Chapter 15
AVA
There are not enough hours in the day.
Turning to a new page in my notebook, I start making today’s to-do list.
- Make next week’s schedule
- Prep documents for marriage license
- Order more espresso beans
- Contact Mia for Hey Honey’s spring merch designs
- Pick new Hey Honey’s logo (options in Mia’s email)
- Reschedule meeting with Lenny’s and Love & Lore
- Run wedding date and plans by Anderson
- Email Callie to update Georgie’s emergency contacts
- Pick up Georgie
- Make sure her homework is done
- Book Vegas flights
- Call hotel about getting rooms on the same floor
Like I said, not enough hours in the day.
Setting my pen down, my head falls into my hands.
My office at Hey Honey’s is quiet aside from the soft humming of the espresso machines on the other side of the closed door and the calm jazz we always have playing through the speakers.
We opened about an hour ago, and even though I didn’t put myself on the schedule for today, I always get more done here in my office than at home.
I headed straight here after dropping Georgie off at school this morning, finally making it to drop-off on time.
Georgie, Emerson, and I are still getting used to maneuvering through our morning routines in tandem, the two-bedroom apartment we’ve been sharing for the last week feeling smaller and smaller with each day that goes by.
And of course, we get the routine down two days before Georgie and I move into Anderson’s.
The thought has me sitting up and picking up my pen, adding Buy packing boxes to my to-do list. My apartment lease with Emerson ends in a few months, so even though I won’t be staying at Anderson’s forever, I figured it makes more sense to move all my stuff out.
I haven’t told Emerson I’m moving out yet, because then I’d have to tell her the whole pretend story Anderson and I agreed to tell all our friends.
And it’s not like I can’t tell her to hold my room because I’ll be back in a few months.
So, I’ll have to find a new place for Georgie and me if—when—the adoption is finalized and Anderson and I get our divorce.
And we have to come clean to everyone.
The thought crosses my mind for the first time since all of this, alarming me in a way I didn’t think it would.
I try to push the thought to the back of my mind and adjust the keyboard on my desktop so it’s perfectly aligned with the screen and centered on my desk mat.
I get to work on the few to-dos I can get out of the way to keep my brain busy.
My anxiety begins to subside as I distract myself with all my tasks—I know it may be temporary, but I have shit to do.
I’m just crossing off Make next week’s schedule when my phone buzzes across my desk.
Glancing at the clock in the corner of my computer screen to make sure I didn’t somehow black out, work eight hours straight, and forget to pick Georgie up from school, I see it’s barely noon.
Unsurprisingly, it isn’t her school’s contact popping up on my phone—or the fire department, which means I didn’t somehow accidentally set my apartment on fire.
Another, slightly more rational, fear of mine—since I’ve actually come home to find my home on fire. And even though I didn’t keep a candle lit or forget about cookies in the oven, it was still my fault.
When I register whose contact it is, relief flickers through me.
But then it burns out as quickly as it came.
My mom.
She’s calling a whole week after I left her house in the middle of the night with her daughter, leaving behind a note telling her to call me.
And the saying “better late than never” doesn’t really apply to this situation.
There’s a moment where I contemplate not answering. Not letting this phone call interfere with everything I have to get done today or give me something else to worry about.
But the thought dissipates almost immediately. I know I’m going to answer. I know I’m going to either listen to her bitch and moan about her situation and everything she’s going through—not Georgie. Or, she’s going to bitch, moan, and blame me for all of it.
Exhaling through my mouth, I answer. “Hey, Mom.”
“You have five seconds to tell me why the hell I have Child Protective Services on my ass. They’ve called me a dozen times.
Showed up at my home. Telling me how I’m a horrible mother.
” Her voice is shrill, and her words slur together.
She’s drunk—in the middle of the day—and she’s probably been drunk since whenever she decided that drowning her grief over her late husband with a bottle of vodka was more important than her thirteen-year-old daughter.
“How do you think it makes me feel, Ava? That I found out from some random woman that my own daughter was taken from me? How could you do this to me?”
Somehow, she finds a way to blame everyone and everything else in the world for her mistake. For her actions. For forgetting her responsibilities.
