Lara had expected a hole in the wall restaurant for her welcome lunch, but the Tex-Mex restaurant her new boss had chosen was fancy: sleek marble-top tables and drippy-crystal chandeliers, generous helpings of guacamole in pebbled mortars, a whole page on the menu just for tequilas. At adjacent tables, men with tanned brows and graying temples rolled their starched sleeves up to their elbows and chomped into burritos. Her new colleagues’ orders were spontaneous – tacos, nachos, beers – but Lara considered her options, preferring something with structural integrity, a tidy dish with low likelihood to stain. 

“The taco-bowl salad and an iced tea, please,” she said. 

“Sweetened?” the waitress asked.

“No, thank you.”

Around the table, Lara and her new colleagues chitchatted, getting-to-know-you topics, mostly friendly, occasionally awkward. They compared hometowns and colleges (Reading, UMass Lowell, for Lara). Jeff, the IT guy, asked how her first commute went (just fine). Marie in Sales inquired about her previous job (similar role – data analytics, smaller company – a startup that shuttered after investors pulled out). Charlene, her boss, asked about everyone’s weekend, then told the group about her son’s soccer tournament.

“And just when we thought we’d go home, no trophy, Kaden scored the winning goal! His little face was so proud.” 

The waitress brought their drinks and a big basket of chips and salsa. Charlene gave Lara a little nudge to go first. 

“Do you have kids, Lara?” 

The question wasn’t a surprise, but still her pulse quickened. Her daughter Meena, now sixteen, was a high school sophomore four counties away. They exchanged cards at birthdays and Christmas. 

She took a sip of her iced tea and found it bitter, then reached across the table for a sugar packet.

“No,” she said, stirring the crystals so they’d dissolve. Legally, that was the truth. 

Meena was a swimmer—good enough to go to States last year, a huge deal for a freshman. Lara followed her meets, live streamed online. At her old company, she liked to block off her calendar for “heads-down time” on meet days, then command a table at a nearby coffee shop so she could watch undisturbed, no need to explain. Headphones in, she’d keep a tab open on her browser to listen for Meena’s event, the backstroke, while she worked. Truthfully, she didn’t always know which dot in the pool was her daughter—the pixelated screen and fitful wi-fi made even close-ups blurry, and the swimmers’ indistinguishable bathing caps, suits, and goggles, underneath constant splashes, turned them into clones. 

No, Lara’s old colleagues had known nothing about this. 

Meena didn’t even know. 

Maybe I should tell her, Lara thought, after one qualifier race where Meena placed third. It had been a tight finish, down to the wall, and Lara nearly overturned her café table with excitement when Meena’s name was announced. She wondered if Meena would be pleased or annoyed by these viewing appointments—or worse, if it would make her nervous. 

She hadn’t said anything. 

Back in those early years, a few days before Black Friday, Lara’s mother agreed to stay over on Thanksgiving so she could get up early and head to the mall. She hoped to be in line by 3 a.m., among the first hundred to get the Squishy Swimmy Sandy doll, the one going for four figures on the internet. The one that caused fistfights in toy store aisles and required security escorts to parked cars. 

Normally she would not do this. In fact, sweet, intuitive Meena, then in kindergarten, had stopped asking for things – at the grocery store, at Target, during commercials. She knew Lara wanted to give her more, but couldn’t; she’d already internalized Lara’s repeated nos. But something about this doll, the hottest toy of the season, had captivated Meena enough to ask. When she did, she’d looked at her feet, her body language careful, yet still hopeful and courageous enough to try. That braveness with timidity broke Lara’s heart. She could wait in line. She too could at least try. 

In the dark, Lara parked outside the big-box store and gaped: The line already snaked around the store and stretched out of sight. Some folks toward the front had sleeping bags and folding chairs, coolers and thermoses. She looked down at her neck pillow and zip-up fleece and felt foolish. She wasn’t going to be in the first hundred, maybe not even the first five hundred. 

When Meena had arrived, six years earlier, the doctors kept her extra days in the hospital to monitor signs of withdrawal. Pregnancy had inspired responsibility: Lara sobered up, made sure her primary care physician was in contact with the OB unit, that all her files were up to date. She even had her social worker on speed dial if complications arose. To Lara’s continued astonishment, Meena arrived tough and clean, and aced her early tests. But Lara hadn’t forgotten the lead nurse’s pursed lips as she signed the discharge papers and handed Meena over—and, so quickly that Lara almost didn’t notice, a flicker of fear. And why not, Lara had thought. She knew the statistics were bad, the odds of relapse and intervention high. Every day would be an active choice not to return to her old ways. 

Lara walked to find the end of the line, blacktop against black sky, reminiscent of those pre-Meena days. The long-avoided visuals cued up old hungers, fresh and immediate, as though the years and effort were mere blips. How often had she crossed shadowed lots like this toward idling cars, a rush of blood in her ears, a buzz behind her eyes? 

She twitched her fingers against the money in her coat pocket. From her mother, for the doll. For the doll. The line was really long. 

“What time did you get here?” she asked the woman before her, now in the second-to-last spot.

“About ten minutes ago, honey,” she said. “I missed the memo that nowadays you need to camp out all night.”

Lara craned her neck to gauge how many people were ahead. Maybe they don’t all want the doll, she thought. Maybe they’re here for another toy. 

