Heart Like Mine: A Novel

“I’m nervous,” I told Melody when Victor first suggested it was time for his kids to get to know me. We’d been dating about three months. “What if they hate me?”

“They’re not going to hate you,” Melody said, shaking her blond head and tucking her slender legs up beneath her on the couch. We sat in the living room of her Queen Anne Hill apartment overlooking downtown, sipping mojitos and munching on chips and the fresh fire-roasted salsa she had made for our weekly girls’ night in. “The best thing you can do is let Victor take the lead and not push yourself on them.”

“Push myself on them how?” I asked, reaching for another handful of chips to dig into the salsa. After cooking for my family when I was a teenager, I’d lost any interest or enjoyment in the task—Victor laughed when I told him my idea of meal preparation as an adult consisted of properly heating up a Lean Cuisine—but my best friend definitely prided herself on her culinary skills.

Melody screwed up her face a bit, thinking before she spoke. “You know. Like being way over the top, cheerleader-friendly with them. ‘Rah-rah, I’m your dad’s new girlfriend! Yay!’ ” She waved a couple of tortilla chips above her shoulders next to the sides of her head like they were pom-poms.

I laughed. “So, no back handsprings?”

She smiled and her dark brown eyes sparkled. “Exactly. Just be yourself. It’ll take time for them to warm up to you.”

She was right, I knew. But Victor hadn’t introduced any of the other women he had dated since the divorce to his children, so I felt a deep need to make a good impression. I thought about buying them gifts, the way I would bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party to show appreciation to the host, but I had no clue what they’d like.

“No bribes,” Melody instructed. “Kids can smell you trying to suck up to them a million miles away. Plus, it’ll piss off the ex-wife and you don’t want to do that, either.”

So, unarmed and a little scared, I arrived at Victor’s house on a Saturday morning in late October, ready to face the firing squad of his children. I walked up the front steps of his house, taking deep breaths before I knocked on the door. “I got it, Dad!” a little boy’s voice yelled from inside, and the door flung open. Max stood in front of me, his hand still on the doorknob. “Who are you?” he asked.

I gave him what I hoped was a friendly but not over-the-top kind of smile. “I’m your dad’s friend Grace. I’m going to the pumpkin patch with you guys today.” Didn’t Victor tell them I was coming? Maybe Max is just forgetful.

He stared at me for what felt like a full minute before speaking again. “You’re bigger than my mom,” he said, and then spun around and raced through the living room and into the den, where I could hear the loud racket of cartoons.

Wonderful. I wasn’t overweight by any means, though I was on the heavier side of normal according to my doctor’s charts. Exercise wasn’t high on my list of enjoyable activities, so I had a wide variety of Spanx to create the illusion of firm thighs and stomach, but overall, I felt pretty good about my body. Of course, I’d seen pictures of Kelli in Ava’s bedroom. She was barely over five feet tall and almost as thin as her daughter, with disproportionately large breasts. (Fake, I suspected, since rarely does a petite woman sport such a substantial rack naturally, but there was no way to know for sure.) I was secure enough in my looks to not feel terribly intimidated by her beauty; men often commented on the appealing combination of my bright green eyes and wavy auburn hair, and Victor told me I was gorgeous every day. But there was no doubt about it. As a woman, there was no way to take “bigger” as a compliment.

I stepped through the doorway and Victor appeared from the hallway. “Sorry,” he said with the sideways grin of his I loved. “He didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s okay. I get it.” I smiled and let him give me a quick kiss on the cheek. We’d agreed not to show any physical affection in front of the kids, but I fought the urge to throw myself into his arms and have him reassure me that everything about this day would go well. I peered over his shoulder. “Where’s Ava?”

“Trying on a fifth outfit.” He rolled his eyes. “I told her, it’s a pumpkin patch, not a fashion show, but who am I to argue? You women change your clothes as often as you change your minds.”

