Page 77 of Summer Longing
“Come sit down,” Ruth said. After a few ragged breaths, Elise followed her to the kitchen table, carrying her drink. Ruth handed her a paper napkin, and Elise pressed it to her nose.
The tea would have to wait. “What’s wrong?”
Elise shook her head, closing her eyes. “Everything,” she said.
“Did you get into an argument with Fern?”
“I guess you could call it that,” Elise said, gulping her whiskey. “It’s this whole situation with Mira.” She seemed to hesitate, then said, “I guess you’re one of the few people I can talk to about it since you know the truth.”
Ruth nodded, feeling a pang of guilt for having confided in Olivia.
“So you know she was left here on the porch. Obviously—you found her. And, as I said that day, I don’t know who left her. But what you don’t know,” she said, “is how desperately I’ve wanted to be a mother.”
The raw emotion in her voice made the specifics of the situation—the unknown origins of the baby—suddenly less important. The urge Elise expressed was so primal and universal, Ruth felt as if Elise’s pain were her own.
“Did you try to have a baby? Before this happened, I mean?”
Elise nodded, finished the last bit of amber liquid in her glass, and spoke slowly and quietly of miscarriages and polycystic ovary syndrome.
“We had so many disappointments,” Elise said. “I wanted to keep trying but Fern had had enough. I agreed to move on. And then…this happened. A miracle.”
Ruth thought back to the day when she discovered the baby on the porch, the expression on Elise’s face when she’d taken her into her arms. Now, looking back on it, the moment took on an entirely new dimension. “So I’m assuming Fern doesn’t quite see it as a miracle?”
Elise shook her head. “She wants me to call a state agency. To go through theproper channels. And I’m just afraid they’ll take her away from me. I need more time. But Fern is done. I don’t know what to do. I chose my marriage over a baby before, but I can’t do it again.”
Ruth exhaled. “You’re in a tough position.”
“An impossible position.”
“I know you’re not asking me what to do, and I wouldn’t presume to tell you. But I do think the important thing here is to keep the lines of communication open with Fern.”
Elise shook her head, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “It’s too late for that. Fern left.”
Ruth, feeling an almost maternal impulse to comfort her, leaned forward and hugged her. Elise cried in her arms like a heartbroken teenager.
“What’s going on?”
Ruth turned around at the sound of Olivia’s voice. She stood near the stove, dressed in her pajamas, her hair up in a messy ponytail. She looked very young, and Ruth was struck by the sad fact that her daughter had never confided in her or consulted her during a breakup or heartache.
“Just some girl talk,” Ruth said. “I hope we didn’t wake you.”
Next to her, Elise sniffled but covered up the wads of tissues with her hand.
“No, I’m just getting water.” Olivia looked at Elise and seemed about to say something, then turned and retreated back to her room.
Elise stood, picked up her glass, and stuffed the tissues in her robe pocket.
“Thanks for listening,” she said. “Olivia’s lucky to have you as a mom.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
There was something warm and energetic about the Barros house. Olivia felt, sitting at the kitchen table while Lidia helped Fern brew batches of the experimental tea, that she had somehow wandered onto the set of a sitcom calledHappy Seaside Family. Lidia’s husband, Manny, made a big show of opening the windows and saying his house now smelled like a cross between the ocean floor and a fruit farm. But even as he said it, he patted his wife lovingly on her rear and told Marco, “Now, this is what I call thinking out of the box. Or, I should say, oyster cage.”
“Here,” Lidia said, handing her husband a mug of the green-tea-and-kelp blend, one Olivia had found tasted the most like the smell of the sea.
Manny waved it away. “Let me know when you start experimenting with coffee and seaweed.”
“That’s not going to happen, Dad,” Marco said.
