Heart Like Mine: A Novel

December was generally a dark month in Seattle, and along with everything else that was happening, I couldn’t help but think it was contributing to my foul mood. It was the Monday morning after Victor and I fought over Ava’s stealing, and I’d arrived at the office early to catch up on some of the work that was piling up. I had client files to review, grant requests to compose, but instead of accomplishing any of that, I sat at my desk, staring out the window at the cloud-laden sky.

“Okay,” Tanya said when she entered my office to bring me a stack of checks to sign. She gave me a stern look and tucked her thick mane of curls behind her ears. “What’s up with you?”

I averted my eyes from her and forced a short laugh. “Nothing. Just feeling a little overwhelmed by the workload.”

“I don’t think so.” She peered at me. “Something going on with Victor and the kids?”

I kept my eyes on my computer screen and my fingers poised on the keyboard, thinking about how easily I’d been frustrated by Ava’s poor behavior, how a better, more loving woman wouldn’t have been. “I just don’t think I’m very good at this mothering thing,” I said. Tears pricked my eyes as I spoke those words. It was hard to admit, even to myself, but over the years I did question whether there was something fundamentally wrong with me because of my decision to not have kids. I talked a good game—blaming the years I spent taking care of my brother, citing my drive to have a career and the insecurity around whether I could be a good mother—but deep in my belly there was a seed of doubt that any of this was true. Maybe the consensus about women who weren’t naturally maternal was true—I was heartless. Or, at the very least, the heart I did have wasn’t built for the kind of selfless existence motherhood demands. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to share my life. Maybe I’d be better off on my own.

Tanya gave her head a quick shake, and her springy black curls bounced. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” She smiled at me thoughtfully. “Do you remember when we first met at the thrift shop? I’d been living at the safe house for about a week with my kids, and Stephanie brought me in to fold clothes with you. You weren’t the boss yet, just volunteering your time.”

“I remember.” I pictured Tanya the first time I saw her. She was barely a shadow of the bright woman sitting before me now. Her face bore the evidence of a man’s fury in a mottled mess of purple and black bruises against her dark skin. Her brown eyes were lifeless; she looked at me, bewildered, like a prisoner who had suddenly been set free and didn’t know what to do with her newfound liberty.

“Well,” she said now, “then you’ll remember how you sat with me for hours, just listening and letting me cry. I think we managed to fold about three shirts. You were so calm and collected. You held my hand and you told me over and over again that I didn’t have to live the way I’d been living anymore. You told me I was stronger than I knew. You said I could be anything I wanted to be, and the way that you said it with such conviction, I believed it might be true.” Her full bottom lip trembled as she spoke. “You may not get all gushy about your feelings, but if I’ve learned anything over the past couple of years, it’s that any fool can learn to talk a good game about how they feel. It takes real strength to show up and prove it.” She paused. “You hear me? You understand what I’m saying? Love is a verb.”

My own lip trembled then, and I nodded, too afraid that if I spoke I’d burst into tears. “Thank you,” I finally whispered.

Tanya smiled and picked up the file next to her. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s get you to work!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smile, and she went back to her desk, quietly closing my door behind her. For the next few hours, I poured myself into writing the proposal that, if approved by the state, would bring Second Chances almost half its operating funds for the next fiscal year. I described the women we helped, their desperation and fear; how our counselors worked with them to build their confidence and a support system that would keep them from ever going back to their abusive partners. Putting the words on the page, I felt better than I had in a month. This I was good at. This was where my talents were—helping these women. Running this organization in a way that made me proud.

As I was typing up a list of all the different services we provide for our clients, I went into great detail about how many of the women who came to Second Chances were without family in the immediate area—how their abusers isolated them both emotionally and physically. Oftentimes we’d have to do a nationwide search to locate relatives our clients could connect with for support, and it suddenly struck me that I could utilize those resources to confirm if Kelli actually did have a baby in high school. In fact, we’d even had a few women who’d given up babies for adoption and asked our assistance in finding them. But before I could do this for Kelli, I needed to make sure I wasn’t headed down the completely wrong path.

I opened my Internet browser and did a quick search to bring up the California census website. Our staff had access to databases that included all births and deaths for every state so we could find out if the women had surviving family members. I could run a search for California and see if any babies were born under Kelli’s maiden name during 1993 or 1994. That would at least be a place to start. “Hey, Tanya?” I called out through my open office door. “Can you help me with something for a minute?”

She appeared a moment later, notepad and pen in hand. “What’s up?”

I turned the monitor of my computer so she could see it. “I need to log in to Vitalsearch for California and I can’t remember my password.”

She strode across the room and came around behind my desk, then leaned over and typed in the right combination of keystrokes. The site opened up and she straightened, smiling at me. “Do we have a client looking for family there? The counselors usually tell me before you.”

“This is a little more personal,” I said, then explained to her about the doctor’s letter and my suspicions about Kelli.

“Wow,” she said. “What does Victor say about all of this?”

