Kelli. His ex-wife. Oh, holy shit. All the air pressed out of my lungs; it took a moment for me to be able to speak. “Oh my god, Victor. What happened?”
“I don’t know the details yet. The medics took her to the ER and I guess I’m still listed as her emergency contact on her insurance plan, so they called me. Can you pick up the kids?”
“Of course.” I stood up, scrambling for my purse. Panic jittered in my chest, picturing their response to this news. Ava, especially, at thirteen, needing her mother so much, and Max, who was only seven and still had to talk with Kelli before he could fall asleep the nights he stayed at our house. Max and Ava, who didn’t yet know that we were engaged. Victor had told Kelli the news earlier in the week, meeting her for a cup of coffee at the restaurant while the kids were still in school. “How’d it go?” I asked when he came home. He pressed his lips together and gave his head a brief shake. “Not great,” he said, and I hadn’t pressed him further.
“What do you want me to tell them?” I asked him now, already worried that whatever I said would be wrong.
“Nothing, yet. I’ll be home as soon as I can, but I have to go to identify her—” His voice broke, and he cleared it. “Her body.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” I’d never heard him so upset and felt desperate to do something to comfort him.
“No, just get the kids. Please. I’ll figure out what to say to them before I get there.”
We hung up, and I hurried outside my office. Tanya turned her gaze from her computer to me. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Kelli . . . Victor’s ex.” I exhaled a heavy breath. “She’s dead.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god!” she said with her eyes open wide. She dropped her hand back to her lap. “What happened?”
“We don’t know yet. Victor is on his way to the hospital right now.”
“Oh my god,” she said again, shaking her head. “I’ll wipe your calendar for next week. The staff meeting can wait.” She paused. “Do you want me to call Stephanie?”
I nodded, thinking that the best person to cover for me was definitely my predecessor, who’d retired when I accepted the job but still gave her time to us as a volunteer. “That’d be great. I’m not sure how long I’ll be out. Thank you.”
“Of course. I’ll call if there’s anything urgent. And let me know if you need anything else.”
I left the building with my muscles shaking, climbed into my car, and gripped the steering wheel, trying to steady myself before pulling out of the lot. Thoughts spun in my head; I tried to imagine what life would be like for Max and Ava after they found out their mother was dead. And for me as the woman who, by default, would wind up standing in her place.
* * *
The night I met Victor, the idea that I might become the mother to his children was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, being a mother was pretty much the furthest thing from my mind any night of the week, something I tried to explain to my date as we sat in the bar of Victor’s popular Seattle restaurant, the Loft. At that moment, I didn’t know I was about to meet Victor. I didn’t know that he owned the restaurant or that he was divorced with two kids. All I knew was I needed to find a way to bail on this date before it got any worse. Chad was the college frat boy who’d never grown up, something I hadn’t realized when we’d messaged back and forth on Match.com and then briefly chatted on the phone. On paper, he was jocular, sort of funny, and had that confident, teetering-on-the-edge-of-cocky demeanor I typically found appealing in a man, so I figured there wouldn’t be much harm in meeting him for a simple drink. Clearly, I had figured wrong.
“So,” he said after we’d been seated, ordered our drinks, and gone over the usual niceties of how happy we were to finally meet in person. “You don’t want kids?” He leaned back in his chair with an odd smirk on his ruddy face.
I was immediately turned off by the blunt challenge in his tone; every internal red flag I had started waving. My online