Weekdays belong to my job. Weekends belong to my kids. There isn't much time left for me, but I do get a sliver on Saturday evenings, when Hannah goes to bed early to read and Otto goes to his Xbox in the playroom the second dinner's done, and my youngest, Ava, is down for the night. From seven thirty, I am alone. Three hours of solitude if I'm lucky, although I often can't keep my eyes open past nine thirty.

I can watch whatever I want on TV, have a glass of wine if I'm feeling fancy, maybe have a long soak in the tub with a good book. I'm leaning towards a reading session, sitting on the sofa with a handful of new proofs laid out on the coffee table, when the doorbell goes.

"The hell?" I mutter to myself. It's nearly eight o'clock. Way too late for someone to drop in, and if it was my mom or my ex, they'd usually call or text first. I get up with a groan, letting in a frozen draft when I open the door and see Ruth on the other side.

"Kind of a late visit," I say, opening the door wider to let her in, ushering her out of the cold. "What's up?" I lead her to the kitchen, always the first port of call when welcoming guests into my home. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, but that's a problem for tomorrow morning. Sundays are chore days, and although my kids complain, they do get them done.

"I've been deciding whether or not to come tell you about what happened at the store today."

I sigh and look at her over my shoulder as I take a couple of mugs out of the cupboard. Ruth comes over every now and then and she never refuses a cup of tea. "I don't work weekends, Ruth," I say, giving her a warning glare and put the stovetop kettle on to boil. "I don't want to hear what happened at the store today. Especially not at eight o'clock on a Saturday. Can't you hear the beautiful silence of all three of my children being quietly occupied?"

"Well, that's what I thought you'd say, which is why I decided not to come. But then I thought, seeing as it's not actually work related but it is related to yesterday's interrogation, you'd want to know. So here I am."

"Interrogation?"

"You were quizzing me about some girl who looks like Barbie."

"In your words. I never called her that," I say.

"Then if I may say so myself, I wasn't far wrong. She came into the store today."

I whip around so fast that a couple of tea bags fly out of the box in my hand. No wine tonight. Just a cup of Sleepytime tea. "She did?"

Ruth gives me a smug smile. "See, you do want to know."

"How'd you know it was her?" I ask, trying to swallow down the steadily increasing rate of my heart. So it was Annie in the coffee shop. She really is back.

"Tall, smiley, blonde girl in a pink dress," Ruth says.

"That could be anyone, really." Please be her. I don't know where the thought comes from, why I want it to be Annie. Why, when she made me fall in love with her and then she abandoned me? I shouldn't want to ever see her face again, but instead my mind is filled with the memory of her warm hands on my waist, her soft lips on my neck, the color of her lipstick and the scent of her perfume and the taste of her tongue.

"I asked if she was Annie," Ruth says, ripping me from my thoughts. "She was confused about how I knew her name so I may have put my foot in it a bit, but I got the confirmation you were looking for. Whoever Annie really is to you"—she gives me a knowing look that makes me shrivel up inside—"she's back."

"Ruth." I drop my elbows to the counter, my head to my hands. "Why did you do that?"

Ruth looks unperturbed. "So I could check if she's the person you were asking about."

"Please, for the love of god, tell me you didn't say that to her."

"I didn't."

That's one thing, I guess. "Did she say anything?"

"Not much. She was there with her friend."

"Who?"

Ruth shrugs. "I'm not sure. I think Annie called her Leo? Indian girl."

"Sri Lankan. Liyoni."

"You know her?"

"She's Annie's best friend," I say. At least, she was, eight years ago. It's nice that some things don't change. I guess some people are worth keeping in touch with. "Did she buy anything?"

"Yes, something from the table of your recommendations. I don't remember which."

"Gee, way to be specific," I say dryly.

"One of those gay romances you're always reading," she says. She glances at me, her eyes piercing through me. "Couple of girls on the cover."

I have never come out to anyone except Annie. It's a sad state of affairs that my colleagues are my closest friends, and even they know nothing, nor do any of the other mothers I sometimes get coffee with, and I'm not even sure we'd be friends if we didn't have children the same age. I haven't dated anyone since my divorce was finalized and my sole sexual encounter since then was a drunken fumble with a stranger two years ago, who has no idea he's a father because I never got his name.

