Chapter 1
Vanessa
Green lawns and well-kept gardens relax my tightly wound muscles as I drive down my sister Lexi’s Street. She and her husband Ace and their two children live on this gorgeous, quiet street and no one deserves it more than my sister. She was the caring and responsible one in our growing up years and now it’s her chance to take life a little easy.
Not that she does. Lexi doesn’t know what it means to relax. I bring my car to a stop in front of her house and hop out. As soon as I enter the house, I’m blasted by a cacophony of noises. I pause for a moment to grin. My sister might have the nicest house of anyone I know but the noise levels can rival a club on a Saturday night.
I find everyone in the playroom on the first floor. Lexi is on the floor with all three kids. Luna is showing her mother her coloring book and my baby, Ivy is on her tummy making loud noises which she’s usually sure make sense. Ryan, Lexi’s two-year-old son is driving a truck around the room with the accompanying engine noises of a truck.
“Looks like a normal day in the Carter household,” I say, raising my voice above the noise.
On hearing my voice, Ivy changes directions and comes crawling toward me. Laughing, I pick her up and pull her body close to mine. The chatter in my mind floats away as I inhale her sweet baby scents. She’s all mine. Love fills my chest, expanding it to near painful proportions.
“Hey, you’re back early. We expected you a little later,” Lexi says to me.
Ivy wriggles in my arms wanting to be put back down. Since learning how to crawl, her favorite place to be is the floor. I lower her gently then kiss my niece and nephew in turns.
“I finished a little earlier. The painter has a good idea and I can’t wait to see the end result.” I’m in the process of finally making my dream come true. I was a nurse and then went on to become a midwife. I was pretty sure I’d do that for the rest of my life but thanks to a certain jerk of a man, I’ve sort of become jaded with my hospital work. Plus having Ivy has put me off working for so many hours. Starting my own business is the perfect solution for me.
Even better, I’ve partnered with an old friend who works as an independent doula. We’ll run the classes together and each of us can cover for the other when needed. It’s an awesome partnership and forty percent of the expectant mothers who’ve enrolled for our classes are referrals from Eva.
“I can’t wait too,” Lexi says. “I’m glad you’re doing this. Having my own business is the most rewarding thing. You’ll love it. Plus, you have a partner to help bear the responsibilities.”
“You were the one who inspired me, big sis,” I tell her and plop down next to her on the carpeted floor.
Lexi had always been one of those people whose noses are constantly buried in books. She’d worked for years as a waitress in a cocktail bar to earn a living for us and to see me through nursing school. I never knew that she harbored dreams of owning a bookshop.
When she and Ace got married, he convinced her to take time off work to find herself. For the first time since my sister was a teenager, she took time off from work. And it worked. She had decided that she wanted to open a bookshop and Ace had made it happen for her.
He came from one of those stinking rich families that could count back to several generations. He had a trust fund and with some of that money, he had helped Lexi’s dream of owning a bookshop come true.
Lexi’s book shop had grown and she now employed three full-time workers. That gave her the flexibility to take a few days off during the week to be home with the children even though she had two full-time nannies.
She needed only one nanny but because of Ivy, she employed two of them.
“It’s hard to imagine that this is us, right?” she said.
I knew immediately what she was talking about. If our schools had voted for least likely to succeed in life, Lexi and I would have taken the top spots. Our mother had been an alcoholic when we were growing up. Lexi, being the oldest, had borne the brunt of it. She shielded me from the worst of our mother’s behaviors, including bringing home strange men to sleep in our house. Over the years, Mother had been in and out of rehab. When she got out, she found someone, disappeared with him for several years, and then showed up out of the blue, wasted and back to square one.