The Other Year

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication

Dedication

For my daughter

in every life

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

A Note from the Author

Summer

Prologue

1

One

2

Two

3

Three

4

Four

5

Five

6

Six

7

Seven

Fall

8

Eight

9

Nine

10

Ten

11

Eleven

12

Twelve

Winter

13

Thirteen

14

Fourteen

15

Fifteen

16

Sixteen

17

Seventeen

18

Eighteen

Spring

19

Nineteen

20

Twenty

Summer

21

Twenty-One

Epilogue

Discussion Questions

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by Rea Frey

Copyright

A Note from the Author

A few years ago, I was standing on the beach in Santa Rosa, watching my daughter frolic in the ocean. Just like the protagonist of my book, Kate Baker, it was the first day of our yearly vacation, and my then-nine-year-old daughter was so eager to get into the waves, she didn’t even consider the red flag whipping behind us.

As I paced back and forth along the stretch of sand, the entire premise of this book came to me in a single moment: one of those flashes of inspiration that are so rare, it makes you scramble to find paper so you can write it all down before you lose it forever.

This book was born from that single moment on the beach, and I am so very proud of the story you hold in your hands.

I wanted to share a few things, however. One is a hard truth about me as a mother, and one is a hard truth about this book for mothers.

Being a mother is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I am not quiet about the fact that I never planned on having kids; in fact, I was vehemently anti-kids for most of my life. (When my daughter was young, I wrote a column for the Nashville Scene called My Daughter, the A**hole. True story.) I figured I’d be terrible at motherhood. I was selfish and flawed and filled with wanderlust. I was sometimes critical and loved to do what I wanted to do. I was afraid of the changes it would cause to my body and relationships. Plus, I was not very nurturing. (By not very, I mean not at all. I actually laughed the first time my husband cried in front of me. I know that’s terrible, but I am such a better human now.) How could I ever raise a tiny human to be a good human? How could I trust the world to take care of a child when I could not? It just didn’t seem like the life meant for me.

When I met my husband, I sat him down early on and explained that I did not want kids and I needed to make sure he knew that. If he wanted to become a dad, he could get out before it was too late. He gripped my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, I choose you. (Thirteen years later, this still remains true.)

Well, I always like to say our daughter chose us. Ten days after ovulation, I accidentally got pregnant. To say I struggled with the news of my pregnancy is an understatement. We were freelancers living in downtown Chicago. We had no stability, no clear direction, no health insurance, and it rocked me. None of it was easy. My fifty-two-hour labor wasn’t easy. Being a new mom wasn’t easy. Moving from downtown Chicago to Nashville to be closer to family wasn’t easy. Living in suburbia wasn’t easy. But loving her? That was the easiest thing I’d ever done. That was never a question. As we grew to know and love her even more, it seemed like it had always been just the three of us.

And as she continued to change, I often wondered, What would my life look like if I had never become a mother? And then, What would my life look like if I lost her?

This is not an easy question, and yet so many mothers lose their daughters. When a parent loses a child, it marks them. It defines them. But do we talk about it openly and honestly? Grief is not something we spend a lot of time on in books; it’s easier to move around it, allude to it, but not go through it.

Dear readers, in this book we are going to take a hard look at grief, because grief often leads to beauty. Because grief is part of life. Because grief gets us to the other side, and life is not always about the good stuff (but don’t worry, there’s plenty of light and joy and fun and romance in this book too).

I can’t imagine a life without my daughter in it; I can’t imagine how I’d find the resolve to move on if something happened to her. And yet people do it every day. Here, on these pages, I used Kate’s story to work out a bit of my own fears. To put myself in her shoes. (And yes, I shed a lot of tears while writing many scenes in this book.)

I have never written a story so deeply personal. I used a lot of my daughter’s quirks to create Liv. Though she is not Liv, she is in Liv. Though I am not Kate, I can relate to Kate, because I am a mother to a daughter I so passionately treasure and am deeply afraid of losing. And yet I know my daughter is not mine. She came through me, but she is her own unique person, having her own unique experiences, and therein lies the rub of parenthood: Hold tight, but not too tightly. Help them grow, but then release them. Let them live, and then be there if they need you along the way.