But I read a lot of queer romance, and I guess I don't need to say the words for Ruth to have her suspicions.

The kettle comes to the boil and I pour two mugs of tea, which I never kept in the house until I met Ruth and she filled the bookstore's coffee cupboard with box after box of black teas and herbal teas and I learned that I quite like a cup of Earl Grey or chamomile. At a push, a cup of Walmart's own black tea with a splash of milk and a teaspoon of sugar. We move through to the living room and I turn on the electric fire , pulling a blanket over my lap.

"What's the deal here?" Ruth asks.

"I give you tea, you drink it, we chat, you leave."

"You can be difficult sometimes, Mrs Jacobs."

I wrinkle my nose. "Ugh, don't do that, Ruth. I've been divorced longer than I was married."

"You didn't get rid of Christian's last name, though."

"No, because it's my children's last name, but Mrs feels weird. It's been a long time since I was a Mrs."

"Sorry, Ms Jacobs. And you know what I mean. Nobody in the history of humanity has acted this way over their old babysitter if that's all they were. What's going on?"

I don't want to talk about it. I really don't want to talk about it. Especially not with Ruth. I like her; we get on well; she helps out with the kids sometimes when I'm in a bind and she has a comforting grandmotherly energy about her, but she is not the person I want to pour my heart out to about how I let a beautiful girl get under my skin and I can't let go of her. It has been so long and my life looks so different to what it was back then, and yet Annie Abraham has always lingered at the back of my mind. And maybe, if one of her first stops back in town was my store, there's a chance I've lingered at the back of her mind too.

"Okay, I get it," Ruth says. "I won't push it. But you know you can talk to me anytime you need, hon."

"Thank you," I say, and I mean it.

"And, just so you know, if you ever want to go out in the evening and, say, meet a friend, and you need someone here for that precious Ava of yours, just give me a call."

I give her my warmest smile before I cover my mouth with my mug and inhale the sweet musk of my tea. "I appreciate that, Ruth, thank you," I say after taking a sip and feeling it warm me all the way down my stomach.

She doesn't outstay her welcome. After twenty minutes of gentle chatter and tea drinking, she leaves, and I sit down in front of my selection of books once again.

A bonus of running my own bookstore is that publishers send me proof copies of books to read before publication, but the downside is that my home is filled with the things, more sent to me each week than I can read. Some I know I'll never get around to, the heavy non-fiction and the horror and the historical; I pass them on to Ruth or Bobby or Jessica. A lot are books I've requested, though, filling the shelves in the kitchen and the two bookcases in the living room and every inch of my bedroom.

I choose a sapphic holiday romance due to come out in a couple of weeks and I scoot to the other end of the sofa, closer to the fire, with the blanket over my lap and the standing lamp providing just enough light to read without straining my eyes.

I make it a whole four pages in before there's a creak upstairs, followed by the soft thump of feet on the stairs and then a figure appears in the archway that connects the living room to the hallway. It's not very bright in here and I may be overdue a visit to the optometrist, but I know from the footsteps alone that it's Hannah. Otto thuds around like a baby elephant figuring out how to use its feet. Hannah slinks around like a cat, like she doesn't want to startle the world with her presence.

"Mom?"

"Hey, Banana," I say. It's eight thirty, her bedtime, but it's Saturday. The usual rules don't apply, and I'm not a strict enforcer. Even during the week I often go to the bathroom at ten, eleven, twelve, and when I poke my head around her open door she's reading by the glow of her nightlight. I'm not going to do anything to discourage a habit I've loved watching her cultivate. As long as she can get up in time for school and make it through the day without falling asleep, what does it matter?

"Are you reading?" she asks, padding across the room to join me. She's holding a book of her own, her thumb marking the page. I may not work on the weekends, but I almost always end up at the store at some point for my daughter to pick out something to read.

"Yup." I raise my book in one hand and hold out my arm. "Want to join?"

Hannah buries herself against my side, her own book clutched in her hand. She is my little replica, the only one of my children who looks like me with her dark brown hair, long and thick, her eyes two chocolate buttons. At only four foot two, she's short for her age, her cheeks round and her body still soft with puppy fat. She fits against me, pulling the blanket over her lap too, and lets out a happy little sigh as she cracks open her book. She's on the third installment of the Nevermoor series for the second time.

