The squeals coming from Olive make me laugh. She lives for Sunday mornings with the entire family. There’s something about a full house that makes Olive feel on top of the world, and that is the reason I continue to do this every week, regardless of how much work it is. I can’t give Olive a normal family, but I can give her a family full of love.
“Sweetie, what are you wearing?” Mom asks Olive.I knew that was coming.
“I saw it in Vogue,” she answers. I close my eyes and shake my head.Alexa is such an amazing influence on her...
“Very funny,” Mom says. “Hunter, dear.” Mom’s voice grows louder the closer she comes to the kitchen. Finding me at the stove, her hands cup around my shoulders as she presses up on her toes to place a kiss on my cheek. “Hi, sweetheart. I brought a few things this morning.”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hunter, I invited Charlotte over. She was bringing in groceries from her car so I figured I would extend the invitation, but she didn’t want to impose. Would you mind if she joins us?” I smile, only for the fact that I asked Charlotte a few days ago and she declined due to awkwardness. I haven’t officially introduced her to the rest of my family yet since AJ was enough of an explanation, but thanks to AJ, Mom knows all about her.
“That would be nice,” I tell her.
“Are you two,” she clears her throat. I look over at her, feeling a rush of heat run through my cheeks. Mom and I have never talked about relationships or women at all for that matter. Ellie grew up in our life and everything fell into place at the appropriate times so “the talk” was never necessary. Looking at her now with her raised brows, I feel the need to tell her not to ask.
Instead, I say, “Are we what?”
She slaps her hand on my back. “Oh, Hunter, you know what I mean.”
“We’re friends,” I remind her for the fifteenth time in the past month. We are friends—friends who look at each other the way friends don’t look at each other. Friends who hug much longer than friends should hug when saying goodbye at the end of a late night chat session on one of our couches. Friends who haven’t dared to take things one step further in fear of losing the only friend each of us has. I have fallen for my friend…and I don’t know what to do about that.
“Hunter, I know how you feel about my prying into your personal life, and I have truly tried my hardest over the past couple of years not to push you,” This is true; instead, she has planted little tiny bugs in AJ’s ear, knowing he can’t keep a damn thing to himself. She’s even tried her hand with Olive. They’ve both ratted Mom out, but she doesn’t know this. “I just think that woman is darling and she has a little girl Olive’s age.”
“You have never met her,” I remind Mom.
“But I would love to.”
“Then go invite her in,” I laugh. “It’ll certainly make Olive’s morning.”
“Did you say my name?” Olive says, turning in to the kitchen with four ponytails lining the center of her head from front to back, shaping a perfect mohawk.
“Really, Alexa?” I yell.
“You’re welcome,” she says. Mom rolls her eyes, feeling the same way about Alexa as I do.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to go extend your invitation to Charlotte.” Normally, I would be too concerned to send Mom across the street to talk to anyone I’m associated with, but I have warned Charlotte about Mom. Nothing could come as a surprise, I would hope.
I finish up the waffles and bring out the paper plates and napkins just as I hear Mom and Charlotte laughing as they walk in to the house. “Lana, I hear that you and Olive are best friends. Is that right?” Mom asks.
“Bestest friends in the whole wide world,” Lana says.
“Well, she saved you a spot at the table in the dining room. Why don’t you go on in and see her so your Mom and I can keep talking?” Without so much as an agreement, I hear Lana flying through the living room, followed by a shriek from Olive. The amount of noise two little girls can make is incredible.
One by one, I shuffle the filled plates into the dining room, and Charlotte is quick to meet me in the kitchen to help with the distribution. “I’m glad you came,” I tell her.
“How could I say no to your mom?” she says quietly with a crooked grin.
“I don’t know. I figured the same way you said no to me.” I nudge her playfully in the shoulder as she sweeps past me with a jug of OJ and two coffee mugs.
I’m in the process of rinsing off the frying pan when Charlotte returns for more. She wraps her arm around my back and presses her cheek into the side of my shoulder.It feels nice. “Your family is really great. With my parents always traveling, I haven’t felt this welcome anywhere in a long time,” she says. Learning about Charlotte over the past couple of months has been a process of slowly breaking down a barrier she has tried very hard to keep in place. While she is usually one without a filter, her past is a different story—one that seems like it’s buried in a place only she knows. I guess we sort of have that in common.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Mom says, walking in with a now empty jug of OJ. The look on Mom’s face is almost menacing like she’s plotting out my future with Charlotte right this very second. I know she means well but I don’t know how to break it to her that a future is an unlikely definition of what comes after today—it’s something I refuse to consider or think about. If I don’t think about a tomorrow, I won’t end up heartbroken when I find myself in another empty world full of only yesterdays.
“Nope, we were just coming out to join everyone,” I tell her, pulling away from Charlotte and taking the jug from her hands. “Go on out, I’ll refill this and be right there.” Mom kindly places her arm around Charlotte and guides her back toward the dining room.
When I hear the growing chatter, a moment of contentment fills me from within, bringing along a feeling of somethingright, something unfamiliar, and something I think I kind of like. Warmth soothes the inside of my chest and I’m nervous to feel the way I do. From the second Charlotte walked into the house today, I haven’t thought about Ellie or the fact that Sunday morning brunch was a thing our families did together for years until she passed.
The only meals I share with Ellie’s parents now are the forced ones that they plan so they can see Olive once a month. They look at me like I killed their daughter, like I planted a destructive seed in her uterus and took away everything they loved. Sometimes they look at Olive the same way and I want to hurt them and make them feel an ounce of what they make me feel. Though, as much as I hate living with the loss of my wife, I don’t know what it’s like to lose a daughter and I will not judge them for their behavior toward me, but I don’t understand how they can do the same to Olive, their granddaughter, and the only piece of Ellie they have left.
