Chapter 10 #2
Shit, not sure explaining death row to a six-year-old is appropriate dinner conversation.
“He means if he got to only eat one meal, it’d be this.”
Mia swoops in to save the day, the slightest smirk playing on her full lips.
The girls move on quickly, only picking at the crumble topping, not eating any of the “mushy fruit” as Everly says. They ask to be excused from the table when Mia and I still have half our dessert left on our plates.
“Is this really your favorite dessert?” Mia asks, not meeting my eyes.
“Mmhmm. Was my granddad’s too. My grandma made the best peach cobbler—that is, until I tried yours. Bury me in a vat of this when I die, okay?”
She giggles. Her laugh…that fucking laugh, undoes me. I want to hear it all the time. Even more so, I want to be the reason for it.
“Anything peach is my favorite. These Palisade peaches are better than any I’ve ever had.” She refers to the peaches grown on the western slope of Colorado, the best peaches on earth.
“Peaches, huh? Been wondering what to call you other than your name. Peach will do just fine, I think,” I joke. More like flirt. What’s wrong with me tonight?
Discomfort flashes across her stunning features but fades quickly. She composes herself and responds, “Mia’s fine.”
“Alright. Mia, it is.” Can’t say I won’t think of her as a peach, but I’ll call her whatever makes her comfortable.
“Charlie always called me Mia,” she says wistfully.
“Charlie?” I say harsher than I intend.
Maybe he’s an old boyfriend. Why do I care?
Color drains from Mia’s face, realizing what she let slip. She looks like a cornered animal about to bolt, and I’m too afraid to say anything, let alone move. All I can do is wait her out.
“Charlie was my big sister. She was my best friend. Charlie was the only person to ever call me Mia.” My eyebrow raises in silent question at the past tense reference.
“She died when we were teenagers.” Mia’s tears belay the intense pain of losing a sibling.
“Charlie’s that warning parents and teachers always give kids that ‘it only takes one time.’ A friend offered her an Adderall during finals for summer school. It was laced with Fentanyl…she was gone a few minutes later, it happened too fast to get help.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. My dad died when I was eleven, but I might understand a little of what you’re feelin’.”
We sit in silence because sometimes there aren’t words to make pain go away, you just have to ride the wave until it passes; and I’ll bob in the cold water with her until it’s calmed.
We eat our cobbler much slower now, either from the stomach-turning grief, or thickness in the air between us.
“Since we’re already talking about difficult topics, something came up today and I feel like I need to tell you,” Mia hedges, nervous to tell me. Hell, I’m nervous to hear it.
“Go on,” I say flatly.
I don’t mean to be a dick, but she makes me clam up. Between how gorgeous she is, and how skittish she is, I have no clue how to behave around her.
“There’s a mother-daughter pageant at the school for the older grades, and Harper was really down about it. She, um, asked if I’d go with her, and I told her I’d need to talk to you first.”
“Sure, that’s fine. Usually Olivia or Cecelia take her, but it’s her choice who she brings.”
My response is colder than I intend, but Harper’s mom is a sore subject that always seems to crop up when I least expect it.
Mia nods, brows pinched in thought. I can see the wheels turning in her head how she’s going to give Harper the best pageant experience possible. Not sure I’ll ever fully grasp how lucky we are Mia and Everly got off the bus in Swiftwater that day.
“You can tell me to mind my business, and I’ll never ask again…”
Here we go. I inhale deeply, steeling myself for the question I know is coming.
“What’s the situation with Harper’s mom? I don’t need any details you don’t want to share, but it might be helpful to know in case I’m blindsided.”
Her request is fair. She deserves to know, being a secondary guardian for Harper. I just hate digging up old skeletons.
“Harper’s mom, Vanessa Foster, isn’t in the picture is the short answer. You won’t ever have to worry about her.”
Mia’s shocked expression is common among the people I’ve told.
“The longer answer is we casually dated. Not sure how it happened, maybe the condom broke, or maybe she wasn’t on birth control like she said. Either way, I got the biggest blessing of my life when Harper was born.
“Vanessa pushed for us to get married while she was pregnant, but I barely knew the woman. Maybe it makes me a piece of shit, but I had no desire to marry her just to ‘do the right thing.’ I didn’t trust her. I never even moved her in.
“She had a good job and a nice place, a support system. I figured we’d co-parent, but I wasn’t in love with her and had no desire to be in a relationship with her.
But I sure as hell went to every prenatal visit and was in the delivery room to see my daughter enter the world.
I’ll never forget how it felt when they handed Harper to me, and I got to hold her for the first time.
“We tried to make it work, co-parenting, that is. But Vanessa got disenchanted with motherhood quickly and left town.”
“She just left?” Mia seethes, and her mama-bear instincts validate the rage I’ve felt all these years.
“Mmhmm. It took years to track her down, but she signed away her parental rights on the spot. I changed Harper’s last name to Clark and got her new documents, and that was the end of Vanessa’s existence in Harper’s life.
I worried for a long time she’d pop out of the woodwork.
I don’t anymore. Some days I’m grateful.
Other days I’m livid that she cared so little about her own child she never came crawling back. ”
“What a bitch.”
The laughter that bursts from my core scares us both, making both of us laugh harder. Never would I have expected such a sentiment to come out of my docile Mia, but it endears her to me even further.
Mia’s laugh unlocks something long lost, deep in the cavern of my chest.
If Vanessa was the storm, Mia is the sun.