7. Carrie
SEVEN
CARRIE
It never failed to amaze me how a six-year-old girl could sound like an entire herd of elephants stampeding across the second story of our home. Glancing up at the ceiling as I zipped up her lunchbox, I pursed my lips.
“Evie!” I called out. “No running inside!”
“I’m going to be late!” my daughter replied, frantic.
“I think she’s more nervous than you are,” Hailey said from her perch at the dining room table, a steaming mug of green tea clasped in her hands. Halfway through her second trimester, her baby bump had just popped and was pushing at the buttons of her blue-and-white striped pajamas. She looked tired this morning, but her nausea had abated a couple of weeks ago, and she was basking in the relative ease of hanging out in the kitchen without having to dart to the bathroom and throw up when someone dared to cook food in her vicinity .
“It’s a big day,” I replied, smiling to hide my own nervousness.
“First day of big-girl school,” Hailey confirmed. Her hand slid over her bump, and her gaze turned inward. I imagined she was thinking about how quickly the years would fly between now and the time she was sending her own daughter off to her first day of first grade. Lord knew it had gone by too fast for me. The past seven years were a blur.
“First day of big-girl school for both of us,” I said, and Hailey laughed.
“Oh, come on. You’re not nervous, are you?”
“I’m terrified. I left a steady job for this, and I still don’t know if it was a mistake.”
“You can do it,” my cousin told me, utterly sure of my capabilities. “You were Wentworth’s top executive assistant for three years. Now you’ll be one of many in the new company’s assistant pool. You’ll have support.”
“Or I’ll be thrown to the wolves because I’m coming in at the bottom of the pack.”
“Just a ray of sunshine, as usual,” Hailey teased.
I pursed my lips and tilted my head, conceding the point. I’d applied for the position at Hearst, Inc. because it had an amazing salary and benefits, and it would be a clear step up in my career. I was a single mother and I couldn’t afford to turn the opportunity down, even though working for Mr. Wentworth had been easy and pleasant and comfortable. Never mind the rumblings I’d heard that working for the multinational investment company was like stepping into an industrial-sized meat grinder. I’d deal with that when I knew what I was facing .
A meat grinder could be worth it, if the salary and benefits were right—and they were.
Mr. Wentworth had been a great boss, but he ran an accountancy firm that he purposefully kept small. After three years, I’d learned all I could, and the slightly-above-average salary was stretched too thin. I had to move on.
But I was nervous.
What if I’d jumped ship for something better, only to find out that I couldn’t handle the new challenge?
The sound of footsteps on the stairway made us both turn, and Hailey’s husband, Seth, appeared. He crossed the room to press a kiss to Hailey’s lips first, then leaned down to kiss her bump. “How are my girls this morning?”
“She’s great,” Hailey replied, arching a brow. “Threw a party in my uterus all night. I, on the other hand, am a little tired.”
Seth squeezed her shoulder and crossed to my side of the kitchen. He greeted me with a friendly “Good morning” and filled his mug with coffee.
“Your lunch is in the fridge,” I told him. “Chicken satay salad.”
“You spoil us,” Seth replied, reaching to ruffle my hair.
I ducked away, yelping. “I spent twenty minutes on my hair this morning!”
“Oh, sorry,” he said, glancing down at my pencil skirt and blouse. “First day today, right?”
“Right.”
“You’ll be great,” he said, lifting his cup of coffee in a casual salute. “No one is better at keeping a thousand balls in the air than you are.”
I topped up my own mug while Seth served himself the eggs and toast I’d prepped, then I joined Hailey at the table. “It’ll just take me a few months to save up enough so I can move out. I’ll be out of your hair by the time the baby comes.”
Hailey smiled sadly. “You know you’re welcome to stay, Carrie. This is your home as much as it is ours.”
“Is it, though?” I answered, trying to keep my voice light but cringing internally.
My cousin clicked her tongue and reached over to squeeze my hand. “It is ,” she insisted. “And don’t think we don’t appreciate all you’ve done for us over the years.”
“She’s right,” Seth cut in, sitting down with his plate. “We’d be living off of takeout and frozen pizza if it weren’t for you.”
I hummed in reluctant agreement. I was a good cook. And it was my way of letting Seth and Hailey know that I appreciated everything they’d done for me over the years.
