Page 174 of Slapshot Baby

My apartment is full of evidence that Ava Hartley existed here, and I walk through it every day cataloging items I refuse to throw away.

The first night, I try the bed. Her scent is in the sheets. After eleven minutes I'm on the couch with a blanket that smells like nothing, pressing both fists into my eye sockets until the pressure builds into something I can control.

Her voicemails come in the evenings. I listen to every one with the phone pressed against my ear.

"The baby moved today, Kai. Really moved. And I put my hand there but all I could think was that your hand should have been the one feeling it."

I play it again once more, phone face down on the cushion.

The texts come in clusters. I open them all and respond to none.

Ava:

I took my prenatals. In case you were wondering.

Ava:

I can't sleep without your arm over me. (Not saying this to guilt-trip you. It's just true.)

She can see the receipts. I know that.

The petty part of me wants her to see them.

The rest of me lies awake at three in the morning hating that I've become the kind of man who weaponizes silence against a pregnant woman.

Because I'm not furious that Ava lied.

I'm furious that I'm still in love with her.

That every voicemail pulls my hand toward the phone. That every text makes my fingers hover over the keyboard before I lock the screen. That the woman who hid my child from me for five months is the same woman who rebuilt my entire life from the wreckage, and I can't separate those two truths no matter how many times I try.

Thursday afternoon, my mother calls.

"Have you spoken to Ava recently?"

I fold a towel that doesn't need folding. "Why?"

"I've called her twice about the renovation this week. All I get back is a text. 'I'll call you back later.' Two times, Kai. That girl has never sent me to voicemail, not once."

"Come over" nearly leaves my mouth. But the penthouse still has Ava's things in every room, and I'm not ready to explain that to my mother while surrounded by evidence.

"I'll come to you," I say.

The drive takes twenty-six minutes.

I park behind Dad's car and grip the wheel for a while because once I walk through that door, this stops being something that happened between Ava and me and becomes something my family has to absorb.

Mom meets me in the hallway, reading glasses pushed into her hair. Her brown eyes does the quick, full-body scan that takes in my posture, my jaw, my hands, and arrives at a diagnosis before I've opened my mouth.

Her face changes. She takes my arm.

"Let’s go to the kitchen."

She pours coffee, sets a plate of lemon cookies between us that I don't touch. Then pulls out the chair across from me and sits with both hands wrapped around her mug.

"Talk to me."

"Ava's pregnant. The baby's mine. She's known since before she came to the hospital."