Affection brightened her eyes. “Then a very handsome man walked up to me and said hello. I looked at him, and I was instantly lost.”
“He had you athello,” Shannon teased.
Ava laughed. “He did. We talked the whole evening, and we went on our first official date the next night. It was a Thursday, I believe, and by Saturday, I was in love with him. We were married four months later.”
“That’s so romantic. You’ve been happy all this time.”
“We’ve been very blessed in our marriage. We’re devoted to each other.” She paused. “I was a teenager when I found out I couldn’t have children.”
Shannon stared at her. “What? Oh no, I’m so sorry.”
Ava shook her head. “It’s fine. At the time I was devastated, of course, and it took me a long time to accept I was never going to be a mother in the traditional sense. I told Milton that first night. I was always very up-front with the men I dated.”
Shannon wasn’t sure if Ava’s bluntness meant she was braveor if she was testing potential partners. Maybe it was a little of both.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“That he was fine with it, and we would adopt. Once we were married, we found a good lawyer and started the process. There was paperwork and interviews, questionnaires, medical tests. We applied everywhere.”
“Then you found my mom.”
Ava nodded. “Not at first. There were other young women who were pregnant. Milton and I were fortunate—we were young and well-off. We brought a lot to the table.” She smiled. “But I wanted a connection with the birth mother. I can’t define it more than that, but it was important to me to feel that we were... close.”
Shannon thought about the little that Cindy had told her about finding out she was pregnant and how young and scared she’d been. Only seventeen with no mother of her own to help her.
“Your mother and I clicked instantly,” Ava added. “From that first meeting, we were talking and laughing. It was as if we’d known each other always.”
“That must have helped. And you look alike.”
“We do, but that was never on my list.” Ava studied her. “I see so much of her in you.” She drew in a breath. “As I said, having the child look like me wasn’t something I insisted on, but when I met Cindy, we felt like it was meant to be.”
She rose and crossed to the buffet against the back wall. There was a fabric-covered box there, maybe twelve by eighteen. Ava collected it and returned to the table.
“My daughter would tell you I’m obsessed with the past, but that’s not true. I’ve always felt it was important to mark events with tangible reminders. Life is busy, and it’s easy to forget the things that matter.” She set the closed box between them. “So I make memory boxes. I have dozens, in fact an entire closet devoted to them. This one is yours.”
Shannon was startled by the words and wasn’t sure what to say in response. Whatever was in that box didn’t belong to her—it couldn’t. She had nothing to do with what had been going on all those years ago. She wasn’t a part of it now, despite being at Ava’s house for a very emotionally confusing lunch.
Ava’s expression turned kind. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing scary inside. Just a few things that were important to me.”
She raised the lid and set it aside, then drew out a beautiful dress covered with embroidery and lace.
“Totally impractical,” she said ruefully. “I already had a christening gown from my mother’s side of the family, and it wasn’t as if you could wear this on a daily basis, but I found it in a little boutique, and I couldn’t resist.”
“It’s lovely,” Shannon murmured, trying to reconcile what Ava was telling her with anything to do with her own life. Had the adoption gone through, then she probably would have worn that dress. The memory box would be aboutherrather than just being random objects in celebration of an adoption that, in the end, had never been.
13
Shannon watched as Ava took out stacks of pictures from the memory box. Pictures she’d never seen before. Oh, Cindy had tons of photos of her as a baby but had never shared one of herself pregnant. Now Shannon picked up several and stared at the teenager her mother had been.
“She was so young,” she breathed, shocked to see her mom as a very pregnant teenager. “I mean I knew she turned eighteen a couple days before she had me, but that was in my head. This is real.”
There were scenes of Ava and Cindy sprawled together on the sofa, having lunch in a park, making faces at the camera. A couple of candid shots showed the two women, arm in arm, laughing together, looking so much like sisters. There was obvious affection between them and an ease.
“You loved each other,” she whispered, her throat getting tight. “I didn’t know about any of this.”
“There was no reason for you to.” Ava’s tone was brisk, as if she was unaffected by the emotion, but Shannon saw her fingers tremble as she withdrew a bright pink onesie from the box.
“We were going to bring you home in this,” she said.
