Chapter 23 Victoria
THREE WEEKS OLD
Victoria walked into the nursery and saw Ace leaning over the crib, watching their baby sleep.
She paused in the doorway, before he could notice her, and observed him like he was a stranger.
Because in a way, he was. This was an entirely new and different man from whom Victoria had known.
That Ace had been reduced to rubble. This Ace was a father who had been transformed twice in recent days: first, at the chance to forge a relationship with his adult daughter, and second, with the singular and surreal experience of seeing his son come into the world.
Ever since that moment, Ace had been glued to Miles’s side.
The way Ace looked at their infant made Victoria feel a sensation she hadn’t experienced since she rewatched The Notebook on a red-eye to New York.
Everything hit differently at thirty-thousand feet.
But this. This. This was something else.
Despite, or because of, everything that had preceded these moments, Victoria was filled with extra gratitude for them.
“How long have you been standing there?” Victoria asked, walking into the room.
Ace looked up from the crib with a guilty expression, as if he had been caught illicitly browsing porn on his iPad instead of researching the city’s tax incentive for replacing real grass with artificial turf. “Half hour, give or take?”
“So, two hours?” Victoria said with a smile and went over to stand by his side. Ace put his arm around her and they stood there together, admiring the life they had created.
“I told Magda to take a break,” Ace said.
Victoria nodded, having assumed as much.
Before Miles’s arrival, they had intended to be hands-on with their son; now that he was here, they found themselves bordering on the maniacally micromanage-y.
But as Victoria’s delivery experience had reinforced, what was parenthood if not a set of theoretical and best-laid plans that were swiftly upended by reality?
Miles moved almost imperceptibly in his swaddle and Ace leaned forward as if to improve his already unimpeded view. Victoria watched him soak it in.
“God, he’s beautiful,” Ace said.
“He’s perfect.”
“He’s lucky he got your bone structure,” Ace said.
“He’s three weeks old!” Victoria said. “You can’t tell that yet.”
“I’m sure of it, and you can’t convince me otherwise,” Ace said. A grin blossomed on Ace’s face and stayed there like it had planted roots. “Should we bring our dinner in here and eat it while we watch him?”
“Like dinner theater?” Victoria said, with a laugh.
“I guess we could go into the kitchen,” Ace said, pulling out his phone and tapping the monitor app to bring up the live feed of Miles sleeping.
Victoria had caught Ace checking it obsessively any time he wasn’t in Miles’s direct vicinity.
Once, even, when Ace was on his way to the bathroom, and she had said they really needed to draw a line.
They went downstairs to the kitchen and propped up their phones alongside each other on the counter, both displaying video of the monitor.
“In case one fails us,” Ace said, like this made perfect sense.
“We are completely unhinged,” Victoria said.
But she wouldn’t have it any other way. This was what she had been too naive to even know to hope for before everything had happened that almost broke her and Ace apart—before everything he had done.
That these blissful, graceful early days, together with their son, were even happening sometimes took Victoria’s breath away.
“Salmon and Moroccan couscous?” Ace asked, drawing her back to the present and the pressing need of her appetite, which had grown from spirited to insatiable in the days since Victoria’s body had stopped sharing one with her baby but provided sustenance for him just the same.
“Sounds good,” Victoria said. “I’ll text Magda and see if she wants some.
” Victoria picked up her phone and minimized the monitor app to do this while Ace pulled out the fillets from the fridge and gathered the necessary seasonings from the pantry.
She watched him move about the kitchen, thinking that no matter how many times she had done this, it never lost its appeal.
She sat at the counter, watching him cook, the faint buzz of the sound machine in Miles’s room emanating from the twin app feeds on their phones.
“I’m so happy,” Victoria said. She gave Ace a slightly goofy grin, as if she were surprised that this had come out of her mouth. As if statements like this were reserved for simple, less serious people. As if happiness were a silly pursuit and not actually the goal.
“Me too,” Ace said. He paused to look at her, and while with most people it stopped there, Ace saw her. “It’s bothering you, though, isn’t it?”