"Who was here?" she asks. "I heard voices."

"Only Ruth. She came over for a cup of tea." I put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head and she smells like fresh laundry. "Anything you want to do tomorrow, hon?"

She folds her book on her lap and says, "What's Otto doing?"

"He's going to Waterworld with Ethan, Josh and Noah," I say.

My son has had the same group of friends since he was five. The four of them do everything together and I'm sure the only reason he's suddenly showing an interest in girls is because Noah got a girlfriend over the summer, the first one of them to start dating, and Otto wants to keep up with his friends.

He's still my soft, sensitive little boy, though he'd die of mortification if he heard me call him that. Yes, he loves video games and laser tag and soccer and basketball and all the things fifteen-year-old boys do for fun, but he also loves his little sisters and he lets me hug him and he still has some of his childhood stuffed animals in his bed. I know he's growing up and I know I can't stop it, but I'd like to preserve his boyhood as long as I can before he's a man.

"Can we have a girls' day?" Hannah asks, looking up at me through thick lashes, the light playing on her freckled cheeks.

"Sure, hon, if that's what you feel like." I have no plans for the rest of the weekend and I could do with a trip to Costco.

"Yeah, I want to get my ornament and Olivia B said that they have some really good ones at the TJ Maxx in the city. Can we go?"

"It's a date," I say, brushing her hair off of her face. Her hair, like mine, is both a blessing and a curse. Long and thick, which means it's prone to tangles and the occasional session when she sits between my knees and we spend thirty minutes brushing out the knots. Usually after she's spent the weekend with her dad.

Every now and then, when Otto's busy at the weekend – which is more and more often these days, between sport and school work and his friends – Hannah and Ava and I will bundle into the car and drive the forty minutes to Kalispell and we'll spend a few hours shopping and eating. It's pretty much the same routine every time. We start at Target and TJ Maxx and Dollar Tree before we head into the city center for Claire's and Bath & Body Works and Starbucks, and Ava naps in her stroller as we wander through the mall. Then, on the way home, we stop off at Costco for supplies. I swear I buy a year's worth of toilet paper every month.

We read together for an hour, by which point I'm yawning more than Hannah is. She crawls into her bed with her book, ready to continue reading, and I slip into my room as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Ava.

I have the space for her to have her own room. There's a box room down the hall that I use for storage at the moment that would make the perfect nursery, but I'm not ready to let her go yet. When the others were little, I had Christian as the voice of reason to assuage my anxieties. He insisted that the baby monitor was enough and we'd wake up if we needed to, and he refused to share our bedroom with either of our children.

Now I'm alone and it's been so long since I did this and I worry. I like to hear my daughter's snuffly breaths as I fall asleep and I like to wake up knowing she's right there. I like not sleeping alone, even though she's in a crib across the room. Hannah's grown out of her nightmares now, but I never minded when I would feel her small sleepy body crawl into my bed and snuggle against my stomach.

I lean over Ava in her crib and I kiss her blonde hair and as I watch the steady rise and fall of her chest, I am overcome with love.

When I was thirty-three, a year into the frantic madness of single parenthood, I thought to myself just give it ten years. In ten years, your kids will be teenagers and you'll only be forty-three, and you'll have all the time in the world. Now I'm forty with a one-year-old. Ava upended any plans I thought I had for my future when she screamed her way into the world almost a decade after I had Hannah. Back then, I had the support of my husband, even if our marriage had started to crumble by the time our second child came along. With Ava I was older. Tireder. Alone.

I wouldn't change a single second of my life if it meant she wasn't in it, but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I feel like I've taken a step back and the guilt of that thought crushes me. I know I haven't stepped back, I know it's just a different path, but it's overwhelming sometimes. Until I look at her sleeping face, her blonde lashes against her cheeks, her little button nose, and I am so filled with love that there's no space in my heart for fear.

I did that, I think. I made you. I didn't mean to, and I don't know who gave me a helping hand, but it doesn't matter. She's here. She's mine. 

*

when i first started plotting out this story, ava didn't exist. then i started writing and now she is the star of the show. does it count as surprise baby trope if the baby in question is 15 months old? i hope you liked this one!