Max ran back into the living room from the kitchen, hopping in place with his feet together and his arms ramrod straight at his sides. “Dad! It’s sunny! Can we play soccer before we go?” I smiled, thinking that Max was exactly as Victor had described him to me: “a jumping jack of a boy, with enough energy to power a small nation.”

Victor walked over to his son and dropped into a squatting position so they were face-to-face. Max stopped jumping. “I don’t think we have time, buddy,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a drive to Snohomish and we don’t want to wait too long. All the good pumpkins will be gone.”

“Mom already got us pumpkins at the grocery store.”

Victor threw a glance at me, then looked back to Max. “Well, this place doesn’t just have pumpkins. It has a petting zoo and arts and crafts and caramel apples. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“No,” Max said. “Can I bring my DS? I want to play Mario Kart.”

Victor sighed and stood back up. “In the car only.”

Ava chose this moment to emerge from her bedroom, entering the living room with slow, deliberate steps. She wore slim-fit jeans, a blue windbreaker, and knee-high green rubber boots.

“Hi, Ava,” I said brightly. “I’m Grace. It’s so nice to finally meet you. Your dad has told me so much about you both.”

She made brief eye contact with me and gave a short nod of acknowledgment before walking over to her father and hugging him tightly, burying her face into his stomach. Victor leaned down and kissed her on top of her head, his lips landing on one of the fluorescent orange hair clips she wore.

A few minutes later we loaded into Victor’s SUV, both of us making idle conversation about pumpkins and the upcoming Halloween holiday. I shifted in my seat to look at the children. “What costumes are you going to wear this year?” I asked them, figuring this was a neutral enough subject to get them to engage with me.

“Iron Man!” Max offered. “With real lasers on my hands!” He held his palms out at me, making pretend electronic shooting noises. “Pew! Pew!”

I laughed. “Awesome. I loved that movie.”

“You did?” Max asked, an edge of doubt in his voice.

“Totally. Iron Man rocks.” I grinned at him, and he grinned back.

“Pew! Pew!” he said, again pretending to shoot me. Victory!

“What about you, Ava?” Victor prodded, looking at his daughter in the rearview mirror. “What are you going to be for Halloween?”

Ava shrugged, staring out the window. “I don’t know.”

“It’s next weekend,” I said. “Do you have any ideas at all? Maybe we could help you figure something out.”

She looked at me, pressing her lips together in a thin line, and shook her head. I sighed a little internally, wondering why she was so unresponsive. Had I already done or said something that bothered her? Maybe she simply hated me on principle, just because I was another woman, invading her time with her father. I could handle kids who were more like Max, open and mouthy. Or maybe it was because he was a boy, and I was used to how my brother behaved when he was Max’s age. I knew how to relate. Ava’s silence made me extremely uncomfortable.

The afternoon went well, all things considered. I even got Ava to laugh when I did my impression of the llama that had spit at her dad over the petting zoo fence. Momentarily disregarding Melody’s advice to avoid bribery, I bought them caramel apples covered in miniature chocolate chips and paid for the sepia photo of them with their dad dressed up in old western frontier clothes. Victor tried to get me to dress up and take the picture with them, but I felt like a family photo would be pushing things too far for a first meeting. I snapped many pictures of the three of them together that day, though, planning to put them together in a small album for both of the kids as a kind of thank-you for letting me join them. I went back to my condo after we returned to Victor’s, even though at that point, I was already accustomed to spending almost every night at his place. There was no way I was going to freak the kids out by sleeping in their father’s bed.

The next day, we went to brunch together at IHOP, then to the beach to collect shells before taking them to Kelli’s house. She immediately seemed uncomfortable with my presence, even though Victor had prepared her by saying I would be there. I’d asked to meet her, thinking that if I were a mother and my ex-husband started dating someone, I’d certainly want to get to know the person spending time with my kids.