The past seven years had been…eventful. After Hailey and Seth’s wedding, I’d moved to Newark to be near them, seeing as I had nowhere else to go and I desperately needed support. I’d just found a job as a wildly underpaid receptionist at a nightmarish real estate management company—I’d been desperate for a job just to make ends meet—when I found out about the pregnancy.
Apparently, the fatigue, nausea, and overall feeling like my body was falling apart wasn’t due to stress. Or not only due to stress. I was growing a whole other human while my world collapsed around me.
There was only one man who could be the father, one man with whom I’d been intimate. That wild encounter at Hailey’s wedding hadn’t been free of consequences, after all. Cole and I had used protection the first time, but then the shower had happened. He’d pulled out, but…
Well. Evie existed. I’d never be able to claim that I was thinking clearly that day.
Looking back on it now, it was hard to put into words the turmoil I’d felt when I found out about the baby. I’d jumped out of the frying pan of my disastrous relationship with an ex who didn’t really care about me—and into the fire of single motherhood.
I’d looked for Cole. I’d gone back to the hotel and tried to find out his details, to no avail. I’d trawled through social media for him. I’d read countless software and business publications, hoping to see a glimpse of him in the news. I’d even looked for feel-good social media stories of people meeting their birth parents, in case someone had shared it.
I came up empty, and eventually I stopped looking.
All I had was a face and a first name. I didn’t even know which state he lived in—if he was in the States at all. We hadn’t talked about those things, despite sharing some of our deepest, darkest secrets with each other.
He was a ghost. As my pregnancy progressed, I’d had to focus on more pressing issues, like how I was going to feed and clothe and care for a newborn.
In the end, Evelyn was born, and everything else in my life flowed on from the decision to put her first, always. She was the center of my world, and I did my best to be everything she needed. I named her after my mother. She’d been created the very day I’d lost that memory box, and it felt like a trade with the universe. I gave up trinkets and scraps of old paper, and I got the most perfect child I could have asked for.
The first few years had been hell. Not because Evie was difficult, but because she was a baby and I was in over my head with little support and a shaky safety net. Hailey and Seth had stepped in and let me move in with them. With shared living costs and with more hands on board to help, I’d gone from drowning to treading water to now—seven years later—feeling like I might actually be seeing land on the horizon.
Would I have wanted her to have a father and a stable home? Of course. But I couldn’t go back in time and change the decisions I’d made. In a lot of ways, I didn’t want to. The night Evie was conceived was carved into my bones. I’d never admitted it to Hailey—or anyone—but sometimes I looked at my daughter with her dark eyes and near-black curls, and I felt like Cole had been sent to me by a higher power. He’d given me the greatest gift anyone could have given me. A future. A reason for being.
Didn’t that make the struggle worth it?
“Mom!” Evie came thumping down the steps and rushed into the kitchen. “I can’t find my backpack!”
“It’s by the front door where you put it yesterday. Now sit. You need to eat before we go.”
“I’m not hungry! We’re going to be late!”
“You won’t be late,” Seth cut in, then nodded to a chair. “Sit with me. I don’t like eating alone.”
Evie let out a dramatic sigh, then slid into the chair next to Seth’s. I fixed her a plate and put it down in front of her, then kept an eye on her to make sure she ate at least part of it. My daughter was a ball of energy who often found eating to be a chore. She sustained herself on air and goldfish crackers, then turned into a hangry monster when her body rebelled. I assumed she got it from her father’s genes; I’d never had the mystical experience of “forgetting to eat.” If I was awake, my stomach was open for business.
Seth usually had more success than I did in getting her to calm down enough to sit for a full meal. He had the same effect on Hailey, and to a smaller degree on me. He was a steady, soothing presence in our home, and I knew he would be a great father.
Watching him interact with my daughter made my heart pinch. I was so incredibly grateful for his and Hailey’s presence in my and my daughter’s life, but I knew it could never replace having a father. I worried about what would happen when his real daughter showed up, if our welcome would wear out despite Hailey and Seth’s insistence otherwise. Yes, I cooked for the family more often than not. Yes, I made sure to take on more than my fair share of the housework, and I contributed to the bills as best I could.
But I was still a barnacle clinging to their happy life, waiting for the moment they’d scrape me off and toss me back into the sea.
I’d traded my dependence on Derek for a healthier but no less desperate dependence on Hailey and Seth. And although I knew that no one could survive without support, I still wondered how long it would take me to finally stand on my own—and if I could do it at all.
Ever since my breakup all those years ago, I’d nursed the secret, shameful belief that maybe I really couldn’t hack it on my own. Maybe Derek had been right all along.
