Ombré

Emerging Writer Series

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “Ombré” by Jenn Morrill. Jenn is a writer, editor, and mother of four based in Utah. She writes about identity, unconventional relationships, and rebuilding a life after certainty collapses. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, and she is currently developing a memoir-in-essays.

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I reach for the doorbell but remember it didn’t work last time. I knock instead, smoothing my wind-whipped hair, aware that no fixing can change that this house holds memories of me at my worst.

I shove my hands in my coat pockets, shivering, but Ellie doesn’t make me wait. The door swings open, and her warm smile welcomes me in. It’s been several months since I last saw her; she looks happy, sure of herself, well. She’s 17 now, and it shows—makeup and hair carefully done, her oversized sweatshirt slipping off one shoulder.

She asks about my kids as she leads me past the couch, blankets piled high, into the kitchen, where afternoon sun feeds the plants along the granite countertops, warming the air. In this part of the house, I notice how the space settles in me. I take a breath and relax into my chair.

Her younger sister, Kacie, joins us at the table in a band T-shirt and baseball cap. Between bites of a pink popsicle, she tells me about her FanX costume while setting up her video game.

Ellie pulls out the nail kit and sets it on her dad’s table. Dan’s table. I sit across from her, hands in my lap. She catches my hesitation with a grin. “Here, put your hand on this,” she says, motioning to a paper towel roll. Her fingers are gentle as she guides mine into position, filing carefully and complimenting my cuticles.

Until last year, this was her mom’s kitchen. And once, improbably, for a blink in the long stretch of midlife, it was mine too.

“I think this blue will look so good,” Ellie says. “Maybe we can do an ombré on a few nails?” When I confess I know nothing about nails—this is only my second manicure in 46 years—and encourage her to do whatever she thinks best, she lights up and scrolls through her phone for inspiration. “Ombré is where the color shades from light to dark,” she explains, showing me a picture. “It’s really popular right now, but I haven’t done it a lot. It’d be good to get more practice.”

“Let’s do the ombré for sure,” I tell her.

A distant knock on the front door interrupts us. “Was that the door?” Ellie asks. At the other end of the table, Kacie pauses her video game and stands up. A second knock, more confident this time, confirms it.

Kacie takes a few steps toward the door and stops. “Uh… it’s Mom.”

Ellie’s eyes dart to mine, and we let out a quiet “Oh…” in unison.

I fix my eyes on my half-buffed right hand, willing them not to shake, my pulse thudding so I can hardly hear the girls.

When none of us move, Tess lets herself in, the door clicking open. I’ve never been on the inside with her knocking on the outside. It isn’t my home. And it isn’t hers.

“Mom! This is a surprise!” Kacie says, trying to balance the sudden tension. Their voices blur as I work to steady my breath. Ellie buffs my thumbnail, and I focus on keeping my fingers still so she won’t feel them trembling.

Tess steps into the kitchen. “Hey,” she says, with a small smile. “It’s been a while. How’ve you been?” She lifts her beanie off with both hands and then immediately pulls it back on. Was she staying or going? That was always the question with Tess.

I look up just long enough to acknowledge her. “Yeah, I’ve been well. You?”

“Good,” she says, easing a little closer to see what Ellie is doing. Her gaze lingers on my hands. 10 months of no contact, and now here she is—contact. Our attempt at friendship hadn’t taken, not like it had with Dan.

“Dan said Ellie’s the bomb at nails now,” I say quickly, offering it as an explanation—why I’m here, at her old table, with her daughters.

“Yeah, she is,” Tess says, with pride in her voice. Then she pauses as if waiting for a cue. When silence meets her, she asks, “Where’s Leo?”

“He’s outside on the deck, so he doesn’t jump on her,” Ellie answers.

Tess slips out the back door to see him and returns a few minutes later, a draft of cold air sweeping across my forearms. “I’ll take him for a walk,” she says, already moving toward the exit again. Leo bounds over to greet me before scurrying back to her for his leash.

Leo always made me feel like I belonged there. He didn’t pee on everyone’s feet, but he did on mine. Tess and I used to giggle when he barked at us for ignoring him, jumping on our legs, trying to detangle us from a kiss.

I press my lips together, tasting the cherry Carmex Tess introduced me to years ago.

Ellie reaches for my other hand, and I rest it on the paper towel roll, settling into the rhythm. I once stood where Ellie sits now, folding shirts in thirds the way Tess liked them. She’d come in through the garage, past the washer and dryer, into the kitchen, and find me stacking folded clothes into a basket.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she’d say, grinning, clutching her arms to her chest before drawing me close, kissing me like the laundry basket held buried treasure instead of sports bras and T-shirts.

I peer past Ellie at the darkening mountains, my eyes trailing down to the backyard pool. A few months into my relationship with Tess, Ellie had friends over one evening. Tess and I watched a movie on the living room couch—just a few feet from where Ellie and I sit now.

We sipped drinks as Tess buried her face in my neck, her fingers tugging at a hole in the side of my jeans. We didn’t hear anyone on the stairs until it was too late. One of Ellie’s longtime friends rushed past as we scrambled to separate. She hid in the bathroom and never came back.

Watching Ellie, I feel a pang for what she absorbed before we understood the cost. As she finishes the base coat on my right hand and moves to my left, I remember the first time I met her—five years ago, the same day I met her mother, Tess.

We met on a dating app and went to an amusement park with our kids—her husband, Dan, came too. My first date with a woman, and it was a family affair.

“We’ll just say we’re friends,” she said.