I appreciate you taking the time to read The Other Year. I would love for you to ponder the question: Do we end up where we are supposed to no matter what, or does grief send us on a different path completely?

I will let you decide.

Summer

Prologue

The red flag ripples in the wind.

Olivia is all business, her body primed for the impending crush of waves. She squints up at me, as if to ask permission:

If I go in alone, will I be okay?

I nod. Olivia knows her boundaries. She passed her swimming test at the YMCA three years ago, and she will stay close to shore. Other adults and children dapple the ocean like buoys, towheaded, brunette, shaven—it’s all one nation in the arms of the sea. Olivia glances down at a partially washed-away sandcastle, mildly curious, then retrains her focus on the ocean.

The current is strong, Liv. Stay close, okay?

We’ve talked extensively about how to swim parallel to shore if she is ever tugged out or gets spun up in a wave from the undertow. I gaze at her, toes flexing against the pliable sand, chest aimed at the water, her defiant chin angled toward a flawless sky. I love the way she announces herself to the ocean, the respect she has for its ruthless power. While she still makes occasional comments about the salty air, the stench of fish, or the way the coarse sand scrubs her ankles, she adores the water as much as I do.

Liv bobs her head, eyebrows scrunched, her mind already inside the thrashing waves that churn against the beach, receding in a froth of clotted white foam. I delight in her anticipation, wishing I’d worn my bathing suit too, but we’d come straight from the car instead of heading to the rental house first. She’d managed to wriggle into her suit in the back seat and had been so impatient to get to the water, she hadn’t even closed the car door.

The first wave smacks her square in the chest. Her squeals send a swift punch of joy straight to my heart. It melts the tension from the overly long drive, the way we bickered about nothing. Mostly she’d stayed hunched over her iPod touch while we waited out a horrific accident, which resulted in an extra hour of travel time. When we’d passed the hunk of disfigured steel on the highway, like some god-awful modern art installation, I’d told Olivia to look away. But I hadn’t. The image of the flattened truck was seared into my mind, the blood splatter along the pavement—still fresh—the endless ambulances and cop cars. I am still processing it, hoping whoever was in that truck is okay, but also knowing that almost no one could survive a crash like that.

Olivia waves. I wave back and take one picture too many as her limbs buck and dip in and out of the ocean. I send a quick photo to my best friend, Jason, who arrives tomorrow with his daughter, Ayana. He sends back a heart emoji and a quick line.

I can’t wait to be there with you.

The sudden sexual tension between us floats through my mind—after one recent admission from Jason wondering what we would be like as more than just friends—and I begin to panic. We have never crossed any physical lines, and I haven’t dated since my divorce, but something has definitely shifted, and I’m nervous to see what might happen when we are alone, on vacation.

I text the same photo of Liv to my mom, then post one on Instagram of my own sandy feet, which my ex-husband, Michael, insisted evolved from hobbits. I smile at the memory, all the ways he used to make me laugh. The smile vanishes as I think of his text message yesterday. He wants to talk.

We haven’t seen each other for over a year—he’s been in Israel on an archaeology dig—but I know that in typical Michael fashion, he’s going to want to jump right back into Liv’s life, even though his absence has left a painful residue for us both. Michael is either all in or completely wrapped up in his work. He’s never been able to juggle being a full-time father and an archaeologist, something that has crushed me time and time again and disappointed Liv.

While he’s been gone, I’ve been rethinking our coparenting arrangement; though we technically split custody, Liv lives with me. He’s always on the road, always on a dig, something we used to embark on together before I became a mother and decided to take a steadier, more stable job in Nashville. Michael didn’t want to move from our life in Virginia, didn’t want anything to change, but he did it for me. However, once we moved, he was constantly on the road. It got to the point where I told him I didn’t want a husband sometimes; I wanted him all the time, and he just couldn’t make that promise to me. To Liv. To us. My body tenses as I replay that painful decision to separate, then eventually divorce. Becoming a single mother changed my life completely. For Michael, it has changed nothing.

Now, as the water rushes over my feet, tugging and receding, I toe a sand dollar free, rinse it clean, and wag it in the air at Liv.

Hold on to it for me, Mama! She wipes the salt from her eyes and dives under again.

