The Breakaway(65)
Besides, she had Mark.
“All set here?” asked the waitress, with the check in a leather envelope in one hand. “You need anything else?”
“We’re all set,” Abby said. “Everything was delicious.” She held out her hand for the check and made herself smile.
Kayla
Day Seven: Syracuse to Seneca Falls Sixty-one miles
It was a secret, something she’d never told her husband, something she’d barely admitted to herself, but when Kayla had gotten pregnant for the second time, she’d secretly, quietly, hoped that the baby would be a girl.
They had had Andy by then, and she and Dale had decided that the second child would be their last. Buying a nice house in a good school district, taking the occasional, reasonable vacation, and eventually sending their children off to college, from which they’d graduate with no more than the average amount of debt, would be tough but feasible on their combined salaries. Three kids would tip the scales from possible to impossible. She’d cried, quietly, in private, when she’d learned that she was having another boy, and she’d ignored her friends and her own sister when they’d tried to soothe her, telling her what a challenge daughters could be.
When Ezra had arrived, most of Kayla’s regret evaporated. Unlike his brother, who’d had colic and had barely slept for the first weeks of his life, Ezra had been a calm, sweet-natured baby, who slept through the night at eight weeks and was happy in his car seat, happy in his stroller, happy just about anywhere. As the years went on, Kayla had seen for herself what had happened when her nieces and her friends’ daughters became teenagers, when the moms were dealing with cutting and depression and disordered eating, friend drama and boy drama, birth control discussions and pregnancy scares.
With every year that had passed, she’d gotten happier about being a boy mom, and proud of the relationships she had with Andy and Ezra. Thank God I have sons and not daughters, she’d think, smugly—arrogantly—when she’d hear one of her friends’ horror stories. She’d taken care to establish open lines of communication with her sons early on, mindful of her own parents’ failings. When she’d asked her mother where babies came from, her mom had said, “From mommies’ tummies” and then hurried out of the room. The next day, Kayla had found a book on her bed, one that had explained the basics in clinical language that had, somehow, left her with more questions than answers. When she’d gotten her period, her mother had told her that there were supplies in the bathroom, underneath the sink, without a word on how to use them, or any questions about how she was feeling. Kayla had been left to glean the rest of her sex education from friends and her biology classes.
Kayla didn’t want her sons growing up ignorant or ashamed. She’d used the correct terms for their body parts, even when they were hard for her to say, and she’d bought them better books when they were ready. As her boys got older, Kayla talked to them, not just about pregnancy and disease but also about consent and pleasure. Andy and Ezra knew, Kayla hoped, how to treat women with respect, to be mindful of their boundaries and, eventually, solicitous of their enjoyment. Best of all, her boys knew they could come to her with anything. She had promised them that she’d listen and not judge, no matter what, and she’d never had cause to regret that promise… until that morning, when Andy knocked on her door.
It was just before seven o’clock in the morning, in the bed-and-breakfast they’d arrived at the night before, and she could hear rain drumming on the roof. Dale was still sleeping, lying on his back on the left side of the bed, the same side he occupied at home. When she opened the bedroom door she saw Andy in his pajama bottoms and a hoodie. His feet were bare, his hair was rumpled, and he looked very young.
“Mom?” he said. She still hadn’t gotten used to how deep his voice was these days; how he no longer sounded like a kid. “Can I talk to you?”
“Of course.” Kayla reached up with her thumb to smooth his eyebrow. Andy had grown six inches in the last eighteen months. His face had gotten more angular, his jaw more defined as he’d lost that little-boy softness, but Kayla could still catch glimpses of the toddler whose thighs had once been as soft and squishy as loaves of Wonder Bread, the little boy who’d worn yellow rain boots and a Batman cape to preschool for three weeks in October, in advance of Halloween. The sweet, good-hearted boy who’d once asked her to put extra cookies in his lunch because his friend’s mom never packed dessert and who, in elementary school, had invited his whole class to his birthday parties so that no one would feel left out.
Kayla pulled on her own sweatshirt and a pair of socks and led Andy downstairs. The house where they’d stayed was a redbrick Georgian house in a quiet, residential neighborhood, with a wraparound porch and eight bedrooms, half of them with fireplaces. She could hear someone—Jasper, she assumed—in the kitchen. There were already carafes of coffee on the dining room table, with a platter of mugs beside them. Kayla poured herself coffee and sat down at the table. Andy took a seat opposite her and asked, quietly, “Can this be just between us?”
“Sure,” said Kayla. She wondered if that girl Morgan had already broken his heart. When the first girl Andy had gotten a crush on, two years ago, when he’d been in ninth grade, had told him she just wanted to be friends, Kayla had been sad, but not surprised. When she’d been a teenager, she wouldn’t have given a boy like Andy a second look. Just wait, she’d told him. You’re going to find someone who thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread. He’d looked at her, red-eyed and miserable, asking, Is sliced bread really that great?