I lifted one shoulder and looked away from her, focusing my eyes on the screen. “I haven’t exactly told him yet.”

“Uh-oh,” she said. “That’s not good.”

I sighed, drumming my fingers on my desk. “I know. I just feel like it’ll be better to talk with him once I find out something for sure, either way. Right?” I looked at her again, eyebrows raised, hoping she’d agree with me.

“How long have you not told him?” Tanya asked, and my hope vanished.

“Too long.” I sighed again and leaned forward, quickly clicking on the links that would lead me to the birth databases for the time frame I was interested in reviewing. Tanya pulled up a chair and sat next to me. I typed in the words “Baby Reed” for both 1993 and 1994, then waited to see the results. There were over four hundred babies with that last name born in California during those years.

“You’ll have to narrow your search by county,” Tanya said. “Where did she live?”

“San Luis Obispo, I think.” I ran another quick search and confirmed that the city was located in the county of the same name. The result this time was zero.

“Well, so much for that idea,” I said.

“Hold on,” Tanya said. “Maybe her parents sent her somewhere else to have the baby? If it was such a big secret, then that would make sense, right?”

I smiled at her. “You’re a genius.”

“True,” she said. “But don’t worry. I won’t let it go to my head.”

I chuckled and brought up a map of California, noting there were fifty-eight counties in the state. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Try San Francisco and Sonoma,” Tanya suggested, so I typed in Sonoma first, thinking we’d get fewer results because of its smaller population. I was right—there were only ten. I had to click through six “Baby Reed”s before I looked at the screen and my stomach flipped over. “Mother, Kelli,” I read aloud. “Father, unknown.”

“Well, there you go,” Tanya said. “Finding out about the adoption won’t be as easy as this, you know. Especially if it was closed.”

“I know, but her baby would be eighteen now, so maybe he—or she—is looking for Kelli.”

“You could start by posting her name on the international reunion registry, if you want. That worked well for Laurel, remember? She found her birth mother pretty quickly that way.”

“I think I’d better talk with Victor first,” I said. “I’ve been keeping it from him long enough.”

*  *  *

A few hours later, I arrived at the Loft to pick up the kids after their respective activities. In what I was sure was his attempt to make up with me, Victor had left the restaurant early so he could do that afternoon’s shuffle between basketball and dance practice. I wrestled with a vague sense of anxiety as I waved at the servers who were sitting at a table folding black cloth napkins, wondering how seeing Victor would feel after the way we’d left things the night before. And now that I needed to confess I’d been rooting around in Kelli’s past, I worried that I was about to erase any progress we’d made.

I walked toward the kitchen, surprised when I entered the swinging doors to see both Melody and Spencer standing there. My best friend hurried over to hug me, and I glanced over at Max and Ava, who were sitting in the chef’s-table booth, where Victor and I had shared our first meal. Ava was leaning over Max’s schoolwork, looking like she was trying to explain something to him.

“Hey, you,” Melody said. “I was just dropping Spencer off.”

I must have appeared confused, so Victor explained. “His physical therapist said he can be out of the sling a few hours a day, so I asked if he would come in at night to help expedite and close things up. No heavy lifting or cooking, of course, but I thought it might help if I came home a few hours earlier.” He searched my face, his expression hopeful.

The tension in my chest relaxed a bit hearing this, knowing our argument had spurred him to this kind of action. “That’s great,” I said, still feeling like a bit of my guard was up. We still had the issue of Ava’s stealing to deal with, so I wasn’t ready to forgive him completely. Of course, I had my own transgressions to admit and I was fairly sure he wasn’t going to be happy with me, either. “Have they eaten?” I asked Victor.

He nodded. “They helped me prep first, but I just fed them so you won’t have to worry about making dinner.” He was trying, that much I knew for sure.

Melody squeezed my hand. “Want some company tonight? My boyfriend is busy for a few hours and I don’t have any clients, so I can come hang out.”

“Boyfriend?” I said before I could help myself. I threw a glance over to Spencer, who blushed furiously but smiled. Melody laughed and walked over to stand next to him, giving him a quick peck on his cheek.

“Can I see you a second?” Victor asked me. “Before you go?”

I nodded, and he glanced over to his actual prep cook, Rory. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and we walked together to his small office in the back of the building. The space was a mess of paper and boxes of wine; his desk was covered in seating charts and half-drunk glasses of water.

“You need a house cleaner,” I said, trying to keep the air light between us. This was not the time to delve into our problems, in earshot of the kids and his entire staff.

He blew a long breath out between his lips, making a puttering sound. “I need a lot of things,” he said. “To get my head out of my ass, for one.”

I laughed out loud at his unexpected pronouncement, clapping my hand over my mouth. He reached over and gently clasped his long fingers around my wrist, pulling my hand away. “Don’t cover your smile. It’s one of the things I love most about you.” He paused but didn’t let go of my wrist, running his index finger back and forth over the sensitive skin at the base of my palm, causing me to shiver. “I talked with Ava this morning.”

