he walked into the room and saw Ani bleeding all over his kitchen floor. Sebastian’s dad was only twenty-six and trying to raise his boys on his own without their mother, and he was short on patience for stunts like this. “You want to be a complete feckin eejit and cut your own bleedin hand, go ahead,” he yelled at Sebastian as he wrapped a towel around Ani’s bloody hand, “but only a gobshit
e would cut a little girl’s hand too! Feckin blood oath!” he’d exclaimed in exasperation as he marched Ani across the street and up the steps to her house and into her mother’s arms. “Haven’t you eejits ever heard of a spit handshake?” He shook his head as he apologized up and down to Ani’s mother and guaranteed that Sebastian wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week after his stunt.

  Ani’s mother had carefully washed off Ani’s cut and bandaged it, kissing it softly as Ani cried for the beating that Sebastian had taken for her.

  “There there luv,” her mother had soothed. “Ye have O’Reilly blood flowing through your veins now. Ye are joined together forever.”

  “We are,” Ani had solemnly agreed with her mother that day. “We are,” she murmured now again as she hung up the phone with Sebastian and sat in the bakery waiting for her daughter to arrive.

  “Mommy?” Raffi called out, poking her head in the door of the bakery kitchen a little while later.

  “Over here baby,” Ani called back from under the steel worktable where she was pulling out mixing bowls and pans.

  “What are you doing?” Raffi asked curiously as she walked over to her mother.

  “I thought we could make lemon cake,” Ani said with a soft smile. “I think it’s a little overdue.” She pulled her daughter into her arms and hugged her tightly.

  “That sounds good,” Raffi replied softly, blinking back a tear.

  “Hey,” Jordan called from the doorway, holding up a duffel bag and Raffi’s school backpack. “I brought her stuff so she could stay with you tonight if you want.”

  “Yes, that would be great,” Ani said gratefully.

  “Are you staying at Sawyer’s?” Jordan asked. “I can pick her up there and take her to school in the morning since you’ll be at the bakery.”

  “Perfect,” Ani agreed, even though she hadn’t even spoken to Sawyer since she’d left yesterday and had no plan for where she was spending the night.

  “Save me a piece of lemon cake,” Jordan murmured to his daughter, giving her a hug before he left.

  “Can we make chocolate frosting for the lemon cake?” Raffi asked her mother excitedly as she joined her at the counter.

  “Hmm, sounds yummy,” Ani agreed with a smile.

  While the cake was baking, Ani and Raffi cleaned up the kitchen together, washing the mixing bowls and wiping down the counters.

  “Are you and daddy getting divorced?” Raffi finally asked the question that had been hovering over them all afternoon as she dried the mixing bowl and returned it to the mixer.

  “Come here, I want to show you something,” Ani replied instead of answering her daughter’s question. She dried her hands and motioned Raffi over to the closet.

  “What is it?” Raffi asked as her mother pulled a box out of the closet and sank down onto the floor.

  “My childhood,” Ani answered quietly, patting the floor beside her. Raffi plopped down on the floor next to her mother and peered at the photo album that she’d pulled out.

  “Is that you and Aunt Sawyer?” Raffi asked in delight, staring at the photo of a blue-eyed blond little girl with a sullen expression on her face holding a chubby baby with strawberry-blond curls.

  “Yes, I hated Sawyer when she was first born,” Ani admitted with a laugh, turning the page in the album to the next photo. “Everybody loved Sawyer and I hated sharing my mother’s attention. I wanted my mum to bake cookies with me, not feed my sister, and Sawyer always cried and interrupted us whenever we were doing anything together. She always had an opinion even when she was just a baby.” Ani grinned at Raffi.

  “Is that you and Sebastian?” Raffi asked her mother quietly, tracing the next picture with her fingers.

  “Yes, we were seven and nine. It was our first lemonade stand.” Ani smiled at the memory as she gazed at the picture of her and Sebastian standing behind a rickety looking wooden board that was balanced precariously on top of two lobster traps. Taped to the front of the board was a sign that read:

  A&S’s lemonaid stand

  drincs 25Cents

  lemon bars 50 cents.

  “Sebastian wanted to buy a scooter and I wanted a Barbie jump rope,” Ani laughed, turning the page to the next photo. “This next one was taken the day that we swore a blood oath to each other,” Ani rubbed the scar on her palm absently as she gazed at the next photo with her daughter.

  “Sebastian looks like he was crying,” Raffi observed, staring at Sebastian’s dirty tear-stained face and rumpled hair in the picture.

  “His father whipped his behind after he found out that Bast had cut the two of us with his father’s fishing knife. But Bast snuck back over later to check on me and make sure my hand was okay. My mum took this picture of the two of us pressing our bandaged palms together,” Ani explained with a soft smile.