“Liz? Yes.” Victoria sighed. Since the hospital, when Victoria had voiced her concerns about Preston, Liz had been distant.
“Give her some time,” Ace said. “She’ll come around.”
“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“You were trying to help.”
“Because what every new mom wants to hear is You could do better.”
“Is this guy a tool or what?” Ace asked.
Victoria smirked at the protective-dad persona that Ace had immediately assumed. He looked up to catch a glimpse of her expression.
“Because I will grab my shotgun!” Ace said, veering into the dramatic for the sake of the joke.
Victoria smirked, then thought about Ace’s question. “Preston isn’t a bad guy. I just think he and Liz are the wrong people for each other.” Victoria watched Ace fuss with the couscous, adding a dusting of cumin.
“Is this because of me? Does she choose the wrong men because she was abandoned as a child?”
Victoria’s face turned down at the plaintive, guilty expression on her husband’s. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.
“Textbook daddy issues rearing their ugly head.”
“Don’t do that,” Victoria said. “You’ll drive yourself crazy, and the truth is, we’ll never be able to figure out all the reasons why Liz is who she is.”
“But that’s how life works: action, consequence. I left my daughter and it messed her up,” Ace said.
“It could be worse,” Victoria replied. “She didn’t join a sex cult. She chose a nice guy who might not be right for her, but she’s not shacked up with a convicted felon or recruiting runaways to harvest their organs.”
“Damn,” Ace said. “Where did you even come up with that?”
“Do you feel better now?”
“I think?” Ace said, and they shared a laugh.
Then he turned serious again. “I know parents mess up their kids. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. And I know I screwed up in the biggest way possible. But I hope I can have a relationship with Liz. I hope I only mess up Miles in the little ways. I hope there’s still time for me to be a good dad. To both of them.”
“Me too,” Victoria said, and raised her glass. “To only messing up in the little ways.”
“To us,” Ace said.
Us.
Victoria never thought the word would mean so much, but she clung to it for the rest of the night, throughout the lovely dinner Ace had cooked them that they shared with Magda, and during Miles’s nighttime feeds, each spaced several hours apart, which left her weary in the morning, almost jet-lagged with the disoriented sense of things being jolted out of their usual routine, but Victoria’s fatigue was also steeped with the sweetness of satisfaction.
The next day, Harper arrived with an armful of beauty products.
“Before you thank me,” she said, stepping into the herringbone-tiled foyer, “they were free from my new JOB!” She pushed the box towards Victoria so she could make jazz hands.
Light bounced off the chunky gold rings decorating at least six of Harper’s fingers.
“Harper, that’s amazing!” Victoria said. “And I’ll thank you anyway. Come in.” Victoria ushered her inside and directed Harper towards the living room. Harper sat down and remained practically motionless, as if she were in a museum and even breathing could damage the fifteenth-century artifacts.
“Is it weird to be in my house?” Victoria asked.
“Not at all!” Harper said.
“Relax. We’re friends, Harper.” Her former assistant’s face looked like a flower opening as this statement found its mark.
“Tell me about this new job before the baby wakes up and I can introduce him to his future favorite babysitter.” Harper’s eyes flew open.
“No pressure there,” Victoria said. “You can just be a fun friend.”
“I know negative zero about babies,” Harper said. “They scare me.”
“I felt the same way. You have a lot of time before you have to worry about that, though.”
“My parents have always told me, ‘Get a job, don’t get pregnant,’ ” Harper said.
“So I guess I’m totally winning right now.
” She beamed at Victoria, who chuckled. “Plus, I’m not going to make a sex tape and use it to try to become an influencer, so they can relax and maybe just, like, try being proud of me? ”
“I’m sure they are,” Victoria said.
“They actually seemed surprised that I was into my new job and I told them, ‘Thanks for hooking me up with a gig in finance but that’s so not me, and Victoria says it’s not about having a job for the hell of it.
It’s about finding one you like and maybe even love.
