* Present day *
"How's our boy doing lately?" Olivia asks, pouring wine in my glass.
"Same as when I saw him a few hours ago in the hospital." I take the glass. "Which isn't saying much, you know how William is."
She does know. She's the one who sat next to me in the cardiologist's office a bit over a year ago while the doctor explained what aortic valve stenosis means in my eight-year-old son’s chest.
We fold ourselves into our usual spots this evening — mismatched glasses and legs tucked under us. This is the thing that kept me sane through the Ron years, through the diagnosis, through the nights when the apartment walls shrank to the size of a coffin.
Olivia on my tiny balcony with cheap wine and no judgment.
Some women have therapists. I have this.
"Any update on the surgery timeline?"
I take a sip instead of answering right away. The six-dollar wine is terrible, but I drink it anyway. "Working on it."
"Working on it meaning...?"
"Meaning I have no earthly idea how to afford it and when I think about it for more than thirty seconds my hands start shaking."
I set the glass down while Olivia watches me over her own. She lets the silence sit for exactly as long as I can stand it. "Has Ron been in contact, sent any money?"
"Ron hasn't sent a cent since he walked out after William was diagnosed and we received the first receipts for his treatment."
"Nothing, really?"
"Well, he's busy playing house with Jessica apparently, and she’s expensive to maintain. Our son doesn't exist in that zip code." I trace the rim of the glass with my thumb. "Last time we spoke he told me the kid's illness was my fault. My genes, my problem."
"He said that. Those words."
"Yeah, eight years of marriage and that's his parting thesis."
The worst part? This isn't even rock bottom. Rock bottom was ten years ago.
Rock bottom was standing in my childhood kitchen two days after Dad's funeral, staring at the foreclosure notice while the lawyer explained that company debt and personal assets were apparently the same thing when your father dies owing more than he owned.
Rock bottom was dropping out of college because I couldn't afford tuition and watching my entire future collapse into a black hole. Rock bottom was Ron Scott proposing to me shortly after that—not because he loved me, but because he knocked me up.
And Mom… She loved Dad so completely that losing him broke something fundamental inside her. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped pretending any of it mattered anymore.
I found her six months after Dad died, while I was eight months pregnant. Empty pill bottles on the nightstand, a note that said ‘I'm sorry’ and caused my preterm labor by extreme stress.
So yeah. Rock bottom was becoming an orphan and a young mother simultaneously at just nineteen with nothing but the crumbs of my previous life and a cheating husband.
I actually thought marriage would fix things. Like becoming Mrs. Scott would somehow undo the fact that I was once Mia Smith, the girl whose father once owned a prospective company and with a bright future ahead.
I remember the first time Ron grabbed my arm hard enough to leave bruises. I'd bought the wrong milk. Whole milk instead of two percent, like that justified the fingerprints that stayed purple for a week.
I also remember thinking: this is still better than being homeless with a child.
That's how low the bar was.
"I was so stupid to let Ron convince me that I needed saving. That I was lucky he wanted to marry me when I had nothing to offer. No degree, no prospects, no family. Just a pregnant girl with dead parents and nowhere else to go."
Olivia's grip tightens on her glass. "He was supposed to be your partner."
"He was my warden." The wine is making me honest. Reckless. "And I endured that only to find the texts from Jessica. Months of 'I miss you baby' and 'when are you leaving her' while I was sleeping in a hospital chair next to our son's bed."
"I would burn every trace of that man. And salt the earth."
"Get in line." I pour another glass with hands that aren't quite steady.
Olivia tilts her head accepting her glass. "Why haven't you changed your last name back to Smith though? You're still walking around as Mia Scott like you owe that man something."
A laugh scrapes out of me. "Liv, I can barely afford groceries. You think I'm spending time at a courthouse over a last name? I've got slightly bigger problems."
She leans back and the silence that follows is so thick I could choke on it. Then something shifts in her face — the crease between her brows smooths out, her mouth twitches.
"I think we need to talk about something positive for a moment. So…" She swirls her wine. "I ran into Luke Matthews a few days ago."
My eyebrows lift before I can stop them. I haven’t seen Luke since the year I was forced to drop out of college and all the following problems.
"Coffee shop near the stadium. I turn around and there he is — twice the size I remember, Ashcat's jacket stretched across shoulders that could block a doorway now." She grins. "We talked for an hour."
"About what?"
"High school. College. His football career. Did you know he's a linebacker for the Ashcats now? Professional roster, the whole thing." She pauses, watching me over the rim of her glass. "We also talked about you. I told him about your divorce."
"You told him…"
"And you should have seen his face, Mia!" She leans forward, knee pressing against mine. "The man lit up the second I said your name. You remember how he used to look at you in school? Like you hung the moon and didn't even notice?"
She points her glass at me. "Same look. All these years later and still the same look."
My eyes find the railing, a spot of rust I've been meaning to scrub.
Very interesting rust. Extremely compelling.
"He's single, by the way. And he asked for your number." Olivia nudges my knee. "I gave it to him."
The wine nearly comes out of my nose. "You gave him my number?"
"He's kind, he's stable, he's got a real career, and he's been half in love with you since high school." She shrugs with the calm of someone who has committed a crime and feels zero remorse. "You could do worse. You have done worse."
My mouth opens to protest. The audacity, the boundary violation, the sheer Olivia-ness of it… Yet something warm cracks through my ribs before I can form the words.
My lips twitch and it's small, barely there, but the first real smile I've felt in weeks and we both know it. Then I remembered about the news I also have for her.
"I got laid off." Her glass stops halfway to her mouth. "The diner cut hours and I didn't make the roster. Nothing lined up, no leads and rent's due in two weeks…"
"I'm sorry…" Olivia reached to take my hand in her, squeezing it gently.
I nodded and let the city hum below us to fill the silence.
Then she sets down her glass and looks at me with that particular stillness she gets when she's being a nurse instead of a friend.
"Maybe they’re hiring support staff at the Ashcats facility, and Luke can help with it? He mentioned something like that I think," she says quietly. "Cleaning, or maintenance. Nothing glamorous, but it's steady, and it's got benefits."
The word cleaning lands in my stomach like a stone. Would Mia that I was before ever imagined working as janitor to save the life of my child?
"Mia…" Olivia's voice is firm now, no wine-softness left. "It's a paycheck, talk to him. What's the alternative?"
The alternative is the math I keep doing looking at my bank account. The alternative is a treatment I can't afford, and a timeline that gets shorter every time.
The alternative is my son in the hospital room and me with my pride wrapped around me like a blanket that doesn't keep anyone warm.
So maybe it is my last hope.
________________