On Thursday the doctor removed my dressing and examined the wound.
There was no sign of infection.
My fingers moved normally.
The doctor reminded me to follow the lifting restrictions until the injury had healed enough and to return if I developed concerning symptoms.
Ethan had taken the morning off.
He carried Ava's seat from the parking lot and handled the diaper bag.
Sophie met us at a small diner near the clinic.
She was already in a booth with a glass of water and a paper menu.
When she spotted Ava, her face brightened.
“There's my favorite tiny human.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
“She beat me already?”
“By miles.”
I settled into the booth carefully.
It had been a week since the accident.
My arm was improving.
The complicated part wasn't the stitches anymore.
It was the way the accident had pulled years of family habit into the open.
We ordered soup and sandwiches.
Ethan needed to leave for a work meeting after lunch.
Before he went, he asked whether I wanted him to take Ava home.
I said Sophie could help me manage.
He looked at both of us.
“Sounds good.”
There was no lecture.
No warning that we might argue.
He kissed Ava's forehead and went out to his truck.
Sophie watched him drive away.
“He seems different from Dad.”
“He is.”
“In what way?”
I thought about it.
“When I tell Ethan something hurts, he believes me.”
She nodded slowly.
“I would like to get better at that too.”
“You already helped at the hospital.”
“That's one evening.”
“It was the evening I needed.”
We ate quietly for a while.
Then Sophie told me about her job.
She handled scheduling for a regional equipment supplier.
I'd known the company name for years.
I didn't know she'd recently been promoted or that she'd spent most of the summer training new staff.
She hadn't known I'd had a difficult pregnancy near the end or that Ethan had taken on extra site visits to protect his leave after the baby arrived.
We had both been living real lives beyond our parents' descriptions.
That surprised me more than it should have.
Sophie showed me photographs of her apartment.
She'd painted the living room a warm green.
She had plants arranged across every windowsill.
One was the cutting I'd given her when she graduated from college.
“You kept that?”
“Of course.”
“I thought you hated plants.”
“I hate fake plants.”
“Mom told me you had a brown thumb.”
Sophie laughed.
“Mom told me you were allergic to cats.”
“I'm not.”
“Good, because I have one.”
Her cat was called Pickles.
The name made me laugh so hard my arm hurt.
After lunch we walked slowly through a small park near the diner.
Ava slept in the stroller.
The trees were losing their leaves.
Sophie pushed the stroller when the pavement sloped.
I told her I had been afraid of losing my ability to manage even ordinary errands.
The first weeks after Ava's birth had been a blur of feeds and short naps.
I had loved her so fiercely that I sometimes became frightened by the smallest things.
Sophie didn't say every mother felt that way.
She asked whether I had told my clinician how overwhelmed I sometimes felt.
I said I had a postpartum checkup scheduled and would bring it up.
She nodded.
“Good.”
At the next bench we stopped.
Sophie took out her phone.
“Mom sent me a message this morning.”
I waited.
“She says we're upsetting Dad.”
“By having lunch?”
“Apparently.”
I watched a little boy chase leaves across the grass.
“Maybe Dad is upset because he was asked to explain himself.”
Sophie read another line.
“She wants us both to come for Sunday dinner and put this behind us.”
I didn't answer immediately.
Part of me wanted to say yes.
A normal family dinner sounded comforting.
But normal had always meant not talking about the difficult thing.
It usually meant I apologized first because I was older and could handle it.
“What do you think?” Sophie asked.
“I'm not ready.”
“Me neither.”
“Could you tell her that for both of us?”
Sophie hesitated.
Then she smiled slightly.
“We said we weren't going to do that anymore.”
She was right.
I took my phone from my pocket.
I typed to Mom that I appreciated the invitation but needed time.
Sophie sent her own reply.
She said she'd be glad to discuss what happened but wasn't interested in pretending it hadn't happened.
Neither of us mentioned the other's decision.
When we reached the parking lot, my phone rang.
Mom's name glowed on the screen.
I put the phone on silent and placed it in my bag.
Sophie didn't ask why.
She helped fasten Ava safely into the car.
Then she hugged me.
“We'll talk Saturday?”
“Yes.”
She began to walk away, then turned.
“Oh, and Rachel?”
“What?”
“Next time something goes wrong, you can call me before you start apologizing.”
I waved my good hand.
“I might even ask you for a ride to the grocery store.”
“Dangerous precedent.”
We both laughed.
For once, the joke didn't hide a wound.
At the grocery store after our walk, Sophie and I moved slowly between the aisles.
I couldn't lift the heavier bags yet, so she pushed the cart.
I held the list on my phone.
We disagreed about cereal.
She liked the kind covered in cinnamon sugar.
I preferred plain oats.
She put one box of each into the cart and declared it a diplomatic settlement.
We stopped near the baby supplies.
I showed her the diapers that fit Ava best.
Sophie asked how I knew when to change sizes.
I explained what I'd learned from the pediatric nurse and from trial and error.
She listened with the same attention she'd once given me when I taught her how to braid hair.
Then she confessed she worried she would hold Ava wrong.
“You won't,” I told her.
“Everyone looks so confident.”
“Everyone is pretending at least some of the time.”
I smiled.
“I'm her mother and I still look things up.”
Sophie seemed relieved.
At checkout the cashier asked whether we were sisters.
We said yes at the same time.
She smiled and said we had the same eyes.
Sophie looked at me.
“I've been told that before.”
The cashier couldn't have known why the comment mattered.
We carried the groceries to my car.
Sophie loaded the heavier bags and reminded me not to strain the healing arm.
Before driving home, we sat in the parking lot for a few minutes with the windows cracked.
Sophie told me she'd considered moving farther away after a difficult year at work.
She hadn't mentioned it to me because Mom said I'd be upset.
I told her I would have missed her but would never have wanted her to stay somewhere she was unhappy.
“That sounds like you,” Sophie said.
“It ought to. I'm the one saying it.”
She laughed.
Then she looked out over the parked cars.
“We've both missed so much time.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think we can catch up?”
“Not all at once.”
She nodded.
“We don't have to.”
We started the engine and drove home with two kinds of cereal, a package of diapers, and a small peace that didn't need anybody else's permission.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Dad Came to My Door With an Apology That Was Really Another Demand
The Seven Stitches, My Sleeping Daughter, and the Answer I Never Expected From Dad
Part 6 of 16
