“Thank you, Laura,” Neil said, the dark circles under his eyes explanation enough for his weary tone.
Laura handed me the baby monitor. “I’ll go, then, if you don’t need anything else.”
“Thanks. Really, thanks so much for helping out.” I felt like I should have given her a hug, but I was so, so done with people touching me.
She took her coat from the closet and was pulling it on when she said, “Oh, a delivery came while you were gone. Baby stuff? There were some duplicates of things she already has at the house. If you want, I could make a list of what she already has, so you’re not buying everything a billion times.”
Neil’s expression softened. “Thank you. That would be very helpful.”
“Okay, well.” She backed toward the door. “I’ll see you…later.”
“We’ll be in touch,” I assured her. We had to give her a paycheck and references.
The apartment was so quiet. Everything was quiet lately. The noise and excitement of the gala last week seemed like a dream I’d had, and I’d woken up to this sad, tired vacuum where sound ceased to exist. I never thought my nerves would be so shot from too much quiet.
“I’m starving.” Neil’s announcement woke up my stomach, too.
“Do you want me to order something in?” I asked, almost giddy at the idea of talking on the phone to a stranger, just for the contact with the outside, non-grieving world.
“No. No, I think I’ll make something,” he said, his voice lifting at the prospect. “We’ve been eating so much take out this week. And to be quite tastelessly honest, I’m…bored.”
“Oh?” My eyebrows shot up. “I guess I figured since we’ve been so busy—”
“Busy isn’t necessarily interesting,” he pointed out, loosening his tie. “I didn’t find a moment of this week enjoyable or entertaining.”
“I didn’t think you did.” It felt safe to smile now, like we could take our devastation faces off in private. But we kept them handy, like sunglasses we’d just pushed onto our heads. “Let’s get changed first, though. Because these shoes are killing me.”
“Yes, and I feel as though funerals follow you home on your clothes,” he said as we went to the bedroom. “Every time I look at my cufflinks, I remember that I was just at my daughter’s funeral. I might just throw this pair in the bin.”
I toed off my pumps and wriggled my stockinged feet against the carpet. “It would be a shame to see them go. But it’s up to you.”
“Oh, Sophie. Please stop,” he said softly.
My heart leapt to my throat. I’d done something wrong, said something, when all I’d wanted was to be supportive and—
“You needn’t be so cautious with me,” he went on. “I’m not going to burst into hysterics if you tell me not to throw away my cufflinks. You’ve been walking on eggshells with me for days, now.”
“I was trying to be respectful of your feelings and your… I don’t know, I just don’t want to hurt you more,” I sputtered.
“Believe me when I tell you that nothing you could do or say would ever hurt me more than the death of my child is hurting me, now.” He stated it so plainly that it was more fact than recrimination. “Besides, what good has all of that solicitous concern done for you?”
If he was referring to my long-built up meltdown at the crematorium chapel… “You have a point.”
“I want things to be normal, again,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “Or, I want them to be the normal that they’ll become.”
“You want to rush straight to the new normal,” I reframed it for him. “But you’re kind of forgetting that stuff like this takes transition. You can’t just take off that suit and finish being shaken by this. And we’ve got a baby now—”
Holy shit. Holy shit, we had a baby now.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “And aren’t you looking forward to a time when that sentence won’t send you into clinical shock?”
“I’m not in shock,” I protested. Yeah, I couldn’t feel my face, but I wasn’t in shock.
“You’re as pale as my shirt,” he said, pinching the garment outward in demonstration as he worked the buttons.
“Be that as it may,” I replied with a roll of my eyes, “I’m worried that you’re going to try to force yourself to feel all better, and it’s going to blow up in your face.”
Probably not the best turn of phrase, considering my suicide fears. At least, I knew the only guns Neil owned were for hunting weird fat birds in Iceland, and those were locked up at his brother’s house.
Neil looked down at his hands as he finished with his buttons. “Sophie… I’m not going to force myself to feel better about this. I will never feel better about this.”
That swelling pain under my ribs flared to life, again. Neil wasn’t trying to make things “normal” so he could ignore the grieving process. He was trying to incorporate his grief into his life, because it would always be there.
The lump in my throat made it difficult to speak. “I don’t have any idea what you must be going through. I’m never going to have any idea. So, if I’m doing something wrong, or I’m not helpful… I want to be. I just don’t know how.”
