Chapter 10: A Party Built Around Her
For a long moment, none of us moved.
Then Sophia shut the laptop.
“We’re not going,” she said. Her voice was steady, but one hand had settled protectively over her stomach. “Neither of us. I’m not walking into a room where people have already decided what kind of mother I am.”
“Good,” I said.
The word came out sharper than I meant it to. I softened my voice, not my answer.
“We don’t owe them a performance.”
Elisa rubbed her thumb along the edge of the table. “Mom’s probably already sent the invitation.”
“Then people will have a piece of paper,” I said. “They still won’t have my agreement.”
Sophia looked at me, and for the first time that morning, something like relief crossed her face. It didn’t last. Her phone began buzzing against the table.
She glanced at the screen and turned it facedown.
“Who?” I asked.
“An aunt. I think.”
The phone buzzed again. Then again.
Elisa’s laptop gave a soft chime as a message arrived. She read it, and color drained from her cheeks.
“It’s in the family group chat,” she said.
“What is?”
Elisa hesitated, then turned the screen toward us. It was the invitation—the same cheerful lettering Sophia and I had seen before, now dressed up with a date and a shower theme. Beneath the bright balloons, a line declared that I would be the baby’s “future second mother.”
My name had been placed there as casually as a party favor.
Sophia pushed her chair back. “She sent it?”
“To everyone in the family group,” Elisa said. “I’m sorry.”
A message appeared beneath the invitation. Congratulations, Evelyn! What a beautiful thing to do for this baby.
Before I could answer, my phone began to buzz.
Then another message came through.
And another.
Relatives I hadn’t spoken to in months sent heart emojis, blessings, and notes about how lucky the baby would be. One cousin wrote that I was finally getting the family I deserved. I stared at the words until they blurred—not because I wanted this arrangement, but because strangers were congratulating me on a wound they thought had healed.
Not one of them had asked me.
I typed, I have not agreed to this.
I read it twice, then sent it.
A little blue checkmark appeared. No answer followed.
Sophia watched me set the phone down.
“They’re going to think I’m taking something from you,” she said.
“No.” I met her eyes. “They’re going to think whatever Lukas and Ingrid have told them. We can’t control that. We can control whether we let them use us to make the lie look true.”
Her mouth tightened. “I need to call him.”
I nodded. “I’ll give you the room.”
Sophia carried her phone toward the bakery’s narrow side hall. I stayed at the table, looking at the invitation on Elisa’s screen. A party built around a baby who wasn’t born yet. A role assigned to me before I’d chosen it. I could almost hear Ingrid’s laughter from that dinner, light and satisfied, as if my grief were a door she knew how to open.
Through the hall’s glass panel, I watched Sophia’s shoulders square. She spoke into the phone, stopped to listen, then spoke again. I couldn’t hear Lukas. I didn’t need to; I knew the shape of his pauses, the careful silences that made a person feel unreasonable for filling them.
Sophia turned away from the glass.
When she came back, her face had gone pale, but her chin was lifted.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said we should stop making this harder than it has to be.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I should let the family help, and you should let yourself be part of the baby’s life.” She pulled out her chair but didn’t sit. “I told him to withdraw the invitation and tell everyone I never agreed to hand over my place as the baby’s mother.”
“What did he say?”
She swallowed. “That the baby needs a stable family.”
The sentence landed between us like an accusation disguised as concern.
“And you?” I asked.
“I told him the baby needs people who tell the truth.” Her fingers curled around the back of the chair. “He said he was trying to protect all of us.”
Elisa let out a short, humorless breath.
“From what?” she asked. “The truth?”
Sophia looked at me. “I said I’m not going to that shower. Neither are you.”
“I’m not.”
“Then we’re clear.”
We were clear with each other. The world outside the bakery was already filling in its own version.
My phone lit up with a message from Ingrid.
We need to talk before Saturday. People are excited, and I won’t have them embarrassed after we’ve promised them this beautiful arrangement.
I read it aloud.
Sophia’s expression hardened. “She promised them my baby?”
“She promised them a story,” Elisa said.
My thumbs hovered over the screen. I could feel the old reflex tugging at me: smooth it over, choose a gentle answer, make sure nobody could accuse me of being cruel. That reflex had kept me smiling through dinners where they discussed my life as if I weren’t in the room.
I typed slowly.
I have not agreed to be the baby’s second mother. Sophia has not agreed to give up her role as the baby’s mother. Do not present either of us that way.
I sent it.
Ingrid called less than a minute later.
I answered because I was tired of letting other people decide when I would speak.
“Evelyn,” she said, her voice warm enough to make the words beneath it sound almost reasonable. “I was just about to call you.”
“I got your message.”
“Then you understand. Everyone has been told. The family is excited.”
“Excitement doesn’t make this true.”
A beat of silence.
“Don’t be dramatic. It’s a baby shower, not a contract.”
“Then why does the invitation call me the baby’s future second mother?”
“That’s how Elisa worded it.”
Elisa flinched beside me, but she didn’t look away.
“And you circulated it,” I said.
“I made sure people knew what we were celebrating.”
“What you were celebrating,” Sophia corrected, leaning close enough for Ingrid to hear.
Ingrid’s voice cooled. “Sophia, no one is taking your baby away.”
“I never said they were.”
“You’re both making this sound ugly when it could be something loving.” Ingrid sighed, the sound of a woman burdened by other people’s ingratitude. “Everyone has been told you would help. Refusing now will hurt the family—and it will hurt that baby.”
There it was: the baby’s innocence, pressed into service as a weapon.
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Don’t use the baby to make my answer sound cruel.”
“I’m asking you to think beyond yourself.”
“I have thought about it. I won’t be assigned a mother’s role I never accepted. Sophia won’t be assigned an absence she never chose.”
Ingrid said my name as if it were a warning.
I ended the call.
For a few seconds, the bakery noises rushed back around us: the espresso machine hissing, a door opening, someone laughing near the counter. Ordinary life, continuing while my family tried to make my boundary sound like a betrayal.
Sophia sat down. Her hand found the edge of the table, close to mine but not touching.
“I’m sorry they’ve put you in this position,” she said.
“I’m sorry they’ve put you in it, too.”
Neither of us offered the other a promise. We didn’t need to. The choice in front of us was simple, even if the consequences wouldn’t be.
Then my phone chimed.
A message from Aunt Marlene appeared, followed by a photograph.
I opened it.
The picture showed the invitation laid flat on a kitchen counter. Beneath the words announcing the shower, in neat black type, was the venue address.
My address.
The bakery seemed to tilt around me. I looked at Sophia, and her hand moved to her stomach.
May you like
Nobody had asked me to host. Nobody had asked if the house was available.
On the screen, my own front door waited beneath a string of printed balloons.
