I smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “It went good. Really good.”
A few minutes later, we were pulling into our street, the familiar brick buildings and narrow stairs coming into view. Home. The place that still didn’t quite feel like it fit me anymore.
Alex dropped us off, and as we walked up to the door, I felt a little tug on my hand.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Do you love Alex?”
The question hit me straight in the chest.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know what to say to myself.
Ava watched me with those too-wise eyes. “It’s okay if you do.”
“I . . . ” I swallowed. “I like him. I like spending time with him.”
Love felt too big. Too heavy.
“It’s a big word,” I said slowly. “It means a lot of different things.” I took a breath as I turned into our parking spot. “But I could see myself loving him someday.”
Ava’s face lit up. “Good.”
“Good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, already reaching for her door. “Then me and Leo would be real brother and sister.”
And just like that, she bounded toward the stairs like she hadn’t just upended my whole emotional universe.
I sat there for a second, watching her go, heart aching and warm all at once.
It was strange realizing that my life didn’t feel like something that had already happened. It felt like something good was finally beginning.
Walking back into my mother’s house after Alex’s felt like stepping out of color and into black and white. His place was warmth and noise and half-finished mugs on the counter. It smelled like coffee and pancakes and life. It felt lived in.
This place was a museum. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. The air was cool and still. Even my footsteps felt too loud.
A woman I didn’t recognize was wiping down the already spotless dining table. She looked up when I came in, startled for a second before smoothing her expression into something polite.
“Oh—hello,” she said, her accent thick, Eastern European, maybe Polish or Ukrainian. “I am . . . sorry. You must be Eleanor?”
“Yes,” I said, thrown off. “And you are . . . ?”
“I am Katarina,” she said carefully. “I clean here now.”
“Where’s Belle?” I asked, already uneasy.
Katarina hesitated. “I do not know Belle. The agency sent me.”
My stomach dropped.
I found my mother in the living room, flipping through a magazine like the world was exactly as it should be.
“Where’s Belle?” I asked.
She didn’t even look up. “The agency sent someone else,” she said flatly, and then stood and walked out of the room.