We’d both recently left the Mormon church. My husband and I had opened our marriage—he wanted to explore what he’d missed after only ever dating me, and he encouraged me to figure out who I was outside the church’s rules. I hadn’t told him I was bisexual until months after we left. It was a secret I’d planned on going to my grave with—and hoped that lifelong repression would be enough for God to see me as worthy.

Within the year, we’d each fallen in love with other people. My husband still believed we could save our marriage while loving others. I couldn’t.

Tess and Dan had recently opened their marriage too. Newly out and polyamorous after decades of Mormon marriages—20 years for Tess, 17 for me—we tried to sound casual about something that already felt anything but. Dan snapped a photo as our shoulders brushed on a roller coaster, kids riding ahead, oblivious to what was starting.

As Ellie paints, Dan’s dance playlist drifts up from the basement with the faint smell of incense he loves and Tess never did.

What started with Tess and me didn’t stay ours for long. A month into our roller coaster romance, the three of us—Tess, Dan, and I—sat on that same couch, Dan between us, watching a movie while the kids slept, the kitchen light glowing softly behind us, the dishwasher humming. When our arms touched, a spark moved through me, our fingers slipping into a natural grasp—the first hint that our lives would blend in ways none of us were prepared for.

“We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re on our way,” we joked.

Tess and Dan offered to have me stay with them for a week so I could recover from a hysterectomy and my husband could focus on the kids. My marriage was already breaking apart. Recuperating in a place free from arguments felt like relief. I spent most of those days sleeping on heavy painkillers while they kept the space quiet and brought meals to me in bed.

After a few days, Tess and I puttered around the neighborhood, arm in arm, heads in bright beanies. Neighbors raised their eyebrows as we passed, and we laughed so hard I feared my stitches might split open.

When the week was up, Tess and Dan sat beside me on the bed and admitted how much they loved having me there. They invited me to move in.

Permanently.

Luckily, I was already lying down. “Yes!” I exclaimed before I could even think. For the first time, the math seemed to add up: two people loving me proved I was worth loving at all.

The details didn’t matter then: my husband crying as he helped me pack, my kids finding their footing in a rearranged family, the confusion among family and friends at our public declarations of a love we barely understood ourselves.

What mattered was this: I was out of the box I thought I’d die in, and I wasn’t alone. Two people were standing there with me, choosing me, wanting me—for the me I was becoming. When I got to be the “cream”—the coveted middle cuddle spot—I felt claimed, years of isolation melting away.

In the days that followed, life began to find a rhythm. Cooking dinner together felt easy in a way I hadn’t known was possible; I was used to cooking alone. We moved around the kitchen: Tess at the stove, Dan with the vegetables, and me chopping fruit.

Their house was our house. Their dog was our dog. My kids had to get used to not knocking at the front door anymore. And then, a few months later, they had to learn to knock again.

Ellie finishes my left hand’s top coat, and I switch hands again.

“Do you know what you’re going to do when you graduate?” I ask, trying to keep the moment light.

“Oh god, I don’t know!” She finishes her stroke and glances up. “I’ve only applied to one college, and I really want to go there. But I’d also love cosmetology school. I can’t decide.” She looks at me, earnest and a little overwhelmed. “How are you supposed to know what you want to do with your life?”

I laugh and answer honestly. “That’s a really great question.”

Tess once sat in this same chair, trying to decide her future—what she wanted with me, with us. It was during our final attempt to reconnect, months after she asked me to move out. She woke early, made coffee, and filled pages of a notebook with plans she described in detail: rings, a commitment ceremony, travel, graduations, growing old together. It was everything she said she wanted. Just not for long enough to make any of it real.

“I can’t do this,” she sobbed. “I can’t be enough for both you and Dan.”

I stormed out of their bedroom and slammed the front door behind me.

The front door opens again now, and Tess and Leo re-enter. Leo’s head and paws appear on my lap. I smile at him, but I can’t pet him with wet nails, so he trots off.

“Is Dad here?” she asks Ellie.

Ellie laughs. “Yeah—can’t you tell by the rave music?”

Tess heads downstairs and is gone for only a minute before returning to the living room.

“It was good to see you,” she says, her voice careful but light.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “See ya.”

Ellie finishes painting my left hand, and I place it under the lamp. The warmth on my skin is soothing. Sixty seconds later, the gel is set.

Dan appears at the top of the stairs, and I stand to hug him. He’d been the husband of my girlfriend, then my lover, sometimes my competitor. We’d loved the same woman—and each other—through all the breakups, reconciliations, and quiet repairs. Somehow, despite everything—or maybe because of it—we’re still connected.

Relationships I once thought were over weren’t. It took years and many hard conversations, but my ex-husband and I are closer now than we ever were in the marriage.

Kacie pauses her game, and the four of us admire my nails together.

“Do you like them?” Ellie asks, suddenly shy.

“I love them. They’re beautiful,” I tell her. And they are—every other finger shifting from light pink to a dark, sparkly blue. A subtle gradient, a transition.

I send her the payment on my phone and grab my coat.

“Next time bring your kids!” Kacie calls out.

“Definitely,” I say. “They’d love to see you.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Dan says. I follow him onto the porch, the door clicking gently into place behind us. “I didn’t know Tess was going to come over. How was it?”

“It was…” I shrug, searching for the word. I settle on “Okay.” And it is.

“Let’s hang out and get the kids together soon,” he says as I pull out my keys.

“Sounds great.”

“Look at that light,” he says, pointing toward the mountains.

I follow his gaze—a wash of pale gold fading into a gradient of blue. Something in my chest loosens.

“Beautiful,” I say.