“Oh?” Again, I tried to keep my tone light.

“She admitted she took the money. She needed it for her dance uniform and she was afraid to ask me because I’ve been so stressed. She shouldn’t have taken it, of course, but I can’t help but feel like it’s partially my fault for not remembering they’d need an allowance.” He shook his head, and I could see the guilt he felt scribbled across his face. I had to remember that I wasn’t the only one in this situation struggling with feelings of inadequacy. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, Grace. I just couldn’t believe that my little girl would do something like that.”

“I know,” I said gently, my fears beginning to evaporate. We could find a way to make this all work out.

“We can talk about it more later, if you want, but I told her she has to apologize to you, okay? So you need to let me know if she doesn’t, and we’ll deal with it when I get home.” I nodded, and he pulled me to him, his long arms tucked tightly around me, his chin resting on the top of my head. “I love you so much, Grace. Please forgive me.”

I hugged him tighter and then pulled back enough to look up at him. “Of course I forgive you. We just have to make sure we stay on the same team.”

“I told you on our first date I don’t get sports analogies,” he said with a wink, then inched his face toward mine. The kiss was soft and sweet, long and slow, and it awoke something in me I hadn’t felt since before Kelli died. Having children around, I’d realized, was arousal’s kryptonite.

When he finally pulled away, I had to catch my breath. He pressed his hips against me and groaned. “Okay. You should go, or I’m going to be in danger of violating a few health codes right here in this office.”

I laughed, and he held my hand as we walked back into the kitchen to face the kids.

*  *  *

Melody told me she had to run to the bank and deposit a check before coming over to our house, so the kids and I climbed into the car and headed home. The drive was quiet. Max hummed along with the radio, but other than a couple of perfunctory answers to my questions about how his day at school had been, he wasn’t his usual chatty self. He raced inside after I parked the car in our driveway, but Ava sat still in the backseat. I trusted that Victor actually had talked with her, but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring up what she’d done. “Everything okay?” I asked her. “Do you need help carrying your bag?”

She shook her head, staring at her lap. I turned to look at her and saw that she was clasping her hands together so tightly, her knuckles were white and she was digging her fingernails into her skin. The tips of her nails were ragged, and the edges were lined in blood, as though she’d been gnawing on her cuticles. “Ava, honey, don’t do that,” I said as gently as possible, feeling the same rush of tenderness toward her as the other night when I’d watched her sleeping.

“I’m sorry I stole from you, Grace,” she whispered. “I just . . .” She trailed off and took a deep breath before continuing. “I needed to pay for my dance uniform and I didn’t know how to ask for it, and the money was there in your wallet and I just took it. I’m so sorry. I know it was really, really wrong.” Her voice broke on her last word, and I felt my throat swell.

“I forgive you, Ava. We all make bad choices sometimes . . . me included.” She nodded, so I went on. “But I also need to say that I’m a little concerned about how you jumped on Max. You could have really hurt him.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I don’t even remember doing it, really. I just remember being mad.” She paused, looking up at me with wide eyes.

“What is it?” I asked, sensing there was something else she wanted to say.

“I just . . .” she began, and bit her bottom lip.

“You can tell me, whatever it is,” I said. “I want you to be able to talk with me.”

“I called my grandparents last week,” she said softly. “On Thanksgiving. After we found that letter from the doctor?”

“Okay . . .” I tensed slightly, wondering what else she had been hiding from us. “Did they talk with you?”

She nodded. “My grandma did, a little. I asked her if she could send more pictures or the rest of Mama’s yearbooks and she said there weren’t any.” Her voice began to shake. “She said Mama was never a cheerleader. That they sent her away to a school for troubled girls. She said it was better to forget the past.”

“Ava,” I said, drawing her name out. Everything she was saying made sense with what I’d confirmed earlier—that Kelli had gotten pregnant and was sent away to have the baby. I couldn’t tell Ava this, of course, not without talking to Victor first. “I think we need to tell your dad about all of this. I never told him about going to your mom’s house to get the recipe or finding the letter, which was totally not the right thing to do. And now with you talking to your grandparents . . .” I sighed. “We need to tell him the truth.”

“He’s going to be mad at me, though.” Ava’s voice trembled again.

“Because you called your grandparents?”

She shook her head. “No. Because going to my mom’s house with you wasn’t the first time I went there after she died. It wasn’t the last, either.” She explained how she and Bree had gone through her mother’s computer and found a list of private investigators and, as I’d suspected, how Diane let it slip about me and Victor being engaged when they visited Kelli’s house again. “I’m so sorry I lied, Grace.”

“It’s okay,” I said, reaching my hand through the space between the front seats to squeeze hers. “I think your dad will understand. None of us are perfect.” I paused. “And no matter what happened in your mom’s past, she loved you and Max very, very much.”

“I loved her, too,” Ava whispered.

“I know you did, sweetie,” I said. “I have no doubt she knew that much was true.”