  “Did it hurt?” Raffi asked in wonder.

  “The beating Bast took, or the cut?” Ani asked her daughter with a grin.

  “The cut!” Raffi replied, swatting her mother.

  “It stung,” Ani admitted, “but I didn’t care. I was taking a blood oath to be joined with Sebastian forever.”

  “Is that why you’re divorcing daddy, because of your blood oath?” Raffi asked her mother sadly.

  “No baby,” Ani sighed. “I just wanted to show you my history with Sebastian. He’s my oldest and dearest friend.”

  “And you love him more than daddy?” Raffi whispered.

  “Oh Raphael,” Ani sighed with her heart in her eyes. “It’s so complicated I don’t even know where to begin. But what I can promise you, with all of my heart, is that I will always be here for you, by your side, every day.” Ani took her daughter’s hands in her own.

  “Are you moving in with Sebastian?” Raffi asked her mother, blinking back tears.

  “No!” Ani vehemently denied. “I’ll get a place close to home and school and we’ll decorate it together and make it beautiful and you’ll live with both daddy and I, half and half.”

  “What if I don’t want to live at both places?” Raffi whispered, staring down at the photo album in her lap.

  “Well,” Ani began uncertainty, not sure how to respond.

  “I love my room at home,” Raffi explained, “all my stuff is there, and won’t daddy be lonely if we’re both gone?” Raffi stared at her mother accusingly.

  “He might,” Ani agreed slowly. “Look Raffi, this isn’t going to be easy for any of us, but we’ll work through it one step at a time,” she promised, squeezing Raffi’s hands. “Won’t you miss me a little if you never come and stay with me?”

  “Yes.” Raffi buried her head against her mother’s chest. “I just want everything to go back to the way it was. I wish Sebastian had never come back. Do you hate me for wishing that?” Raffi asked her mother in anguish.

  “Oh baby, I could never hate you for anything,” Ani whispered into her daughter’s hair, hugging her close.

  “What’s this picture?” Raffi asked as she pointed to another picture in the album.

  “That was the day we won the go-cart race,” Ani laughed.

  “A&S’s lemonaid stand,” Raffi read the words painted on the side of the go-cart in yellow paint.

  “Advertising,” Ani explained, smiling at the memory. “Other kids had gotten neighborhood stores to sponsor them but we decided to advertise our own business.”

  “And this one?” Raffi asked, flipping through the album and stopping at a picture of Ani at thirteen, slender and lovely with soft curves, long silky hair and a smattering of sweet freckles across her face. She was wearing a deep blue dress with spaghetti straps that hugged her tiny waist and ended at her knees, showing off long skinny legs and pink toenails peeking out of silver high-heeled sandals.

  “That was my first dance,” Ani murmured softly. “Bast took that picture, He said he wanted to remember me in that dress forever. It was a high school dance and I was so nervous about going. But then Bast slipped a corsage on my wrist and led me over to his bik
e and I wasn’t nervous anymore.” Ani grinned at her daughter. “He sat me on the handlebars of his ten-speed bike in my dress and heels and biked us over to the dance in his suit. It was so Bast that I forgot all about the butterflies in my stomach.”

  “Did you love daddy when you married him?” Raffi asked her mother with an unreadable expression on her face.

  “Very much,” Ani replied softly. “I still love your father Raphael, I always will. We created you together and we will always be connected by you.”

  “But do you wish that you hadn’t had me?” Raffi sniffled, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. “If you hadn’t had me, you could have been with Sebastian all this time and you could live with him now.”

  “Oh Raffi, you’ll probably never understand the love that I have for you until you become a mother yourself,” Ani whispered to her daughter, pulling her into her lap. “I would trade my entire lifetime with Sebastian for one second with you. I will never love anyone like I love you, not Sebastian, not daddy, no one. The day that you were born was the happiest day of my life, do you understand that?” Ani asked her daughter intently, pulling her away from her chest so she could gaze into her eyes. “You are the greatest treasure in the world to me.” Ani stared into Raffi’s identical blue eyes.

  Raffi nodded, dropping her face back against her mother’s chest. “Did Sebastian do something bad when you were younger?” she whispered. “Was daddy right, is he a murderer?”

  “No baby, no,” Ani assured her daughter. “He’s not a murderer at all. We got into a terrible car accident when we were kids and someone died, but it was just an accident. Bast is a wonderful, kind, and gentle man.”

  “So is daddy,” Raffi whispered back, “and he’s a brilliant surgeon, I hear people say it all the time.”

  “Your daddy is a wonderful man and a brilliant surgeon,” Ani agreed, “and I will love him forever and never regret my time with him.” She hugged Raffi tightly. “But I also love Sebastian, and I’ve missed him all these years that he has been locked away. I have to give us a chance to make up for the time that we lost.”