Family
I spent most of that first week at home with Layla in one of just a few places. We were either curled up on the couch together or I had pulled my new recliner in front of her crib so I could watch her sleep. Even though bonding with her was important, I knew I didn’t need to spend every single second of the day with her, especially during those few hours when she was actually sleeping peacefully, but I couldn’t stop myself.
When I could, I attempted to devour every book and website on babies that I could find. For most of my pregnancy, I had trouble thinking ahead and I came close to even resenting the thing growing inside me. It was hard to imagine that the result would be a real human being and not just some vague life ruining… thing.
But she was real and she was here and I was determined to be the best mother I could be.
People tended to make assumptions about my childhood based on what I looked like, but all it really meant was that I had a loving, accepting family who knew that how I chose to dress and decorate my body didn’t make me a bad person. My parents had been the best parents a kid could have ever wanted. I hated saying that I had a fairytale childhood, but I kind of did, especially since I was an only child. Thanks to grad school and fertility issues, my parents had been older than what was considered normal when they finally had me, and in the meantime, they’d both learned practically everything there was to know about pregnancy, birth and child development.
But me… I was brand new to this.
While Layla napped, I was reading everything I could, trying to learn all the things I thought I should have already known. It was just overcompensation, I knew. If I had to do this alone, then I had to be twice as good as any other mother. I had to be mother, father, everything to her.
She had been taking a particularly long nap one day when a knock came at the door. It was time for Tobias’ shift to end, so I figured it was him coming by to check on us like he had developed a habit of doing. I braced myself for Layla to start crying at the sudden noise, but thankfully she didn’t. I sat down the book I’d been reading and shuffled to the door to answer it.
When I swung the door open, I saw that it wasn’t Tobias.
“Avery, I…” I stuttered out, scratching my head. I felt stupidly self conscious of how I looked, with my unwashed hair, boxer shorts and milk-stained t-shirt.
“Is this a bad time?” She asked.
I looked down at my shabby appearance again, then back up at Avery and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, dumb question,” she replied. “But can I come in?”
“If you want to…” I replied, stepping back to let her in.
I didn’t understand at all why she was there. I hadn’t seen her since the wedding, a full five months prior. I had seen Zac, the flakiest of all the flakes in the world, more recently than I had seen his sister. What had changed? Why was she there? A tiny little cry from my bedroom provided the answer.
“I’m sorry, I’ll just… I’ll be right back…” I stuttered out. “You can, umm, you can go ahead and sit down or whatever.”
Before Avery could say anything, I hurried off to the bedroom. Layla had woken up, and her cries were in full force by the time I made it to her crib. I wasn’t sure what had disturbed her, other than perhaps our voices, but I could see she wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon. After checking for a dirty diaper, I resigned myself to holding and rocking her for a while. It wasn’t like I minded; if I could have spent every moment of the day holding her, I would have.
A little sheepishly, since I was carrying the wedge that had come between mine and Avery’s friendship, I made my way back to the living room. Avery was sitting on one end of the couch, and I sat on the other, curling my legs up under my body and holding Layla against my chest the way I knew she liked. Only when she was right against my heart did she seem to calm down from some of her worst crying fits.
“Is that, umm… I mean, what’s her name?” Avery asked.
“Layla,” I replied. “Sorry she’s not making better of a first impression. I guess she wanted to show off how loud she could be.”
Avery smirked slightly. “She comes by that naturally.”
“I guess so,” I replied softly. “Look, Ave… I’m really sorry that it all… came out like that. I never intended for anyone to find out like that. Truthfully, I never intended for anyone to find out at all.”
“Don’t you think Zac deserved to know?” She asked.
I tried not to let my anger take hold of me. “For all the good it’s done that he found out.”
Avery sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Colby, he’s… you know this isn’t easy on him. You can’t have expected him to just drop his family and run here. Or did you? Did you really expect him to just be with you?”
“No!” I said, then winced at how Layla cried louder. “No, I didn’t expect anything from him, and that’s what I’ve gotten. Nothing. I didn’t want him to know because he was obviously trying to make things work with Kate, and I was trying to help that. If he never knew, if she never knew, then it would be one less thing to drive them apart.”
“You make it sound noble,” Avery replied, only a hint of judgment in her voice.
I shrugged. “He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to be with me, anyway. I didn’t really think having his baby would change anything. So before you or anyone else can accuse me of it, I most certainly didn’t get pregnant on purpose.”
“I wasn’t going to accuse you of that,” Avery scowled. “Not at all. You wouldn’t have kept it a secret for so long if you did. That much is obvious. I just… I still don’t understand why you couldn’t at least tell me. It hurts, Colby, that you deceived me. It still hurts.”
“So why are you here now?” I asked.
“Because no matter how much you hurt me, she’s my niece. She’s my family. And someone on her dad’s side ought to get to know her. The rest of them will come around eventually, I hope, because she deserves to know them. It isn’t her fault. She shouldn’t be deprived of her family because of… how she became a part of it.”