The woman saw her expression. “It’s all worth it when you see their faces, though, isn’t it?” 

“Sure is.” Lara rubbed her palms together and bounced in place. She tried to picture Meena, delighted on Christmas morning, but all she could see was the line. The macadam was cold and hard under her thin soles. 
 
Staying sober, Lara thought, was the most monumental gift she could give—but one that, hopefully, Meena would never realize. And that was correct—this was what Lara was supposed to do for her daughter. This was not a shared burden. Normalcy, though, couldn’t be wrapped up, nor could a six-year-old understand it as a gift. 

Her daughter wanted that doll. 

She probably wouldn’t get the doll.

In the distance, Lara saw a sedan pull into the plaza and park at the edge of the lot. The driver left the sidelights on, but no one got out. Lara’s fingertips tingled. 

She pictured Meena’s disappointment, again. 

She watched another car pull up next to the sedan. 

She had cash in her pocket. 

Her fingertips itched.

The second car drove away. 

Meena’s courage, unmatched.  

“Would you …” she started to say, then noticed the woman in front of her had put in earbuds. A few shoppers had queued up behind her. 

Salt in her throat. 

She stepped out of line.

Back at the office after lunch, Lara sat down with Charlene to go over initial procedures. They opened up her email calendar; multiple light-blue rectangles charted the month ahead. 

“I’m already scheduled for meetings?” she asked. 

“Mostly HR stuff—and meet-and-greets with the folks you’ll be working with the closest,” Charlene said. “If it’s too much, just let me know. Everyone has their own pace, and I know it can be a lot at first.”

“No, that’s fine,” Lara said, a little too quickly. “Was just a surprise.” 

She regularly discussed surprises, and her reactions to them, with her support group. This was a little one, no big deal. She picked at a loose thread at her wrist.

During her interview, Charlene had discussed the company values, how it was important that Lara bring her whole self to work. Lara had smiled and nodded, appreciating the platitude, knowing that Charlene had no clue what she’d just offered. That Lara had spent a good part of a decade working to ensure whole swaths remained private and out of reach. 

On an unremarkable Thursday a few weeks into the new job, Lara blocked off her afternoon for a family event. She let Charlene and the team know she wouldn’t be available, then left at lunch and drove two hours west. 

In the parking lot of Meena’s high school, she waited until a few other families went in, then followed signs for the athletic wing. Inside, it was humid, the air thick with chlorine. Parents, younger siblings, and friends packed the bleachers. Lara scanned the faces for her own mother, Meena’s legal guardian, but didn’t see her. She made her way toward the top row and pulled her baseball cap lower over her brow, hoping to remain anonymous. 

The events got going, the swimmers fast and determined. Pigeon-bob breaststrokes, splashy butterflies. Even in person, Lara couldn’t always tell who the winner was. 

The first medley relay came up. Meena emerged from the locker room, lanky and freckled. Lara noted the number on her cap, so she wouldn’t lose her later. At the pool’s edge, Meena knelt and splashed her arms and thighs, then stood and stretched her arms wide and closed, wide and closed, like bellows. 

In two years, Meena would be eighteen, and Lara could resume contact more regularly. If Meena was open to it. She didn’t want to be a surprise, and yet she didn’t know, with her current constraints, how she wouldn’t be. 
The whistle blew and Meena’s teammate got the race started. 

From the foot of the bleachers, Lara’s mother ascended the stairs, then sat down next to her. Lara stiffened and waited. 

“Hope it’s OK I’m here,” Lara said, quietly. 

Meena took her place on the block.

After a few minutes, her mother said, “She’s in two relays today and a solo, but that race won’t be for a while yet.”

Lara nodded.  

The teammate touched the wall and Meena leapt backward. The water caught her and off she went, belly up, windmill arms, purposeful in her direction. Her feet fluttered, sending rapid little splashes in her wake as she powered toward her finish. In utero, Meena had liked to kick, just like that. That initial recognition, when Lara first felt it, had been the best surprise.

The crowd grew louder and Lara joined in. Part-cheer, part-scream, her voice blended in with her mother’s, the other parents in the bleachers, the coaches and friends and siblings. Indistinguishable from the crowd, she let her yell come from all the places she’d kept at bay over the years, those pieces that made up what Charlene called her whole self. The addict, the mom, the estranged daughter, all could come out here, for just a few moments. 

Meena touched the wall and her teammate dove in. 

In her pocket, Lara’s phone buzzed. 

Meeting request: 8 am Friday, All-hands recap/Q3 KPIs.

She accepted the invite. Over her shoulder, her mother noticed. 

“That’s an early start,” she said. “Have to get back?”

Meena stood at the top of the lane with her teammates, urging the final relay swimmer on. 

If Lara left after Meena’s solo swim, she’d get a coffee on the Pike, then get home around bedtime. Plenty of time to crash and make it to the early meeting. Meena – and her colleagues – would be none the wiser. 

“Not yet,” Lara said.

SARAH PASCARELLA is a writer and editor based in Boston. Her fiction has recently appeared in The Fourth River, Chestnut Review, and Levee, among other publications. Her short story "Time and Tide" was a 2021 Best of the Net nominee (MudRoom Magazine). She has a master's in writing, literature, and publishing from Emerson College.