Page 92 of Mending Hearts

She eyed the state of the house again but didn’t contradict me. “What about Mia? How is she coping?” After the briefest hesitation, she said, “Because I know you, Tyler, and this doesn’t look like you’re doing well. New baby and all, but your house is a disaster.”

“Yeah, the house is a disaster, but Victoria is fine. I’ll call that a win.”

“And Mia?”

“She’s fine, too.”

“She’s left town already?” With a sigh, Katie sank into the closest chair. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

I hadn’t told anyone. Every time I called someone for help, I insisted I could handle things with a bit of direction over the phone. They assumed Mia and Pasha were still in the house, and we were learning to be a family. I hadn’t been able to correct them. Just the thought of uttering the words made the deadness inside spread. At some point, the sucking wound of her absence would be sewn up.

Perseverance. That was what this situation called for. Endurance.

“I’m sorry,” Katie said. “I know you really cared about her.”

I stared at her and thought about how inadequate her words were for the feelings eating at me. “I’m capable of coming out the other side. I know that already.”

“Yeah.” She picked at the strap of her bag. “I guess you do. For what it’s worth, I’ve had a lot of regrets about what happened between us.”

“I haven’t had nearly enough sleep to have this conversation.” The last of the formula squeezed out of the bottle, and I pulled the nipple out of Victoria’s mouth before she could start sucking air. “I’m not in a very diplomatic mood.”

“I can take your blunt honesty, Tyler.”

“I would have liked some of that from you eight years ago.”

“Understandable. I was…I was too young to—I don’t know—comprehend what I was doing, what I was giving up.” Her hands twisted in her lap.

“For just over seven years, I probably would have been content to hear an explanation, something that made sense. But I don’t need one anymore.” I burped Victoria. A surge of triumph stormed through me that I’d made the task look so easy with Katie here. See? I was fine.

“I know you’ll need some time to adjust to a new normal. But I was hoping we could hang out a bit, get to know each other again.”

I stared at her, baffled. She still thought there was a chance for us?

“All right. Fuck it. Turns out Idoneed to know.” I set Victoria in the living room playpen. “You can’t disappear for eight years, and now that I’ve finally moved on, show up expecting things to go back to, quite frankly, what you left in the first place.”

“We were good together,” Katie whispered. She didn’t meet my gaze and was instead focused on Victoria through the mesh.

“You’re fucking right we were. But you left. You decided we weren’t something you wanted.”

“That’s not exactly what happened.”

“Clue me in.”

“My parents don’t even know why I left…not really.” She twisted her ponytail around her finger and released it. “I was free-falling, and looking back, I don’t even know why. Well, Iknowwhy, but my feelings got out of control.”

Instead of sitting down, I paced the room, running my hands through my hair. “Spit it out, Katie. For months, you’ve been telling me you wanted to give me the truth. I’m listening, but I’m not going to be listening for long. I’m not even sure I care.” My thoughts had been so consumed by Mia that it was nice to care about something else for a change, even if it was only for a moment.

I didn’t know if Katie and I could find our way back to each other. Right now, I couldn’t imagine I’d even want that. With the way I felt about Mia, being with her was unthinkable. Mia’s name was scrawled across my life as though she’d autographed everything she touched while she was here, including my heart. Katie didn’t own even a tiny piece of my emotional landscape anymore. Mia had claimed it all.

“While you were gone on tour with that musical, I found out I wouldn’t ever be able to carry children.”

The admission stopped me in my tracks, and I slid down into the couch. “What? But—” That made no sense. “Why?”

“Apparently, I was born with a tiny uterus. The name of the medical condition is big and long and not particularly exciting. Being a mom meant a lot to me, so much to me.” Tears filled her eyes. She gestured toward Victoria. “I wanted a baby—your baby.”

I rubbed my index fingers along my eyebrows and tried to think through what she was saying. We’d been together long enough that kids, marriage, all of it had come up at some point. She’d wanted to be a nurseand a mother. For her, there’d been no question of whether we’d have kids, just when. “You can’t have kids?”

“It’s not quite that simple.” She scooped up her tears. “I mean, nowadays I could get a surrogate, probably, if I could afford it.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “We could have gotten a surrogate back then if we could have afforded it.”

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