Chapter 6: The Invitation
The invitation stayed on Sophia’s phone between us, bright and cheerful and wrong.
I looked at my name beneath the shower details. Future second mother. Three words, arranged as if my life were a place setting someone had already assigned.
“Don’t forward it,” I said. “Don’t send it to anyone, even to explain.”
Sophia’s thumb hovered over the screen. “I wasn’t going to.”
“I know. But save the original. The email it came with, the invoices, every message from Lukas about the money or the shower. Don’t delete anything.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. “You think they’ll say I made it?”
“I think they’ll say whatever helps them.”
She locked her phone and tucked it away. The bakery’s espresso machine hissed behind us, drowning out a burst of laughter from the counter. Sophia rested both hands around her paper cup, but didn’t drink.
“I thought he was paying me for work,” she said. “Now I don’t even know where the money went.”
“Neither do I.”
The truth sat between us, less satisfying than a clean accusation and harder to look away from. I wanted to tell her she should have known better. I wanted someone else to be responsible for the fact that I had spent years trusting a man who could look me in the eye and build separate realities for the women in his life.
Instead, I pulled my coat from the back of the chair.
“Keep the documents,” I said. “We’ll figure out what they show when we have more than one piece.”
Sophia nodded. Neither of us offered the other forgiveness. For now, we left the bakery with our own versions of the truth and a reason not to let anyone erase them.
When I got home, Lukas was waiting inside.
He stood near the entry table, holding a bunch of white tulips wrapped in brown paper. For one stupid second, my body remembered what it was like to be glad to see him. Then I saw his careful expression, the one he wore when he’d chosen his words before I walked into the room.
“These are for you,” he said.
I set my keys down. “Why?”
His mouth tightened. “Do I need a reason to bring my wife flowers?”
“No. But you brought them today.”
He looked at the tulips, as if they might supply an answer. Their green stems pressed against the paper, damp at the cut ends. I remembered him bringing flowers home after one of the worst appointments, when I’d been too exhausted to cry until I was alone in the bathroom. Back then, he’d sat beside me on the floor and held my hand without asking me to feel better.
The memory rose so sharply I almost reached for him.
Then I remembered the invitation.
“Did you know about the draft?” I asked.
His gaze came back to me. “What draft?”
“The baby-shower invitation with my name on it.”
A pause. His flowers rustled in his hand.
“Sophia showed you.”
“She didn’t write it.”
“I didn’t say she did.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
He exhaled through his nose and set the tulips on the table. “It was just a draft. Nobody sent it.”
“Then why does it call me the baby’s future second mother?”
“Because my mother wants everyone to feel included.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It was meant kindly, Evelyn.”
“Kindness doesn’t give you the right to assign me a role.”
He stepped closer. “The family wants the baby surrounded by love. That’s all this is.”
I looked at the flowers. A tender impulse flickered again, then vanished beneath the sight of my name printed where my consent should have been.
“And the five thousand?” I asked. “Was that kindness too?”
His expression hardened. “I helped Sophia. It was a harmless gift.”
“Then why was there an invoice for baby-shower planning?”
“She gave me suggestions. Caterers, venues. Nothing more.”
“She says she didn’t plan an event.”
“She’s pregnant and upset. She may not remember every conversation clearly.”
The remark landed softly, almost gently. That made it worse.
“You’re calling her unreliable now?”
“I’m saying this has gotten twisted.”
“By whom?”
He spread his hands. “Everyone’s angry. You’re angry. Sophia’s overwhelmed. My mother is trying to make things easier.”
“Easier for whom?”
“For the baby. For all of us.”
There it was: the family, the baby, the arrangement. Everyone but me, whose name had already been placed on an invitation I hadn’t agreed to.
“Love cannot be announced on someone else’s behalf,” I said. “You don’t get to tell people I’ll raise this baby and call it kindness.”
“I never said you’d raise the baby.”
“Ingrid said I’d provide daily care. She said I’d become attached after the birth. You let her say it.”
His eyes flashed. “You keep taking one conversation and turning it into a plan.”
“I heard what you said. I saw what was written. Sophia showed me your messages.”
“And now you’re building a case against me.”
“I’m trying to understand what you’ve done.”
“I’m trying to keep this family together.”
“By lying to both of us?”
He looked away, and in that small movement I saw the answer he wouldn’t give me. Not a confession. Not regret. Just irritation that the lies had begun colliding.
“You know how this will look if you keep pushing,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“People will think you’re unstable. You’ve been through a lot. The fertility treatments, the stress—”
“Don’t.”
“I’m warning you what your relatives will hear.”
“They’re your relatives.”
“They’re our family.”
“No. They’re people you’re willing to use as an audience.”
His face changed. The pleasant husband with the flowers disappeared; in his place stood the man who had decided that fear might work better than charm.
“If you go around accusing everyone,” he said, “I’ll tell them you’re not thinking clearly. That you’re reacting emotionally and making things up because you can’t handle the situation.”
A chill moved through me, but I didn’t look away.
“You mean because I won’t accept the role you chose for me.”
“I mean because you’re acting like this is a conspiracy.”
I glanced at the tulips again. They had been meant to soften the room before he asked me to swallow what he’d done. I could still love the memory of the man who once sat on a bathroom floor with me. I could still grieve the years we had spent trying to become a family.
Neither thing required me to trust the man standing in front of me now.
“Take the flowers if you want,” I said. “I’m not letting them answer for you.”
His jaw flexed. “You’re making this impossible.”
“No. I’m refusing to make it easy for you.”
He stared at me as if he were waiting for the old version of me to come back—the woman who smiled through German conversations and let silence pass for peace. When I didn’t, he picked up his phone and walked toward the den.
I stayed by the entry table, listening to his footsteps cross the hall. A moment later, his voice carried through the partly open doorway.
“Hi, Aunt Marlene, it’s Lukas. I wanted to make sure you heard about the shower.”
I went still.
May you like
“Yes, Saturday,” he continued. “We’re celebrating the family’s new arrangement. Evelyn will be part of the baby’s life, and it means a lot to have everyone there.”
The tulips lay between me and the door, their pale petals closed against the room. Lukas kept talking, inviting relatives to celebrate a promise I had never made.