“What do you do for a living, Grace?” she asked me. Her voice wavered a bit as she spoke. Her tiny frame was clad in the tight black skirt and white blouse she wore to wait tables at her job. Both kids clung to her after being away from her for the weekend, and she wrapped her arms around their shoulders protectively.

“I already told you that,” Victor interjected before I had a chance to answer her, his voice holding a twinge of annoyance I hadn’t heard from him before.

“Do you have any kids?” Kelli continued, ignoring his remark.

I shook my head, and a brief, smug look flashed across her face. She tried to hide it with a quick smile, but it was too late—I’d seen it. I didn’t understand why so many women seemed compelled to pit themselves against others who had simply chosen a different path. Stay-at-home moms against those who worked; women who breast-fed against those who chose to use formula; and my personal experience—women who had children against those who did not. Luckily, it wasn’t the first time I’d faced this issue, so I gave my standard response to smooth her ruffled edges: “It must be amazing to be a mother.”

She softened a little in that moment, when she saw I wasn’t intent on proving myself a better or more evolved woman because of my focus on my career. “It is amazing,” she said, moving her gaze to Victor then, her eyes suddenly seeming darker and more intensely blue. “They’re what keep me from falling apart.”

Victor looked away. “We need to get going,” he said. He smiled at his children and threw his arms out for one more hug. They complied, wrapping their arms around his neck until he pretended to choke. “Love you, monkeys. I’ll talk with you this week.”

“Love you, Dad!” Max hollered as he turned around and sped inside the house.

“Let me know how that algebra test goes, okay, kitten?” Victor said, and Ava nodded, shoving her face into his neck, inhaling deeply, as though she was trying to memorize his scent. Victor carefully extricated himself from her embrace, and she reluctantly followed her brother’s path inside.

I smiled at Kelli. “It was so nice to finally meet you,” I said, but she only nodded once, briefly, not taking her eyes off Victor. A moment later she whipped around and shut the door.

“Okay,” I said a little shakily as we walked toward his car. “Did that go well or not? I couldn’t tell.”

Victor grimaced and shrugged. “Could’ve been worse,” he said, reaching to take my hand. I opened my mouth, about to ask what he meant, but then closed it again, uncertain if at that point I really wanted to know.

Almost exactly a year later, as I heard the sharp slam of Ava’s door, my gut churned thinking about the pain she and Max were facing. I was a little hurt that Victor asked me to leave the room when he told them about Kelli; I’d assumed we would do it together. It made sense, I supposed, that he wanted to do it alone, but I wished he had said something to me about it in the bedroom so I would have been prepared. So it didn’t look to his children like he was dismissing me. Still, I’d heard every word from the den. They were devastated, and I had no idea how to help them through this. I had no idea how to get through it myself.

“Grace?” Victor called out from the hallway, pulling me from my thoughts. “What happened?” He must have heard Ava’s door. His face appeared from around the corner a few seconds after his voice. He was pale and disheveled, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. I didn’t want to tell him what his daughter had said. He had enough to handle; he didn’t need a thirty-seven-year-old whining that she got her feelings hurt.

“Ava just needs some time in her room, I think,” I finally answered him, sighing wearily. I couldn’t believe the exhaustion rolling through my blood. Even my bones felt heavy.

His dark eyebrows furrowed and he frowned. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing!” I snapped, trying to keep the defensiveness I felt out of my voice, but failing miserably. “She wants to be alone. She’s traumatized, Victor. I’m not her mother and I’m certainly not a therapist. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

The skin softened around his eyes and mouth. “Sorry.” The word was a whisper. A ghost of an apology.

I nodded, holding my breath instead of speaking. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean to accuse. He turned around, and a moment later, I heard another door quietly shut.

I blew out an enormous breath between pursed lips and leaned heavily against the back of the couch, pressing both of my palms to my forehead. It was obvious I was the intruder—a totally unwelcome guest. And this was supposed to be my new home. How would we build a life together after this? And then, a much worse thought, one I shoved back down the instant it echoed through my mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all.