30. KAI
KAI
Bringing Home the Win
Three days, and I still haven't moved her shampoo out of my shower.
It sits on the ledge next to my soap, cap slightly open the way she always leaves it. I pick it up every morning then put it back. I stand under water hot enough to scald and try to feel something other than the hollow Ava carved out of my chest.
Her toothbrush is in the holder. A hair tie on the nightstand. One of her flats kicked under the entry bench, the left shoe slightly crushed at the heel from the way she steps on the back when she's in a hurry.
My apartment is full of evidence that Ava Hartley existed here, and I walk through it every day cataloging items I refuse to throw away.
The first night, I try the bed. Her scent is in the sheets. After eleven minutes I'm on the couch with a blanket that smells like nothing, pressing both fists into my eye sockets until the pressure builds into something I can control.
Her voicemails come in the evenings. I listen to every one with the phone pressed against my ear.
"The baby moved today, Kai. Really moved. And I put my hand there but all I could think was that your hand should have been the one feeling it."
I play it again once more, phone face down on the cushion.
The texts come in clusters. I open them all and respond to none.
Ava:
I took my prenatals. In case you were wondering.
Ava:
I can't sleep without your arm over me. (Not saying this to guilt-trip you. It's just true.)
She can see the receipts. I know that.
The petty part of me wants her to see them.
The rest of me lies awake at three in the morning hating that I've become the kind of man who weaponizes silence against a pregnant woman.
Because I'm not furious that Ava lied.
I'm furious that I'm still in love with her.
That every voicemail pulls my hand toward the phone.
That every text makes my fingers hover over the keyboard before I lock the screen.
That the woman who hid my child from me for five months is the same woman who rebuilt my entire life from the wreckage, and I can't separate those two truths no matter how many times I try.
Thursday afternoon, my mother calls.
"Have you spoken to Ava recently?"
I fold a towel that doesn't need folding. "Why?"
"I've called her twice about the renovation this week. All I get back is a text. 'I'll call you back later.' Two times, Kai. That girl has never sent me to voicemail, not once."
"Come over" nearly leaves my mouth. But the penthouse still has Ava's things in every room, and I'm not ready to explain that to my mother while surrounded by evidence.
"I'll come to you," I say.
The drive takes twenty-six minutes.
I park behind Dad's car and grip the wheel for a while because once I walk through that door, this stops being something that happened between Ava and me and becomes something my family has to absorb.
Mom meets me in the hallway, reading glasses pushed into her hair. Her brown eyes does the quick, full-body scan that takes in my posture, my jaw, my hands, and arrives at a diagnosis before I've opened my mouth.
Her face changes. She takes my arm.
"Let’s go to the kitchen."
She pours coffee, sets a plate of lemon cookies between us that I don't touch. Then pulls out the chair across from me and sits with both hands wrapped around her mug.
"Talk to me."
"Ava's pregnant. The baby's mine. She's known since before she came to the hospital."
My mother's hands tighten on the ceramic, lips press together, her eyes bright.
"How far along?"
"Almost five months."
"And she never told you?"
"No."
"Oh, Kai." The words come out soft. Weighted. "Oh, sweetheart."
"Don't feel sorry for me."
"I'm not feeling sorry for you. I'm feeling sorry for both of you."
She reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. Her palm is warm in the way that only a mother's hand can be.
"Tell me what happened when you found out about the baby."
I pull my hand back, cross my arms.
"It’s okay to be angry about it, Kai."
"I’m more than angry. I feel stupid, Mom. She was in my bed every night with my baby inside her and I didn't see it. I touched her stomach, noticed her body changing. I told her she was beautiful and she smiled at me and I didn't say a single thing."
My mother's eyes soften."What else?"
"I'm in love with someone who can't trust me. Nothing I did over five months was enough to make her feel safe telling me the most basic truth about our relationship."
"You think this is about whether you were enough?"
"What else would it be about?"
"What did she say when you asked why she didn't tell you?"
"That every time she tried, something stopped her. My health, my career, my amnesia. She said she was scared I'd feel trapped.” I pause, breathing in to calm myself. “But I showed her my love every day.”
"When Ava came to the hospital," Mom says, "she'd texted your phone first. I answered. She said she needed to reach you about something urgent."
"She told me."
"I remember her face when she walked into that corridor, Kai. She was terrified. I think she came to tell you about the baby but didn’t when you couldn’t remember her"
The kitchen goes very quiet.
"I want you to do something," Mom says. "And I want you to actually do it, not just nod and tell me what you think I want to hear."
"What?"
"Pretend you’re her for a few minutes. Not you in her situation. Her. With everything you know about her."
"Mom..."
"Five minutes. Then you can be angry again. I'll even be angry with you if that's what you need. But do this first."
I lean back. Close my eyes.
Fine. Pretend to be Ava.
I’ll try my best with what I know about her.
Five weeks of silence after a night that felt like something rare, and every morning the phone is blank. He didn't call. He isn't going to call. Of course not. Expecting anything else was the mistake, the same mistake Mom made, the same one she swore she'd never repeat.
But on getting to the hospital, the man opens his eyes and says have we met? The speech crumbles into dust because how do you tell a man who can't find your name in his own head that you're carrying his child?
When he can't walk to the bathroom. When he doesn't recognize the teammate beside his bed. When the doctors say four years are gone and might stay gone.
So tomorrow sounds better. Tell him tomorrow when he's stronger.
But when he gets well, he calls and his voice cracks saying he doesn't know who he is without hockey. Adding a baby to a man who's barely holding himself together feels like throwing a drowning person an anchor instead of a rope.
And every day the confession gets heavier even though she practices the words in the shower while the hot water runs.
I'm pregnant. It's yours. I've known since before you remembered how to walk.
Every morning the words dissolve because saying them means watching his face change.
Because what if he stays out of obligation? What if duty replaces desire? What if the man who chose you becomes the man who's stuck with you, and the warmth in his eyes cools into the resigned responsibility of a decent man doing the right thing?
Or worse. What if he leaves?
What if he leaves the way Dad left, with a kiss on the forehead and the car keys already in his hand and the taillights getting smaller and the phone that never rings?
That is the fear. Not that he'll be angry. That he'll be gone. And every day of silence is one more day where he's still here, still warm, still reaching for you in the dark.
Just one more week. Then I'll tell him. One more week of being loved before it ends.
That’s what Ava must have thought until one more week became five months.
I open my eyes.
My mother is sitting exactly where she was, coffee untouched, both hands flat on the table. Her chin is trembling.
Even though I don’t agree with Ava not telling me, I now understand why she didn’t.
"She wasn't being cruel." My voice sounds strange. Lower. Scraped clean.
"No, baby. She wasn't."
Mom's hand finds mine. She grips it hard.
"That girl sat in my kitchen and ate scones and listened to me talk about your height chart on the doorframe while your baby was growing inside her and she never said a word." Her voice breaks and rebuilds in the same breath. "She was scared of losing you."
"She should have told me."
"Yes. She should have."
I push back from the table.
"Where are you going?"
My keys are on the counter where I left them. They feel heavier in my palm than they did when I walked in.
"Kai." Mom's voice catches behind me. "What are you going to do?"
I look back at her from the kitchen doorway. "I'm going to bring my family home."
She smiles, nodding.