I stared at her for a moment, only vaguely registering that Layla had finally stopped crying. Maybe Avery’s words had gotten to her as well. “I… that’s really… more than I deserve, probably. I’m so sorry, Avery.”
“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry, too. You probably needed a friend these last few months and I was too busy being selfishly angry with you to think about that.”
I shrugged her words off, not wanting her to know how much I had needed and still did need a friend. Tobias was great, but he couldn’t be everything to me. Avery couldn’t either, but she was one missing piece of the puzzle. The other piece… I didn’t know when I would see him again, if ever.
“So, Layla, huh?” Avery asked. “Like the song?”
I nodded. “Layla Juliette Green.”
“You didn’t… she’s not…?”
“Why should she be?” I asked. “I’m not his wife. He wasn’t even there when she was born, and he’s not here now.”
Avery frowned deeply. “Colby, he’s… you don’t know what he’s going through. I don’t know, maybe it’s not my place to tell you, and truthfully I don’t know how bad it is because I’m not there, but…”
“But what?”
“It’s just… from what Zoe said the last time I talked to her, he’s been staying with our parents a lot and she said he always smells like alcohol and pot. And thanks to him, our baby sister can identify those two smells now.”
I looked away. “I hope you’re not blaming me for that.”
“I’m not,” she replied. “You just need to know what this is doing to him. What not being able to make this right is doing to him. And I really do think that’s what it is. It’s not you, it’s that there’s no way for him to win this. There’s no way for him to go back to pretending everything is okay, and definitely no way for everything to be okay.”
“You’re really… really not blaming me?” I asked, hesitantly looking up at her.
“No, I’m not,” Avery said softly. “I know his marriage wasn’t perfect. Everyone knew that, but until now, they’ve worked through their problems. Not that they’ve ever… had problems this bad before. But whatever it was, the two of them could work through it. And now Zac just doesn’t know how to even begin to work through this, so he’s… he’s just shutting down, I guess.”
“What can I do about that?” I asked weakly. “I tried, Ave. I tried to keep him away from this. I did.”
“I know. But I’m just not sure that was the solution. I don’t know what is.” A little sheepishly, she added, “Do you think… can I hold her?”
I glanced down at Layla, who was nearly asleep, her little eyelashes fluttering. “It’s a risky move, but hopefully it won’t set off those operatics again.”
Carefully, I adjusted the blanket I had her wrapped in and handed her over to Avery. Of course she was an expert at this, with as many siblings, nieces and nephews as she had. She knew more about being a mother than I did, I was sure. That was only one small part of why I was glad to have her in my life again.
“She looks like you,” Avery said.
“You think? I look at her and all I can see is Zac.”
Avery gave me the saddest look. “You love him, don’t you?”
I gaped at her. I couldn’t say it. I’d never said it to Zac, never acknowledged it out loud in any way, and I couldn’t do it now. I didn’t have to, though. The way Avery nodded slightly told me that she knew, without me saying it, that I did.
“Why did you really leave the tour?” She asked. “Because you were pregnant, or…?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know that until Thanksgiving, but it… it must have happened earlier in October. But I just… you know, he seemed so happy, Ave. After Kate had the baby. He was so happy, or at least trying to convince himself he was, I guess. And I knew if I stayed, he wouldn’t be. And I wouldn’t be, either, but… I just couldn’t keep holding on for something I wasn’t going to get and dragging him through the dirt at the same time. Even before I knew about… about Layla, I just knew I had to get away before I ruined everything. Too late, I guess.”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” Avery said. “If he was willing to cheat with you, then his marriage was already on its deathbed. Whether either of them will ever admit that is another thing entirely.”
“I never asked him to leave her,” I blurted out. I wasn’t sure why I had said it, but it seemed important for Avery to know.
Avery just nodded, as though she already knew or she just believed it without question. She looked back down at Layla, who had drifted off easily in her arms. “I guess I do see a little of him in her. I wish he could see her.”
“He could,” I replied. “I’m not stopping him, even if he’s not on the birth certificate. I don’t want him making promises to do this or that, but if he was here… he could see her. I’d give him that, at least.”
Avery gave me a sad smile. “I know he’s done a lot wrong, but I think he deserves that at least. Whether he’s in any state to be grateful for it right now, I don’t know. But hopefully…”
She drifted off then, and I didn’t dare ask her to finish the sentence. I didn’t want to think about what might happen. I just wanted to be happy that at least one relationship in my life had been repaired and that for now, Layla had one new family member. I couldn’t even attempt to think about all her other aunts, uncles, cousins… half brothers and sister… father. Those were all big question marks that made me feel sick, but this, this was good. Sitting here with Avery was good. I didn’t have it in me to think about any other steps in the right direction.