26. Emzee
EMZEECHAPTER 26
N o matter what I said to Ford or how hard I tried to convince him that we could find a way to be together, I may as well have been trying to reason with a brick wall.
Ford had made up his mind.
In order to make his parents happy, we had to be apart.
So here I was now at Brooklyn’s baby shower, depressed and alone.
It was being held at her and Luka’s apartment, and since Brooklyn was literally a fashion model, it was decorated like no other baby shower I’d ever been to.
Instead of soft pink and blue pastels, my sister-in-law had chosen the Pantone colors of the year—a deep, bright yellow and a cool gray—for her theme colors.
There were also splashes of gold everywhere, because nothing said Brooklyn like glitter and glam.
Gold stars and moons made of paper hung from the ceiling, along with three-dimensional old-timey hot air balloons instead of regular balloons.
Cream and yellow flowers practically exploded from every surface.
Meanwhile, Luka was making the rounds with trays of bite-sized appetizers and drinks.
I got a kiss on the cheek and a plate of mini souffles from my brother, but he was too busy being a good host to hang out and commiserate with me.
I’d just reached up to touch one of the hot air balloons when Tori came up beside me with Nina in her arms.
“Aren’t those so cute?” she said.
“I found them on Pinterest. They’re handmade and they came all the way from France.”
“How gratuitous,” I whispered, as if I was scandalized by the thought.
“I love them.”
“Me too,” Tori said.
“I already called dibs on the pink one for Nina’s room.”
“I’m so glad you’re here. And how is my sweet angel?” I cooed, reaching down to gently trace the baby’s hairline with my finger.
“Hi, sweet girl. Just look at all those dark curls.”
Nina smiled at me, and maybe it was just gas, but I didn’t care.
She was beautiful.
“Want to take her for a minute?” Tori asked.
“I have to run to the ladies’. We got caught in traffic on the way over and I’ve been holding it. Stefan’s still bringing the presents up.”
She passed Nina into my arms and I found a quiet corner to hide in at the end of the hall.
I knew Tori would be bombarded by guests with their own cases of baby fever for most of the party, so I was happy to have a few minutes with my niece all to myself.
When Tori found us, I was rocking Nina in my arms, my lips pressed to her forehead.
“You’re a natural,” Tori whispered.
“I brought you a champagne flute so we could trade.”
I laughed.
“Thanks.”
Once we returned to the party, I discretely tipped the champagne into a potted plant and grabbed a bottle of water instead.
I still hadn’t shared my big secret with my sisters-in-law yet.
The agenda was packed full of party games and gift opening and generally being elbow-to-elbow with people I didn’t know.
Between the loudly chattering guests and my usual nausea, I couldn’t force myself to sit with the group for too long, so I settled into a chair at the edge of the room and picked at a cupcake while Brooklyn’s best friend Mateo set up the games.
The first involved trying to put cloth diapers on balloons with safety pins, which resulted in many popped balloons, a lot of laughing, and one spilled drink (not mine).
Up next was a trivia game about Brooklyn and Luka, where we were given a list of traits and we had to guess who they described.
I knew Brooklyn was crazy about chocolate-covered strawberries and that Luka was the better ice skater (thanks to his many years on the boys’ hockey team), but I still lost the game, too distracted by my thoughts to finish filling in the blanks.
I missed Ford.
After that, we sat around decorating diapers for Brooklyn and Luka to use during late night changings.
We were supposed to write words of encouragement, draw pictures, sign our names.
I sketched Mr. Kibbles, Luka and Brooklyn’s greyhound, and drew a little speech bubble coming out of his snout that said, “CHANGE IS RUFF!”
The dog part looked pretty good, but I’d never said I was a comedian.
All the while, women were circling Tori and Nina and talking about what a pretty baby she was, how tiny, how perfect, how precious.
Telling stories about their own babies, their own pregnancies, their remedies for colic and teething and overall reassuring Brooklyn that she was going to do great during the delivery, that everything was going to be completely wonderful.
