break free from our passionate kiss, Georgie nuzzles her nose along my jawline and whispers, “I’m so glad you weren’t hurt in that crash. The world would really miss having Reed Rivers in it.”
Goosebumps erupt on my arms and neck. Where did this come from? “Hey, are you okay? I’m fine. Really.”
She nods. “It just scares me to think everything can change in the blink of an eye. That someone as young and fit as you could have been gone, just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “Sorry. Was that too dark?”
I smile sympathetically. I’m sure Georgina’s thought a lot about mortality these last few years, with her father fighting for his life. Far more than most people her age would think about it. “No, it’s a good reminder. I was cocky driving around that corner. Going way too fast. It was a good wake-up call for me that I’m not actually invincible.”
She nods her approval and then resumes looking around the room. She looks at a framed magazine article—a Forbes “30 Under 30” piece featuring me. She runs her fingertips across the spines of the books on my shelf. Self-help, motivational, business, and fitness titles, mostly. And then she notices a small framed photo on my desk.
“Is this you?” she asks, picking up the frame.
It’s my favorite photo from when I was a kid. The one shot from my childhood where my smile, and my mother’s, too, seemed genuine and not put on for the camera. It’s also the one shot I’ve got that includes both my mother and Amalia. Also, a shot from my one and only childhood birthday party—the one time in my life when my mother, still grieving Oliver, somehow pulled her shit together enough to do that thing all the other kindergartners’ mothers had done that year for my classmates: she threw me a big birthday party with balloons and a cake and paper plates bearing images of my favorite cartoon. It never happened again. But, to this day, I remember how much fun I had at that once-in-a-lifetime party. How much fun Mom had, too. Truly, I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven that unique, carefree day with my mother and Amalia and the kids from school—the mysterious place my mother had always told me my big brother Oliver had gone to live.
“Yeah, that’s me with my mother and Amalia. That shot was taken on my fifth birthday.”
“Amalia, as in, your housekeeper, Amalia?” Georgina says in surprise. “I didn’t realize you’ve known Amalia your entire life.”
I gaze at the photo in Georgina’s hand. “Amalia was already working for my family when I was born. She only stopped when my father went to prison, when I was thirteen.”
For a split-second, the chaos of that time flickers through my mind. I remember the shock of it all. The early morning raid by the FBI that took my father away from me forever. The shock I felt at being ripped away from Amalia and sent to live with some distant relative I’d never met before, since Mom was already living in a facility by then, thanks to the stress of the custody battle a few years earlier.
“And when did Amalia come back into your life?” Georgina asks, still looking at the photo.
I clear my throat. “About ten years later. The minute I could afford to pay Amalia a salary, she was my first ‘purchase.’ Long before my first sports car. I think I hired Amalia right after I’d turned twenty-four?”
“Aw, that’s so sweet, Reed. That makes my heart go pitter-pat.” She returns the photo to its spot on my desk, her face aglow. “What a lucky little boy you were to have not one, but two, mothers growing up.”
I try to return Georgina’s easy smile, but I can’t. The little boy in that photo wasn’t lucky. Far from it. And he didn’t have two mothers. He barely had one. But only because two halves make a whole. In truth, my mother has never been fully functional. Not like other kids’ mothers. And nothing like the kickass, nurturing mothers I’ve observed as an adult, like Henn’s mother and my sister’s mother-in-law. Hence, the reason my father hired Amalia in the first place: to help my woefully ill-equipped mother with Oliver when he was born. And, as much as I love and appreciate Amalia, and can’t imagine life without her, I can’t honestly say she’s a “whole” mother to me, either, simply because she’s my employee. In