’ Which—funny enough!—is kinda the same thing I think every time I go home with a guy.
Will I like him? Will I maybe even love him?
Or will I delete my number from his phone while he’s sleeping and ghost the hell out of him? ”
Harper looked at Victoria. “Don’t worry! It’s not like I do that every weekend.”
“I am so old,” Victoria said with a laugh.
“Nah,” Harper said. “You’re just a mom now—in a good way! Whatever you do, don’t watch Euphoria.”
Victoria and Harper both looked up as Magda entered the room holding Miles, who had woken up for his midafternoon feeding.
Victoria thought it would put Harper over the edge if she were to lift up her sweater and expose even a sliver of breast, so she asked Magda to grab a bottle from the fridge, then asked Harper if she wanted to feed the baby.
“Omigod, so honored that you’d trust me not to break him, but I’d be too nervous.”
Harper filled Victoria in on the cast of characters at her new workplace and thanked her, once again, for being such an important person in her life.
Victoria tried to wave this off—she hadn’t done that much, she had done what anyone in her position would—but Harper insisted.
She told Victoria that most people wouldn’t have noticed her.
Most bosses would have kept ordering their coffees and their lunches and not taken an interest in the person who was bringing it to them.
They wouldn’t have cared enough to try to figure out what Harper should have been doing with her life instead of being an assistant in a field she knew nothing about.
“But do I meddle too much?” Victoria asked. “I meddle too much,” she said, answering her own question.
“No! What do you mean?”
Victoria explained how she had offered Liz unsolicited advice on her relationship. “I need to stop inserting myself so much into people’s lives.”
“No,” Harper said, shaking her head. “That’s not true.
You’re a real friend. The kind who’s going to tell you when you have food stuck in your teeth or an outfit looks terrible or you need to make a life change.
I don’t know Liz, but it sounds like there’s some truth you dropped that she needs to deal with. ”
Victoria ruminated on this.
“This is who you are,” Harper said. “It’s how you show up for people. It’s what makes you you and it’s what makes me want to be like you.”
Later, Harper skipped down the front path towards her car, then turned around to give Victoria an affectionate wave.
The genuine joy Victoria felt from having forged this bond was like the thrill she derived from closing a deal, signing a new client, or making an unspeakably large amount of money.
But as she watched Harper pull out of the driveway, Victoria realized that previously she had only assigned this sensation to events in her professional life.
She was genuinely as glad to have Harper in her circle as she was to have Nash Winton on her client roster.
After Harper left, Victoria went into the kitchen and pulled out her laptop.
Even though she was technically on maternity leave, she still checked emails and worked a few hours every day.
Victoria sat at the table and checked the necessary tasks off her list, the room wrapped in light coming in from the large bay windows.
Outside, a hummingbird hovered delicately over the bougainvillea bushes, whose magenta blooms danced gently in the soft breeze.
Then she went upstairs to do tummy time with Miles, realizing that Ace wasn’t home yet.
He had left earlier for his thrice-weekly four-mile run on the grassy median separating traffic down San Vicente Boulevard.
Victoria admired his love of running even though she shared no desire to emulate it unless she were escaping a bee.
Victoria looked at her watch; tummy time had become a sacred occasion, and Ace never missed the part of the afternoon where they put Miles on a soft blanket and encouraged him to pick up his head, even though his muscles would not be developed enough to accomplish the task for some weeks.
Victoria called Ace, but he didn’t answer. The afternoon was stretching to its conclusion, the light outside glowing gold with the setting sun, and Victoria started to grow concerned.
And then her phone rang. Victoria looked at the screen and saw that it was displaying an unknown number.
Combined with a bone-chilling sense of premonition, this was enough to still her breath.
She walked out of Miles’s nursery, into the hallway, and picked up the call with trembling hands.
Once she heard the news that awaited her on the other end, Victoria dropped the phone, which went crashing to the ground with a gunshot echo of glass and metal hitting wood.
Victoria followed it, falling to the floor as if she had been bludgeoned by the words she had heard and would never, ever recover.