“Gab…” I don’t even know what to say to her anymore. I don’t know how to talk to my own daughter.
She sits down on the foam mattress and crosses her legs, then shoves the pillow down into the hole between her knees, resting her elbows on it as she looks at me. “So…” she says with a grin. “You and Jake, huh?”
A grin tugs at my own lips, even though I try to hold it back. “Me and Jake what?”
She smiles even bigger. “So you and Jake were totally a thing, weren’t you?”
“A thing?” I fluff the extra pillows and sit down next to her, leaning against the back of the couch with my legs in front of me. I lay my hand on my belly, because it makes me feel centered. “Define thing.”
“He was your boyfriend before you met Dad.”
I nod slowly and suddenly it’s hard to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Oh, Mom,” Gabby chides softly. “Don’t cry.”
I point to my stomach. “I’m really pregnant, Gabs. I can’t help it.” I wipe my eyes and try to get myself together.
“Tell me about Jake,” she says, and she turns to lay her head in the little bit of lap I have left. My fingers immediately find their way into her hair. “Was he your first love?”
Warmth settles in my heart, replacing where pain was a second ago. “Yeah, he was.”
“How old were you?” She yawns.
“It was the summer I turned sixteen.” Memories wash through me, making the hair on my arms stand on end. “It was magical.”
She snorts and turns away from me, and I run my fingers through the back of her long dark hair. She makes a soft, happy noise, and I realize this is the most calm I have felt in quite some time.
“Was he your first kiss?” she whispers. Then she giggles.
“Yeah, Gabs. He was.” And he was my first grope, my first second base, and my first boyfriend. My first loss.
“What happened between the two of you? Too much distance?”
“No,” I reply. “I met your dad when I joined the Army.” And that love…that love eclipsed everything else.
“But before that,” she prompts. “What happened with you and Jake?”
I shrug more to myself than to her. “I had to go home. He stayed here. That was all of it. We wrote letters for a little while, and then we stopped. I don’t remember why.”
“You were meant to meet Dad,” she says. Her voice gets soft and breathy, and more of her weight settles against my leg.
“Yes, I was.” That is one hundred percent true. I was meant to meet Jeff. I was meant to have three beautiful children with him. What came later…that was a tragedy.
After a long while I slide out from beneath Gabby’s sleeping form and pull the covers over her, staring down at her long enough to watch her chest rise and fall twice. That’s enough. Twice.
15
Jake
My paddle slices through the water with a dull slush, the soft whisper of the boat moving across the lake breaking the silence of the morning. The sun is barely over the horizon, but I shoved the canoe off anyway. I didn’t have much of a choice. Pop woke me up early and asked me to go and fix the mooring cleat on the floating dock that’s in the middle of the lake. I get out there, though, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Knowing Pop, he’ll probably tell me that there was a lesson in this little excursion.
The lesson is: Don’t even try to sleep late when Pop’s in the house. He will always find a way to get you up.
It is beautiful out here, though. The sun is coming up over the trees, casting shades of purple and grey on the calm lake, which looks slick as glass. I have missed the calm mornings and gentle breezes. In the city, it’s all hustle and bustle of epic proportions. People rush to and fro, horns honk, and people shout, even in the early morning. Here the only shout is the fishing crane as it flies by. Or the duck that happily dunks its head over and over, bobbing like a cork, causing tiny ripples that fan out around it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone standing on the end of the dock. I shade my eyes with my hand, and realize it’s a young boy. Katie’s son, Alex? He has something in his hand and he hauls his arm back and throws it toward the center of the lake. Then he turns and runs back down the dock, back toward their cabin.
Well, that was strange.