I pocket the treasure and check the time. It’s our yearly tradition to order pizza and salads for dinner on our first night of vacation, and the delivery is expected in less than an hour. I’m eager to get to the beach house, air it out, and unpack. I stalk the sand, watching Liv float, dive, and pivot.

Though this year has been tough, with demanding clients and huge projects that I must oversee, I’ve made a vow to be a more present parent. As an agricultural engineer, I’ve spent much of my career in the field, designing equipment, developing methods for land preparation, planting, and harvesting. With the promise of a promotion on the horizon, which would mean more computer work and less field work, I promised Liv I would be more available. I could sign up for PTA meetings. I could chaperone field trips and get to know the other moms at school. I could finally start the garden that Liv has been begging for but that hasn’t happened yet because I’m always so busy with work.

My being more available means a lot to Liv, and I want to make her happy. I know that childhood is fleeting; soon she will be in fourth grade. There will be boys and hormones and battles between friends. I’m already witnessing her childlike traits disappear, her identity as my little girl transforming into someone else. I don’t want time to pass us by.

She erupts from the waves every few seconds, her orange long-sleeved one-piece slightly too large. She is growing so fast and caught between sizes. Her crotch sags with collected sand, but surprisingly, she doesn’t complain. After a year of no vacations due to my intense work demands, she isn’t going to waste a second of this one.

When my phone dings in my pocket, I answer, one eye trained on Liv while scanning for shark fins, the other on the message. It’s from Michael, as if by thinking about him I’ve conjured his text.

We really need to talk, K. Call me when you can, por favor, mi amor.

I sigh. Mi amor. Though we are divorced, there is still so much love between us. I miss him. I miss us. I miss being a family. I text back a reply that we are on vacation and I will connect with him when we’re back in two weeks. Disgruntled, I return my focus to the ocean, back to Liv.

The waves climb and crash. Other children scream and play, tossing tiny footballs to each other or riding boogie boards on healthy waves. I search for Olivia’s unruly brown curls, her bright bathing suit, that oversized rainbow on the chest. My heart seizes, and I take a step toward the water.

One moment she is there—right there.

The next, she is gone.

1

Instead of screaming her name, I scan the sea, sure she’s just drifted and will pop to the surface, algae braided through her hair like ropes.

After seconds of not seeing her, I step into the water until it drenches my pant legs, my eyes combing the sea from left to right.

As if on cue, Olivia explodes out of a wave, her limbs arched like a starfish. Her emergence sends an electric assault through my chest, followed by relief at her exuberance.

She is fine.

I motion for her to stay closer to shore. I stuff the phone into my fanny pack and delight in Liv’s manic, practiced movements, wishing once again that I had my bathing suit. I glance behind me, suddenly aware of the few families still on the beach for the day. Under my jumpsuit, I wear a sports bra and boy shorts, both black, both luckily resembling a bathing suit. I step out of my clothes and crumple the jumpsuit on a nearby patch of dry sand, then wade in after her, the water an icy shock against my skin.

Mama! Olivia shrieks and slaps the top of the water with her tiny, open palms. You’re coming in? She blinks and wipes water from her eyes, as we forgot her goggles back in the car.

In response, I dive under a wave and swim to her, my limbs jarring awake after so many hours in the car. I grip her middle. She loops her spindly legs around my waist. She is slippery and warm. We look so alike and nothing alike—Michael is Mexican, I am white, and Olivia is a perfect blend. She has pieces and parts of my family and his. She has my family’s Eastern European cheekbones and strong chin; she has Michael’s wavy dark hair, dark skin, chocolate eyes, and gap between her front teeth. I kiss her wet nose and smooth her unmanageable hair, now damp and flat, from her face. "Hermosa," I say. Beautiful. Though Michael hasn’t been as present in her life, I try to work in Spanish as much as I can.

"Tú también, Mamá." You too.

I praise her flawless pronunciation, and she offers me a generous smile. Freckles trample her nose and cheeks. Another trait from me. A notched scar mars her right eyebrow from when she walked straight into our dining room table as a toddler, which resulted in two stitches above her eye. What used to embarrass her, she now embraces, as she’s reached that age where scars are cool.