“All right,” I said, checking my watch. That was all the encouragement Evelyn needed. She brought her plate to the sink, wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and then sprinted to the front door to check that her favorite backpack was packed with all the necessities. The bag was her favorite: a black, water-resistant shell with tiny bumblebee appliqués all over it, piped in bright yellow. She’d been terrified of bees when she was little, and I’d gone on a campaign to teach her about the insects in an attempt to limit the number of toddler meltdowns I had to navigate every summer. I hadn’t anticipated that my efforts would cause somewhat of an obsession in her, spawning many trips to the library and a particularly memorable visit to the American Museum of National History when they’d had a special bee exhibit on display.
After tucking the matching lunchbox into her special bee backpack, Evie zipped the bag up before slinging it over her shoulders and tightening the straps.
She reached for the front doorknob and I said, “Hold on. Let me get my shoes on.”
“Hurry up, Mom!”
“Hey now,” I chided, stabbing my feet into the slim leather loafers with a small heel that were stylish yet comfortable enough to see me through the day. “You be nice.”
Evie’s shoulders dropped. She walked over and pressed a dutiful kiss to my cheek, then went back to wait with her hand on the doorknob. I laughed at her half-hearted attempt at reparations—even though every kiss and hug from my daughter warmed my heart.
Glancing in the hallway mirror, I tamed a few flyaways then gave up and put my hair in a low bun, ignoring Evie’s dramatic six-year-old sighs of impatience. By the time I was ready to go, she was vibrating with excitement or nerves or both. Her hand was warm and soft as she slipped it in mine, and we set off toward the local elementary school.
She’d been attending the school since Pre-K, but this was the first year that she’d be out of the modular classrooms and in with the big kids. I looked down at her dark head of hair, trying to ignore the tugging in my chest.
Seven years had flown by—but I could feel a change in the air. Today wasn’t only my daughter’s first day of school. It was potentially the first day of our new life.
If I made it through the probation period and succeeded at this new job, I’d step onto solid ground for the first time in a decade or longer. The salary was enough to let me build up a solid emergency fund as well as enough cash to move out of Hailey and Seth’s place. For the first time since Evie was born, I’d be able to give her her own room. Her own home .
I couldn’t mess up. My future—my daughter’s future—rested on me nailing it. I needed this job. I needed a steady, long-term contract with a company that could afford to pay top dollar for my skills. Otherwise, I’d have to stay with Hailey and Seth, and no matter how much they insisted that I could live with them, I knew our time was limited.
We shared a three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse between the four of us. It was sandwiched in a row of townhouses and was a little worse for wear—rickety stairs and tiny rooms, and windows that had been painted shut decades ago. Evie and I were in one room, Hailey and Seth in another, and the third was Hailey’s home office. She said she was happy to have the baby in their room and eventually convert the office into her daughter’s bedroom, but I knew that as soon as her screaming infant came into the world, she’d realize that she needed more room. She needed our room.
So the clock was ticking, and the pressure was on. Today was my only chance at making a good impression on my new boss to make sure that I could repay Hailey and Seth’s generosity by finally standing on my own two feet and letting them start their family in peace.
The school came into view, and my daughter’s hand clenched around mine. She glanced up at me when we reached the gates.
“You want me to walk you to your classroom?”
Evie bit her lip, then straightened when she saw her best friend, Zara, on the far side of the playground. “No,” she said. “Me and Zara can walk in together.”
Right. Rejected by my own six-year-old. What else was new? There was no need for me to get emotional. Maybe if I repeated it to myself, I could pretend that her words didn’t make me want to cry. “Give me a hug,” I said through a tight throat, forcing a smile onto my lips as I kneeled in front of her.
Evie wrapped her arms around my neck, then pulled away. “Okay! Bye, Mom!”
“Bye-bye, honey. Remember, Aunt Hailey is picking you up from school today, because I’m starting my new job. ”
“Yep!” she called out, already grinning and waving at Zara. “Bye!”
And with that, she was sprinting across the schoolyard, her backpack banging against her body with every elephantlike step. I watched her get swallowed by a small mass of kids, took a deep breath, and commanded my tears to stay behind my eyelids.
Then, with nothing else to do, I turned in the direction of the train that would take me across the river and into Manhattan. I had a half-hour commute, which would give me enough time to gather my wits and prepare to blow my new boss’s socks off.
Anything less would be a failure of disastrous proportions.