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“Hey, Noah?” Amanda asks, wiping her fingers. “Could you pass me another slice?”
Eagerly, Noah responds, “Yeah, sure.”
He reaches to separate some pizza from the tray. In his enthusiasm, he accidentally upends a salt shaker. Billie squeals in front of him and Jesse gasps.
“That’s bad luck!” Billie howls.
“You need to throw the salt over your left shoulder,” Jesse insists.
Noah blinks. He looks between his mother and Amanda.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Olivia says, amused.
“You wouldn’t want to tempt fate, now, would you?” Amanda drawls.
Olivia almost misses it. She is about to take a sip of her drink in the pizza parlor but, before she does, she glances once more at her son. She watches as his cheeks flush bright red right after hearing Amanda’s words. He quickly does what the girls instructed.
“Can we go play the games, Mama?” Billie suddenly pleads.
Jesse also looks at Amanda with big eyes. Amanda smiles before digging some money out of her purse. She gives them both a stern look before handing it to them.
“Take turns,” she orders.
They both eagerly nod.
“I can supervise,” Noah immediately offers.
Amanda looks at the boy and smiles.
“Thanks, Noah,” she says, appreciatively. “Go on.”
Olivia stares at the three retreating figures. She turns to Amanda, dumbstruck.
“What?” Amanda asks.
“‘What?’” Olivia parrots, incredulously. “How long has he been that way?”
There’s a sparkle in Amanda’s eye.
“My helper?” Amanda chuckles. “Come on, Liv, it’s just a harmless crush.”
“Yeah. When it’s with you,” Olivia emphasizes.
She thinks back to how quick Noah was to help Jesse with her instrument the other day. Taking hold of it rather than Amanda needing to carry it.
Have there been other times? Olivia wonders.
Olivia’s mind is whirling. When she meets Amanda’s eye again, she sees the smile has slipped off the blonde woman’s face. Amanda lowers her own drink.
“This really concerns you.”
It isn’t a question. Olivia runs a hand over her lips.
“I just …” Olivia falters. “Maybe it seems like an overreaction. Maybe it is an overreaction. But I know how I was when I wasn’t much older than Noah.”
Burton Lowe. A man who is never too far from her consciousness.
A reminder of another life.
“I don’t have any illusions of who I was and the types of decisions I pray to God my girls don’t repeat someday,” Amanda acknowledges. A chill runs down Olivia’s spine. “But you are also forgetting a crucial piece in all of this.”
Tiredly, Olivia asks, “What’s that?”
“We’re not our mothers,” Amanda says, bluntly.
Olivia swallows. She has a difficult time meeting Amanda’s sympathetic gaze. It was not too many years ago that Olivia was the one guiding Amanda. Trying to mentor and help her get through the more impossible facets of her life.
She is so proud of the woman that Amanda is today and all the work that Amanda has put in to make it possible. But right now, Olivia cannot help but feel as if Amanda is running laps around her. Olivia wonders if it’s even possible to catch up anymore.
Despite knowing in her heart that it’s not a competition.
“This case stirred up a lot.”
Again, it’s not a question. Olivia knows that Amanda knows the answer.
Yet she finds herself nodding.
“My mom wasn’t … she wasn’t that,” Olivia says in disgust. Amanda nods in understanding. “It’s just hard. Knowing who she was and who I wanted her to be. Reconciling the fact that she never had the space or the time to become that woman and mother, even later.”
“Sometimes I wonder …” Olivia lets the thought sit for a moment. “You hear all the time about people who are better grandparents than they were parents.”
“Hell,” Amanda says, leaning backward. “Beth Anne Rollins, come on down.”
Olivia smiles slightly at how Amanda says it, but she is mostly lost in thought.
Would Serena have found it easier to love Noah? Would she have struggled to look at him in a similar way to how she struggled to look at Olivia? Knowing how it wasn’t love, but unforgivable violence, that brought him into the world?
Or would she have had a new perspective? Would she have seen the light that her grandson brings to the world and, most importantly, Olivia? How Olivia’s eyes come alive and her soul heals as she watches Noah doing the things that he loves or being his most authentic self.
Olivia’s eyes drift over toward the kids when Billie whoops in excitement. She smiles slightly when Noah goes to give her a high-five and then lifts his hand just out of reach. Both women laugh when he continues to do it and both girls jump to try and slap his hand.
“We see a lot every day, Liv,” Amanda reminds her. Olivia’s eyes remain fixed on their children. “Not all of it bad. Some of it, more than a little, is miraculous.”
Olivia nods in agreement. It is easy to hold onto heartache until it weighs you down. She has found that time and positive experiences aren’t necessarily healers, but they do make life far more manageable. Happier, even.
This is where I’m happy, Olivia thinks. Right here.
Surrounded by her family.