Ava stepped inside, shoulders tucked up, eyes wide with something I couldn’t yet read. Not meltdown-wide or anxious-wide. Just . . . processing. My mother's instinct kicked in immediately.
“Everything okay?” I asked gently.
She nodded, though the way she hovered near the door told me she wasn’t quite telling the whole truth. Slowly, she walked toward my vanity. Her eyes landed on the photo tucked into the mirror of me and Ethan at nineteen, my hair a shocking electric blue.
She leaned in so close that her breath fogged the glass.
“Mom,” she said, voice a whisper of disbelief, “you had blue hair.”
A laugh bubbled out of me, soft but real. “I was cool once.”
She huffed in that classic Ava way, somewhere between amusement and annoyance, then kept staring at the picture. I saw it, the tightening of her jaw, the way her fingers fidgeted in the hem of her shirt.
She was working up to something.
I didn’t rush her.
Finally, she said it.
“Leo said you were on a date with his dad.”
The air knocked right out of my lungs. I froze. Not ready. Not now. Not when my emotions were already a tangle from the night, from Ethan, from everything Alex made me feel. But I wasn’t going to lie to her.
I sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded in my lap. “I was,” I said. “Are you . . . okay with that?”
Ava’s brows pinched hard, and she looked back at Ethan’s picture. She studied it with an intensity that made my heart ache.
“He’s not going to be my dad,” she said quietly.
“Oh, baby,” I breathed, standing and crossing the room to her. My throat tightened. “No. He isn’t. He will never be your dad.”
I reached out slowly, carefully, and she let me touch her shoulders, her cheek.
“Right now,” I continued softly, “Alex and I are just getting to know each other. That’s all. And even if . . . even if something does happen, even if we decide to be together someday, he willnevertake your dad’s place.”
Her lip trembled.
A single tear slid down her cheek.
A tear. From my Ava. So rare it nearly broke me in half.
“I miss him,” she whispered.
“So do I,” I said, pulling her into my arms before the emotion could swallow her. I hugged her tightly, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo, steadying myself as much as I steadied her. “I miss him all the time.”
She held on for a long moment, then let out a heavy breath against my shoulder. I guided her toward the bed, and she climbed in without a word, curling into my side like she did when she was small.
I grabbed her tablet from the nightstand and opened the folder of family videos. Ethan holding baby Ava, spinning her around the living room, both of them laughing in the sunlit kitchen of our old apartment.
We watched them on repeat, wrapped around each other.
The softness of the moment loosened something inside her, and without looking at me, eyes still on the glowing screen, Ava said, in the smallest voice, “If you want to date Alex . . . it’s okay with me.”
I pressed my lips to the top of her head, my chest tight and aching. “Thank you, sweet girl.”
We fell asleep like that. Just a mother and daughter, wrapped around grief and love and the first tiny step toward something new, while Ethan danced with baby Ava on the screen, looping endlessly in the warm glow of memory.
27