“Mom,” I try to say, but she keeps going on and on about how hard this situation is for her. Having CPS investigate her and her ability to be a mother, and how ridiculous that is. She is a mother of four, after all.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, lowering the phone from my ear, my mother’s voice turning to static the further I hold it away. I’ve been down this road with her before, and it isn’t even worth arguing. I doubt she’ll even remember this phone call tomorrow.
Even if she remembers, I don’t know how I will ever get her to understand that she’s been choosing herself over her daughters for my entire life, leaving me to put Phoebe, Jasmine, and Georgie first.
Because if I didn’t, who would?
I bring the phone back up to my ear, listening to her slurring about how embarrassed she was to open the door to CPS and have to tell them Georgie wasn’t home.
Because she had no fucking clue where she was.
She doesn’t say how scared or panicked she was.
She was too concerned with herself and how she looked. More so than Georgie’s whereabouts.
“Mom,” I try again, a little louder.
“What?” she snaps. “What could you possibly say to fix this, Ava? First, I lost my husband. Then, I lost my job. Now, I’ve lost my daughter?” Her next few sentences come out too slurred for me to make out.
The more I let her go on, the more my skin prickles, the more it feels like the room is closing in on me. The more I need to count, to organize, to do something that makes me feel like I’m in control.
It’s all about her. It always has been.
She hasn’t even asked about Georgie. Hasn’t asked to talk to her.
And that says more than anything she’s trying to tell me now.
“For fuck’s sake, Mom. Will you please shut up and let me speak?” I finally say, snapping right back at her. “If you took your head out of your ass for just a second, you might see that the world doesn’t revolve around you. The second you decided to pick the bottle up again, you lost Georgie.”
“You did this!” she spits, and it sounds like she’s struggling to get the words out, her mouth probably numb from all the alcohol. “You took her away from me!” She’s getting hysterical, and I’m about to lose my shit.
The way her words melt into each other brings me back to moments just like this. I can picture her face perfectly, red and splotchy, her breath smelling of acidic hunger and stale vodka. I can see her bloodshot eyes and her messy hair.
I remember being ten years old, sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the door locked, trying to feed Jasmine a bottle while she hiccupped against my chest. Phoebe sat beside me, hands clamped over her ears, even though the shouting had already stopped.
The crash had come first. Glass exploding against tile. Then my mom’s voice—thick and slurred—swearing at the cabinets as though they’d offended her.
All I’d asked was if she’d picked up groceries for dinner.
I remember scooping a four-month-old Jasmine up from her play mat on the kitchen floor, grabbing Phoebe by the hand, and locking the door behind us. Sitting with my back pressed against it like I could hold the whole apartment together if I just stayed still enough.
I remember counting Jasmine’s swallows. Listening for footsteps.
I remember feeling Phoebe’s head fall onto my shoulder when she finally drifted to sleep and counting her exhales.
I remember being twelve, bent over the kitchen table with Phoebe’s math worksheet spread out in front of us, the overhead light flickering because the bulb hadn’t been changed in months. Jasmine—two years old and sticky with applesauce—kept sliding off her chair and crawling under the table.
Mom was asleep on the couch. Or passed out. It was hard to tell the difference anymore—if there even was one.
The TV was on, some late-night rerun laugh track playing to an empty room, and a half-full glass of clear liquid on the coffee table. It looked like water, but it smelled like nail polish remover.
Just carry the one, I told Phoebe, trying to sound patient, trying not to snap when she started to cry because she didn’t understand.
I remember glancing at the clock every five minutes.
Not because I cared what time it was.
Because I was calculating how long it would take to get Jasmine bathed, how quickly I could get Phoebe in her pajamas, whether Mom would wake up angry or stay unconscious long enough for me to get them both into bed without her stumbling down the hallway, and when I could finally get my own homework done.
I remember being fourteen, standing at the bus stop in stained sweatpants and an old camp T-shirt.
Mom hadn’t come home that night, or the night before.
I got both of my sisters onto the bus—Phoebe pretending not to notice that other kids’ moms were standing there in workout clothes and clean ponytails. Jasmine, clutching the straps of her little backpack, like she might float away.