Page 17 of When People Leave

Carla

C arla didn’t share much with her daughters about her marriage to their father. When they asked how they met or about their relationship, she gave vague answers or changed the subject. She didn’t want to lie to them, but her and Brian’s story wasn’t one she wanted to discuss.

When Carla met Brian, they had an instant connection. When she wasn’t with him, she thought about him and even dreamed about him. She didn’t care that they didn’t have the same goals in life. At the time, her fascination with his athletic prowess was more important and exciting.

Brian had been the best player on the baseball team through most of college.

During Carla’s junior year, she went to all his games and was proud to tell anyone who would listen that he was her boyfriend.

She was enamored that Brian was on track to attain his lifelong dream of getting recruited to pitch in the major leagues.

That is until the first game of his senior year when he threw a fastball, and with the crack of the opposing team’s bat came a crack in his arm and excruciating pain.

The dream ended faster than Brian could stand up.

Brian was never the same after that. At the end of that year, he graduated and joined an accounting firm in New York.

“This wasn’t the way my life was supposed to be,” he would complain to Carla.

“I should’ve been traveling with my team and making more money than we could possibly spend in a lifetime. ”

Carla worried that he wouldn’t be able to move on from his disappointment, but right after she graduated, they got married, and she convinced herself that he was past it.

They rented their first apartment, and she took classes to get her real estate license.

She hoped knowing the ropes would give them an advantage when they could afford to buy their first house.

Unfortunately, right before Carla got her first job as a real estate agent, she found out she was pregnant.

Morgan was born when Carla was twenty-four, and a year and a half later, Charlie came into the world. Before she and Brian could catch their breath, they were a family of four.

Carla got bored staying at home, so even though Morgan was barely three and Charlie one, she would take them to museums and movies.

Afterward, they’d visit her favorite pizza place in Brooklyn for lunch.

Anthony, the owner’s son, was a close friend of Carla’s from high school, so he’d give her a discount.

Brian was barely around, and when he was, he seemed distant and stressed. Carla could tell something was going on with him, but whenever she tried to talk about it, he would dismiss her concerns and pick a fight.

Things got worse and worse until Carla filed for divorce before Brian could find out she was pregnant with their third child. She was done with him, even if he wasn’t aware of how unhappy she was.

Being a single mother wasn’t that different from what she already had been doing. As the girls grew, she avoided talking about what led to her and Brian’s split. The only thing she told the girls was that their father hadn’t been a good guy, and he walked out on them and never looked back.

Carla never wanted to be raising three young kids alone, but she ended up thriving in the role. She could decide how to raise them without anyone criticizing her, and she made sure that she was always there for them--the complete opposite of the way her parents raised her.

They ate dinner as a family every night, she attended every school event, and she helped them with their math homework up until she realized she couldn’t figure out how to divide decimals. The most important thing to her was that her children knew they were loved, cared for, and never lonely.

While the girls were young, Carla refused to bring another man into their lives, and by the time they were all adults, she had no desire to date.

She never wanted a man to lie to her or hurt her again.

Morgan, Charlie, and Abby were not only her family, but her whole life, and being with them made her happier than she could have imagined.