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“No, I think it’s natural.”
Eddie stretches her arms up and yawns, the cutest grunt following. I reach out and touch her tiny knees when she draws them up to her stomach and lets out a toot. Arya and I burst out laughing, cry together as we memorize Eddie’s features, and fall deeper in love with her.
“What do you think he’d do if he saw her right now?”
Arya glances at Eddie, and then me. “Love her as much we do.”
She’s right. He would.
37
WHEN I LEARNED ABOUT HIS PAST
Despite depression and lack of sleep with a newborn, outside of my bubble, the world continues. I have no idea how I get through Eddie’s first seven months of life, other than if it hadn’t been for my mom, Lana, Harper, and Arya, I wouldn’t have. I’m living with my mom and Arya off campus in a three-bedroom house. Mom takes care of Eddie so I can finish school. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s working from home selling makeup online and it’s the best situation for us, and not at all what I thought I’d be doing. While I imagined I’d be doing all this on my own, I have the best support system surrounding me.
I spend the summer in Athens, refusing to visit the lake. I can’t, and I don’t want to take Eddie there. She’s the perfect baby, in every way. Happy, feisty at times, and a lot of work. She’s a good sleeper, but with school and working part time at a coffee stand too, I don’t have time for much else.
Before I know it, I’m in my sophomore year of college. Eddie learns to crawl and babbles in gibberish nobody understands but me, and I think she says Mama, but it’s sound like everything else so I’m not entirely sure.
Have I heard from Ender? Nope. Arya thinks he joined the military without telling anyone. That wouldn’t surprise me knowing him. I wonder if he knows he has a daughter, or if he cares. And at some point, part of me begins to hate him. I still love him—he gave me Eddie—but there’s a portion of my heart that wants to hate him for leaving us.
I make his family swear they won’t tell him about Eddie, because I strongly believe I deserve the chance to do that myself after everything, though I wouldn’t put it past Walker, or Theo to tell him.
Eddie starts pulling herself up and standing, and then laughing and falls dramatically to the ground to get others to laugh. I want to stop time and remember every detail about her at this age. She’s the spitting image of Ender in every way. Lana tells me they’re identical in looks and mannerisms, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see him every time I look at her. In all honesty, she’s the only reason I’m able to get up every morning and continue to finish college knowing I need to provide a life for her.
College is a blur to me. What isn’t blurry is Arya’s need to party. While her and Roman are on a break again, it’s a string of nights that lead to one turning point when I realize I can’t continue to live the way I’m living.
It actually starts when she finds me crying one night, holding my journal I’m writing the book in, Eddie asleep beside me in my bed as I relive my first time with Ender. The night we conceived the one snoring beside me. It’s a horrid, jumbled mess of words, but I finally get out, “I miss him.”
“My God.” Arya sighs, trying to get me under control. “Am I gonna have to set up an intervention or something?”
I nod, a little dramatic, closing my laptop where I might have been searching for his name on Facebook. Something I might do… daily. “Why can’t I move on? Why am I so obsessed with this?”
“Get your shit together, Hads!” Arya says. “Set an example for Eddie.” Arya’s voice drops, and her eyes scrunch the way Ender’s do, or did, when he was trying to be serious. “She needs you and me. Your sisters are a shitshow and I don’t hold out too much hope for Myles. He got suspended again for fighting. So we” She pauses and motions between us. “need to buck up and be it for Eddie.”
I nod. “Okay.” Though I’m not entirely sure I believe my own words.
“Let’s get you back in the saddle.” She moves to my closet and picks through my not-so-sexy wardrobe. “And for Christ’s sake, raise the bar this time.”
“Where are we going?”
“A party.”
I’m not sure if raising the bar refers to my love life, my wardrobe, my standards, or all of the above. “What about you and Roman? Is he going with us?”
“Nope.”
Roman’s not around much. He’s playing baseball for the University of Alabama and their relationship is complicated. I think back to if Ender had stayed, would we be complicated?
Oh hell, we’d be a train wreck.
“I don’t want to go. I can’t leave Eddie.”
Arya growls in my face. “You’re going. Mom is going to watch her, and we’re going the fuck out. End of discussion.”
* * *
Arya’s plan tohelp me move on starts with tailgating at the Dawgs game and ends up downtown after the win. My mom watches Eddie for the night and it’s the first time I’ve been out since I had her. I spend most of the night on my phone, texting my mom and begging for pictures of her until Arya takes my phone. “You need to stop.”