I take a look around the room. All the photos I took when I got my first camera for my birthday hang on the wall. The bookcase still has my old books and the handful of prizes I won in photography competitions.
It feels like I’m standing somewhere between my past and my future, with Ava lying on the bed, sleeping soundly. I take a deep breath and turn to join my sister in the kitchen, making sure to leave a gap in the door so I can hear Ava.
“I locked the car for you. We can unload later because now you need coffee, and I need details,” Liv says in her best big sister-turned-mother hen voice.
“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“Never have. Do you still take it black with sugar?”
“Yeah.”
She sets a large cup of freshly brewed coffee and a sandwich that rivals anything I’ve eaten in the last four weeks in front of me. Liv didn’t take over my mom’s bakery for nothing. She’s as good if not better than my mom.
I take a bite of the sandwich and roll my eyes at how amazing the bread is. Soft on the inside with a crispy crust.
“Jesus, Liv. I think I need a moment alone to eat the rest of this.”
“No chance. Now spill.”
I drink at least half the coffee and eat the sandwich before I gain enough courage to tell my sister how my life has turned from pretty much perfect into a clusterfuck of shitty-ness.
“Clive came back to fight for custody of Ava.”
“What? How the fuck dare he? He left before she was born, and now he wants her? Why?”
I smile at her reaction. Maybe I should have released Liv on Clive when I last saw him. It probably would have saved me a load of money.
“He claimed Ava was his and he missed out on her baby years. He also wanted alimony.”
“He must have been fucking joking,” she says in a high pitch before she remembers Ava’s asleep upstairs. “Sorry, go on…”
“We did a DNA test, which confirmed Ava is biologically mine, but he lawyered up and brought up our life together before he left. How he was the main breadwinner with a steady income while my photography gigs were less reliable. Of course, that’s bullshit because Ava has never wanted for anything her whole life, which was financed by myunreliableincome,” I say.
“Surely no judge can dispute how you’ve been raising Ava on your own.”
“They didn’t. Funny enough, that was the easy part. The DNA test proves she’s mine, and Clive’s absence over the last seven years proves I haven’t needed him or his income. The worst came after.”
Liv pulls the elastic band from her hair and ties it up again as if she's steeling herself for the bad news.
“The legal battle, as short-lived as it was, drained my savings. Wedding season is here, so I expected the number of bookings to increase. Some springs start out slow, so I didn’t think too much of the decrease in bookings until a wedding planner friend told me she’d heard rumors about me.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Lies about wedding guests claiming I sexually assaulted them and then paid them off to shut them up. That kind of thing. It kept future clients from booking me.”
“He tried to destroy your business, so you’d have no choice but to hand Ava over to him.”
Her conclusion is the same I came to before I called her up last week asking for help.
“I’m sorry to spring all this on you, but I needed to do something before I could no longer keep a roof over Ava’s head.”
Liv puts her hands on mine and squeezes them hard.
“You’re welcome here for as long as you need. This house is yours as much as it’s mine, and it’s also too big for me to rattle around in all on my own. It’ll be good having some life back in it.”
I pull her to me and give her a tight hug. “Thank you, Liv. It’s too early to say it’s nice to be back, but I can definitely say spending time with you will be great. Ava is going to love it here.”
“Let’s unload the car before it gets too dark. There’s no point waiting when you know that by now the whole street knows you’re back,” she says.