On the outside, I was smiling.
Inside, it felt like there was a knife in my chest.
Of course I wanted to be happy and excited for Brooklyn, but being at her shower was just a painful reminder of all the things I wouldn’t be getting when I eventually told people about my surprise New York baby.
The baby that everyone would “know” was the result of an affair.
The Malones wouldn’t have to spread a word of that rumor, either, because everyone could do the math.
Thanks to all of Ford’s foot-dragging on signing the divorce papers, I’d run out of time to pretend that we’d gotten divorced first and I’d gone to a sperm bank afterward.
Now it would just look like he’d found out I was cheating and we’d separated because of it.
Not that I could blame him for refusing to sign.
His heart had been in the right place.
But even so…just thinking about what could have been still hurt.
Thankfully, Luka was done passing out cocktail weenies and Stefan was leaning against a wall with a whiskey in his hand, so I wasn’t completely on my own.
In fact, my brothers looked almost as out of place as I felt.
Most of the guests were Brooklyn’s friends, so it was a lot of screaming women helping her open gifts and taking pictures of everything she unwrapped.
“This almost makes me not want to have kids,” Luka said, coming to stand by me with a freshly opened beer.
“No, it doesn’t,” Stefan said.
Luka grinned at his extremely pregnant wife who was sitting on her baby shower throne looking gorgeous and glowing.
I was pretty sure that when I started showing, I wasn’t going to look anything like Brooklyn and Tori had.
I was too short and too curvy already—a baby would just make me look like a beach ball with legs.
“Sorry you have to be here without Ford,” Stefan said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry for all of it,” Luka added quietly.
They were trying to console me on the sly, since their wives still didn’t know anything about the Bratva, or how seriously close we had come to losing the family business…
or what the cost had been for me personally.
But although I truly appreciated their efforts, there wasn’t anything my brothers could say that would help, that could change the fact of my impending divorce or make the situation any better.
I was always going to be playing this role in our family.
The martyr. The one who got the crumbs while they feasted.
It was like I was goddamn Munchkin: a little dog, always curled up at their feet, waiting for attention.
I wished that Munch was with me now.
He wasn’t a substitute for Ford, but he had always been a great comfort to me.
“What are you three scheming about?” Tori teased, walking over to us with the baby in her arms.
“Work stuff,” Stefan said, kissing his wife and then Nina.
“Nothing important.”
“I’ll bet,” Tori said with a smile.
All of a sudden the lights in the room dimmed, and everyone stopped talking.
I turned in my chair to see Tori’s stepmother Michelle walking slowly into the room, carrying a white frosted cake decorated with gold leaf and real peonies, ablaze with candles.
It was beautiful. The smell of vanilla and flower petals had my mouth watering already.
“A birthday cake? What is this?” Brooklyn asked, looking delighted.
“Birthday wishes can be made in advance,” Tori’s stepmother said with a smile.
“So let’s all wish good things for Brooklyn and Luka’s little one.”
She placed the cake in front of Brooklyn, the lights from the candle making her look even more luminous.
Luka went to her side, and took her hand in his.
As everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” my brother and his wife smiled at each other with such love that my heart almost burst. At the end, while everyone was applauding, they blew out the candles together.
The whole thing was extremely adorable, and it reminded me that even as I was stewing in my jealousy and loneliness, at least I had a family.
No matter what happened—with my marriage, with the mob, with the agency, with the baby’s perceived paternity—I knew that I had two brothers who were fiercely protective, and two sisters who were the kind of friends I’d only ever dreamed of while I was growing up.
Ford, on the other hand, didn’t have anything like that.
He had no one to swap memories with.
No one to share the good times with.
No one who had his back no matter what.
Except…me.
I wished that I could have saved Ford the way he had saved me all those times before.
The way he had protected me and taken care of me.
Then I realized something. I could.