The water seems to pick up in its late-afternoon ferocity, and I keep an eye out for shark fins, always aware of whose territory we are really in. We swim and float, and then finally ride a wave all the way to shore. Olivia’s bathing suit slides up to reveal a perfect half-moon of her butt cheek. I laugh and motion for her to fix it, emerging from the water refreshed, just as the flag changes to double red and lifeguards blow their whistles, commanding everyone out of the water. I gather my clothes and shimmy into my jumpsuit, and the two of us walk back to the car without towels.

Olivia chats a mile a minute on the short drive to the rental house. We pause at a four-way stop for an ambulance. It careens around us, siren blaring.

I hope the people are okay, Liv says once it passes.

Me too. I think again of the accident we saw on the way down, the dismantled truck, crushed like a flimsy toy.

Once we park, Olivia jumps out. Look! A chicken! She points to a beautiful rust-colored chicken waddling down the cobblestone path of our short block. Can I pet it?

I shrug, unsure if chickens carry diseases like birds. I once saw a documentary where people groomed their chickens and entered them into competitions for money. Olivia, who adores all living creatures, reaches out her hand, but the chicken ignores her and keeps clucking and walking in the opposite direction.

So cute, she sighs. Could we get a chicken for a pet?

I don’t think so.

I catch her side profile, not for the first time registering just how much she’s changed this past year. For starters, she’s growing boobs. There will soon be locked doors, training bras, and a demand for privacy. No more joint baths or Liv running carelessly through the house in her underwear. That fleeting window of parent-child intimacy shrinks by the day, and Liv runs hot and cold—one minute treating me as someone she’s always turned to, and the next, shutting me out completely. And Michael is missing it all. I loop an arm around her shoulder and squeeze tight.

I need a pet, Mama. Every girl needs a pet. It’s part of my hero’s journey.

Your hero’s journey? What part would that be?

The call to adventure. Duh, she says. Plus, if we got a chicken, it could lay fresh eggs, right?

True. But we also have coyotes and foxes that aren’t too kind to chickens. I ruffle her damp hair. Liv, I know having a pet sounds fun, but they’re a lot of responsibility too.

She rolls her eyes and sighs. You always say that.

Because it’s true.

At the door to Here Comes the Sun, I fiddle with the key, admiring the renovated rental. Inside, Olivia bolts upstairs, clearly annoyed with me about the pet conversation. This is the first time I’ve rented the house longer than a week, and while I initially had second thoughts about being gone so long, Jason and Ayana offered to keep us company (and pay for half, which helps). Plus, it’s my fortieth birthday, so I figure it’s worth the splurge.

When I hear the shower crank upstairs, I find a spare towel and pat myself dry while I assess the living room. A comfy sectional faces an oversized coffee table, fanned with local magazines. The open kitchen sits beyond, cut in an L shape with all new appliances. The twenty-foot dining table sits to the right, loaded with chairs for renters with large families. After making a quick grocery list and checking the app for the pizza delivery, I walk up to the third-floor primary suite and rinse off in the steam shower, then head back to the kitchen to chill a bottle of wine. I take the opportunity before Olivia comes back downstairs to slip onto the front porch and ease into a rocking chair without my phone.

Even though I am on vacation, I’ve already received at least twenty-five emails from my boss with the subject line, Don’t you dare respond until vacation is over, but . . .

As if I won’t read them. As if any workaholic unplugs enough to not constantly worry about the never-ending to-do list. I’m currently managing three big project builds, and my boss has implied that if all goes well, I could be looking at a promotion. While I’ve always been career-driven, once I became a single parent, it became mission critical. Though Michael helps with child support, most of the monetary responsibility falls on my shoulders, and I want to give Liv everything I can, everything I never had growing up.

It has taken me years to get where I am, and while no one is telling me I have to prove myself, the innate need is always there, especially working in a predominantly male field. Though most companies have gone remote since the pandemic—a wonderful gift for single parents everywhere—I still go into the office several days a week, just to have in-person meetings with my boss. I show up to project sites regularly, and I even work weekends if there’s a client issue.

Much like Michael, I never established proper boundaries on my climb up the ladder, and I’ve paid for it in numerous ways: no time for romance, a shameful lack of presence with Liv, and various house projects and goals that never seem to get done because I’m too busy working.

