Chapter Thirty-Two
Choosing You
Livia
Two weeks before my sister’s wedding, she showed up at my door.
Or rather, at Carter’s door.
I was curled sideways on his couch, one hand on my belly like I might feel the flutter I knew wouldn’t come for weeks, the other cradling a mug of peppermint tea Carter had brewed me.
He hovered nearby, as he did — big body, soft eyes, and that burly beard he had thanks to the Ospreys being firmly in the playoff race. He informed me he wasn’t shaving until they lost, which had me questioning who I was rooting for each time he hit the ice.
“Anything else I can get you?” he asked, grabbing Zamboni’s leash from where it hung by the door. The pup scurried out from where I’d been using him as a footrest on the couch with a little bark of excitement.
I lifted my mug. “You’ve already done enough.”
A knock rattled the door.
Carter glanced at me, that mischief-light in his eyes that usually preceded him saying something designed to make me roll mine.
“Who is that?”
His grin twitched wider, but there was a nervous edge to it, too. “Either a really great surprise, or one that is going to land me in the dog house.”
Zamboni huffed impatiently, waiting for Carter to let him out now that his harness was in place. But Carter only used it to wrangle him before opening the front door.
When he did, time collapsed.
My sister stood on the threshold in a sundress the color of lemon bars, her hair twisted back the way she wore it in high school when we used to share a bathroom and a secret stash of lip gloss, her eyes shining with both hope and uncertainty.
Her hands were full, tote bag straps digging into her shoulder, and another paper grocery sack hugged to her chest.
The mug nearly slipped from my hand.
“Hi,” she breathed, the word shaking.
I just blinked.
I couldn’t believe she was there.
Carter moved quickly, helping Lacey with the bags and inviting her inside as he struggled to keep Zamboni in check. Of course, my sister commanded him with ease just like I did, which made Carter go slack jawed and me grin.
For a heartbeat I stayed seated, body glued to leather. Fight, flight, freeze. I tried to work through what I knew could help — naming five things I could see, breathing in for four and out for six, but my brain was a jumbled mess.
Because my sister was here.
My sister is here.
As if it just registered, I abandoned my mug on the coffee table and rolled off the couch, scurrying over to her.
And as soon as the bags were out of her hands, Lacey was rushing to me, too.
We collided, arms thrown tight, both of us giggling, or maybe trying not to cry. I didn’t care in that moment about any of the weirdness between us. I hadn’t seen her in years, and something about just her presence alone had me forgetting there was any bad blood between us.
She felt the same. She smelled like the same honeyed vanilla lotion we stole from Mom’s vanity when we were twelve. My chest caved, and once again I found myself blaming hormones for how tears flooded my eyes.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you,” she whispered into my neck.
“I didn’t know if I still had you.”
The truth shredded my throat on the way out.
“You do,” she said. She squeezed harder, like she could anchor the words into flesh. “You always do.”
I wanted to believe her, to revel in those words, but something in me stayed wary. We separated, and I wiped under my eyes with the pad of my thumb. Lacey did the same.
“Come on, Zambo,” Carter said, leaning in to wrap his arm around me and press a kiss to my temple. “I’ll be right down the road,” he whispered. “I have my phone. Call if you need me. Okay?”
I nodded, pressing up to kiss his lips. “You did this?”
“I only helped facilitate,” he said with a grin, and then with one last squeeze of my hip, he and Zambo were gone.
Lacey watched me, her fingers writhing together in front of her waist.
“You—” It took me a second to find my voice. “You’re here.”
Lacey exhaled. “I am. Hi.”
“Hi.” I huffed out a laugh that still felt like a sob. “You said that already.”
Her mouth wobbled. “I panicked. I had a better opening line in the car.” Her eyes fell to where I was absentmindedly rubbing my stomach.
I couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter that I was just barely showing a little bump that looked more like I’d eaten too much than anything else.
I felt our baby like a piece of me, one I had to constantly cradle and protect. “Oh, Liv.”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head as I looked down. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“It’s wonderful.”
Her brows pinched together when I looked back at her, but then she clapped her hands together. “Oh! I brought you some things.”
She ran to the counter where Carter had dropped the bags, digging through them and pulling out items one by one.
