Page 122 of Maybe in Another Life

“I’m sorry,” I say to Carl sincerely.

He waves me off. “I’m teasing. As long as she’s happy, I don’t care. And it appears she is.”

Tina fights her way through the crowd to talk to us. She gives me a big hug and then goes straight for the kill. “When are you leaving the office to start school full-time?”

“Next month,” I say. “But I’m still not sure about this.”

I look to Carl. So far, I have put myself through school by working just under full-time for him and taking advantage of his practice’s tuition-reimbursement program. It’s been an amazing opportunity, but with Gabriella and the possibility of a second child, I want to finish my certification faster. Ethan and I discussed it, and I’m leaving my job to go to school full-time. But if Carl wants me to stay longer, I’ll stay longer. I’d do anything for him. Without him, without the Hudsons in general, I don’t know where I’d be.

“Would you stop? Get your certification. And when you’re done, at least give me the first option to hire you. That’s all I can ask.”

“But you two have done so much for me. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

“You don’trepayus,” Tina says. “We’re your family.”

I smile and put my head on Carl’s shoulder.

“I do need a favor of you tonight, though,” Carl says. “If you’ll oblige me.”

“Of course,” I say.

“Yates has been on me to hire someone from his old office. A nurse, I guess, who’s here with him. I swear, Yates is like a dog with a bone. He just will not let up when he wants something.”

Dr. Yates is a new doctor at the practice. Carl and Dr. Yates don’t see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, but he’s a good guy. I invited him to the party even though Carl thought it wasn’t necessary. But Carl also wanted to invite the entire officeexceptYates. So... I think I was right about this.

“And you know me,” Carl continues. “I’m not good talking business at a party. Or, rather, I hate talking business at a party.” Carl is perfectly fine talking business anywhere. He just doesn’t want to talk to Yates.

“I’ll do a quick screening for you if I run into them,” I say.

“I’m going to go check on Gabriella,” Ethan says. He steps into the kitchen, and I watch as he calls Paula. He always does this. He talks a big game about leaving her for a night, and then he calls every two hours. He has to know how she is, what she’s eaten. For someone who didn’t know if he was ready to be a parent, he is the most conscientious parent I’ve ever seen.

He officially adopted Gabriella last year. Ethan wanted us all to have the same name. “We’re a family,” he says. “A team.” She is now Gabriella Martin Hanover. We are the Martin Hanovers.

And sure, maybe Gabriella and Ethan aren’t related by blood, but you’d never know it to look at them, to hear them talk to each other. They are family as much as any two people can be. The other day at the grocery store, the cashier said Gabriella and Ethan had the same eyes. He smiled and said thank you.

“I know, sweetheart, but Daddy needs to talk to Paula,” I can hear him saying into the phone. “If you go to bed when Paula asks you to, Mama and I will come in and give you a kiss when we get home, OK?” Gabriella must have given the phone back to Paula, because the next thing I hear out of Ethan’s mouth is “OK, but you got the marble out of her nose?”

We are tired a lot of the time. We don’t go on dates as often as we’d like. But we love each other madly. I’m married to a man who became a father because he loved me and now loves me because I made him a father. And he makes me laugh. And he looks handsome when he dresses up, which he has done tonight.

He comes back into the room, and soon the place is so loud we can barely hear each other speak. Just when the party seems to hit its peak, someone asks Jesse to tell the story of how he and Gabby met. Slowly but surely, the entire house quiets down to listen. Jesse stands at the base of the fireplace so he can be seen and heard by everyone. He’s too short to be seen on his own.

“First day of geometry class. Tenth grade. I looked to the front of the classroom and saw the most interesting girl I’d ever laid eyes on.”

Jesse has told this story so many times I could tell it myself at this point.

“And, to my delight, she was shorter than me.”

Everyone laughs.

“But I didn’t ask her out. I was too nervous. Three weeks into school, another girl asked me out, and I said yes because I was fifteen and was going to take it wherever I could get it.”

The crowd laughs again.

“Jessica and I dated for a long time and then broke up senior year. And of course, when we broke up, I immediately found Gabby and asked her out. And we had this great date. And then, the next morning, my girlfriend called me, and she wanted to get back together. And... we did. Jessica and I spent college together, got married after, yada yada yada...”

He always says “yada yada yada.”

“Jessica and I split up after two years of marriage. It just wasn’t working. And then, a few years later, I get a Facebook request from Gabby Hudson.TheGabby Hudson.”

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