And though I’ve carved out two entire weeks away—weeks that I’ve more than earned—there’s always that nagging feeling that I’m not doing enough, that my team will drop the ball in my absence, or worse, that someone else might do a better job and my expertise will become obsolete. It’s unnerving to try to maintain the balance of being a single parent and having a demanding career, and for once, I just want to tuck the deadlines away and enjoy a vacation. I’ve vowed that this will be the year that I strike the balance, that I stop trying to prove myself in the office and carve out more quality time with Liv.

Which starts now.

I blink into the waning sunlight, coughing as the neighbor next door lights up a cigarette. I close my eyes, bracing myself for the next two weeks. So much of this vacation hinges on how it all goes these first few days: Olivia not getting sunburned, not having irritated eyes from her goggles, not getting overly tired, not getting stung by a jellyfish, not getting homesick, not getting into a fight with Ayana . . . It seems all our trips hinge on her moods, and I often can’t keep up with how savagely they swing.

I lose myself to the rhythmic push and pull of the chair, and my thoughts wander back to Jason. What he said to me as we sat out by the fire in my backyard a few nights ago. I’ve always wondered what life would have been like if we’d ended up together. Twenty years of friendship rattled with one brazen sentence. And now? Now I can’t stop thinking about the possibility of more.

The food delivery guy turns into the driveway, startling me from my thoughts, pizza boxes hot and fragrant in his outstretched arms. I take them and hustle inside, arranging the boxes on one end of the dining room table. The strong aroma of oregano and garlic makes my mouth water. I call for Olivia, who is already in her pajamas. The two of us sit at the dining room table with its fourteen metal chairs crammed around it. We are just a party of two. It amazes me how some families fill these rental homes completely.

We chew in silence before Olivia launches into the plot of a story she wants to write. I nod and swallow my wine, my mind working out how it’s going to be to share a house with Jason, starting tomorrow. Finally, she loses herself to her food, and I ignore the itch to look at my phone, a typical distraction that keeps me from the present moment.

I tear off another slice of margherita pizza, which has grown cold, the cheese congealed, the crust hard. I eat it anyway, stabbing baby kale leaves and scooping some roasted brussels sprouts and cauliflower onto my plate. I barely say a word, but Olivia doesn’t seem to notice.

Outside, a raucous family throws a football. Having been raised by a single mother, I always longed for a giant family, but after an extremely difficult labor with Olivia—and not getting pregnant until thirty—I took what I could get. I wanted more children, but after the divorce, the potential for a bigger family closed up like a box.

What’s wrong, Mama? Olivia chews and stares thoughtfully at me.

What do you mean?

You have your worried smile.

I do? I reach over and kiss her cheek. You know me so well. I’m not worried, though, I promise. Just trying to go from work mode to vacation mode. Sometimes it takes Mama a minute.

That makes sense. She plucks a glob of cheese from her pizza and abandons the crust. Are you excited about your birthday?

I smile. You know me. Not much of a birthday person.

I know. But maybe this year can be different.

I try to figure out how to explain why getting older isn’t as awesome as celebrating birthdays when you’re a kid. I don’t dread aging; in fact, I’m looking forward to my forties, but I’ve also never been someone to throw big parties for myself. I think sometimes it feels a little selfish to make a big fuss for just turning one year older.

She shakes her head. That’s not selfish. That’s what people do.

Which is why you always have the best birthday parties.

I admire Olivia as she launches into play with two tiny dolls and a pizza crust. Something rough roots around my heart. With every passing day, I worry that I’m not showing up as the role model I want to be. Yes, I am a hardworking single mother, and that’s something. But when I look at all the other moms at her school, who constantly devote themselves to committees, fundraisers, and field trips, I feel like a fraud.

Doesn’t she need more in her life than just me, my mom, Jason, and Ayana? Is she missing out on the great big family I always imagined for her? I chastise myself for going down the rabbit hole of what is not instead of what is, but that stab of worry needles its way in: What if it turns out that I’ve been failing her all this time?

But when Liv looks at me and smiles, a fleck of oregano stuck to her oversized front tooth, I begin to laugh, which makes her laugh. She chews a piece of kale, smearing it across her teeth with