Black-and-white cookies. A box from a bakery I recognized from Long Island — soft everything bagels wrapped in white paper, a pint of scallion cream cheese.
Rainbow cookies in a little windowed box.
A jar of deli pickles as big as my forearm.
Entenmann’s chocolate frosted donuts and a loaf-pan icebox cake with the unmistakable mark of chocolate wafers and whipped cream.
Malt powder. A six-pack of cream soda. A carton of tart cherry juice.
Ginger candies. Lemon drops. Saltines. Peppermint tea.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what to get,” she said frantically as she kept unloading.
“But I knew I wanted to bring you a little bit of home. Did I remember the cream cheese correctly?” She held it up.
“Scallion, right? I thought maybe it was the almond one, but then I was like no way my sister would sabotage a perfectly good bagel with a sweet cream cheese.”
My smile was wobbly. “You’re right. Scallion.”
“I knew it.”
But she wasn’t done. She pulled out a plush robe next, and then fuzzy slippers, a maternity dress still on its hanger, the kind that draped rather than clung, in a green that would melt against my skin.
There was a little toiletry bag jingling with prenatal vitamins, a belly oil I recognized from a boutique, and a silk scrunchie.
On top of it all, a handwritten note folded into quarters and tied with a piece of raffia in the way only my sister would think to do.
My throat closed.
“I made a pregnancy package,” she said, like she needed to explain the obvious. “For nausea and comfort and… and so you feel taken care of.” She swallowed. “Like you should have felt back then.”
There it was. The rift, the fault line we both stepped on the last time we spoke and the earth gave way.
“I’m sorry,” Lacey said. She said it quick and sure, like pulling a bandage.
“I should have said those words first. I should have said them weeks ago. It’s not an excuse, but I need to tell you—when you told me about…
Robert, and about Mom and Dad—” Her face crumpled.
She steadied it with a breath. “It felt like my world tilted. I was blindsided, and that made me feel guilty, because another part of me wasn’t.
It was like hearing the end of a story I’d been reading with pages missing.
I think I knew something awful had happened. I just… didn’t know what.”
I stared at her. The honesty of it was both a balm and a blade.
“I wasn’t sure where you stood,” I admitted. I kept my voice even, the way I did when I was telling a patient hard news. “I’m still not.”
“I know.” Lacey rolled her lips. “I kept thinking if I took a minute, took a breath, I’d come back with the right words.
And the longer I took, the more wrong every word felt.
Meanwhile, you were here. Alone. And I made it worse.
I’m so, so sorry.” She reached for my hand before she could second-guess herself.
Our fingers linked. They still fit. “I’m getting married, Liv,” she said, her voice wobbling but sure.
“And of course, I grew up picturing our parents there. I imagined judging what Mom spent on the flower arrangements and Mom telling the band how to play a Motown set properly. I held on to that picture even when I didn’t want to.
I tried to force the world to make sense so the picture wouldn’t have to change. ”
I squeezed her hand when her chin trembled. “I get it, it’s—”
“I told them not to come.”
Air left the room in a rush.
“You… what?”
“I told them if they weren’t capable of protecting their daughter when it mattered, then they didn’t get the honor of standing in the front row of my new life.
” Her jaw was set, eyes bright, shoulders squared.
“I told them if they couldn’t say your name without spitting, they could keep it out of their mouths and out of my day.
They argued, and wheedled, and threatened me with a hundred different silences.
Mom said she’d cut me off just like they did with you. ”
“She means that,” I warned.
“I know. I don’t care. I didn’t waver.”
My hands hovered over my lips. “Oh, Lace…”
“And if you’ll reconsider,” Lacey continued, her voice breaking, “I want you by my side.”
The sentence knocked me back like a wave. For a second, everything was static. Then the softness returned, the smell of vanilla, the cooling air, the quiet insistence of my own heartbeat in my ears.
“I—” I started, eyes burning, rib cage pressing in. “You really want me there?”
“I have always wanted you there.” She leaned forward, our foreheads almost touching, her hands tight in mine. “And I don’t care if Mom and Dad never come around. I don’t care if they want to live in denial for the rest of their lives to save face. I believe you.”
It wasn’t loud, the way she said it. It wasn’t dramatic. It was simple. It was steady.
It was the exact key my rib cage was waiting on to unlock.
Everything in me gave way.