“I don’t know how to do this, either,” he admitted. “I suppose, just like everything else, we’ll have to muddle through together.”
He opened his arms to me, and we held each other, not for the last time that day.
* * * *
I was sleeping like a bear in January when soft humming crackled over the baby monitor. Although Olivia had been living with us for less than a week, the broadcast frequency of the monitor somehow triggered my brain into full wakefulness. I felt across the bed. As I could have predicted, Neil was already up.
Although I still didn’t have a maternal bone in my body—and I’d begun to suspect that I never would—I wasn’t going to let Neil bear the brunt of caring for Olivia.
I yawned as I stumbled from the room, rubbing my bare arms. It wasn’t cold in the apartment, but my skin was still warm from sleep. Soft light spilled from the door to Emma’s room, and I stopped, a hand on the frame, to look in.
Neil stood in front of the window, looking out at the skyline on the other side of the park. He held Olivia against his shoulder, gently bouncing her while he murmured a soft lullaby.
My heart ached at the thought of him once holding Emma like this. He’d put her picture on the dresser, the “we’re expecting” photo she’d sent out to announce the pregnancy. In it, Michael stood behind her, his arms wrapped protectively around her stomach.
Olivia was only eight months old. They’d spent more time with her during the pregnancy than they had after she’d been born. That unfairness left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I swallowed thickly. It didn’t help.
Though Olivia had spent her first couple of nights in her playpen in our bedroom, pulled up close to Neil’s side of the bed, he had worried about the soft sides, whether or not they would be safe with her habit of snuggling her face into them, so we’d had a crib delivered. It was the same model as the one she had in her nursery, which was currently in the hands of the moving company who would be bringing her things to Sagaponack. It was astounding how much stuff she’d already amassed in her little life. Now, living with us, she’d be living the same life Emma had as a child, with her very own bedroom in a ton of different houses.
As I watched, Neil carefully adjusted Olivia against his shoulder, one big hand coming up to cup the back of her head.
He looked up, half turning to mouth, “Is she sleeping?”
I couldn’t help but smile at Olivia’s wide blue eyes staring at me over her grandfather’s shoulder.
“Not even a little.” I came into the room to stand beside them. For the first few nights Olivia had been with us, I’d felt oddly removed from the entire situation. It seemed so intimate, to care for someone else’s child. It felt, still felt, like Emma was in the room with us, judging me for not loving her daughter as much as she had. But the more
time I spent with Olivia, the more silly I found that idea. There was no way anyone would ever love Olivia more than her parents had, but I was certain I would never love any other child on the planet as much as I loved Olivia. I’d known that from the moment she’d been born.
At first, I’d just thought Neil was exhausted, and that was why red ringed his eyes. But, with the baby in his arms, he couldn’t wipe away the tears that spilled down his cheeks. Not that he would have hidden them from me, in the first place.
“Do you need me to take her?” I asked, putting my hand on his arm.
“No.” He gave me a small smile, despite his tears. “Honestly, I didn’t need to come in here. She was only fussing a little, and she probably would have gone right back to sleep. I just needed to hold her.”
We stood in silence together, looking out at the New York night.
“I don’t know how to do this, Sophie.” His shoulders slumped. It was the weight of his grief pressing him down.
“Well, I don’t either.” I tried to smile, but I felt the tears at the corners of my eyes. “We can figure it out.”
“I don’t know how to raise another person’s child.” He kissed Olivia’s head. “This was supposed to be Emma’s job, and Michael’s. I was just on standby to give her toys and make her like me.”
“Right, and now, I’m sure you’ll never buy her a single toy. Or pony.” That was an inevitability now that Emma wasn’t around to object to it. “You know how to be a father. You did a good job with Emma. You’ll do a good job with Olivia.”
“Exactly, I knew how to be father. Not a grandfather stepping into a father’s shoes.”
“Hey, we can do this.” He would probably be much better at it than I would, but I was sure I could get by, once I got some experience under my belt.
“I’m so sorry, Sophie,” he said softly, holding my gaze with his steady green eyes. “I know you never wanted children.”
“Don’t say that. Not when she can hear,” I said, laying my hand over his on Olivia’s back. I would never let her doubt, not for a millisecond, that we loved her and that she wasn’t just welcome, but needed, in our lives. “Sometimes, plans change, okay? And we don’t have to do this alone. My mom lives way too close to us, so I can always call on her. You were a great dad, so I can pick up some pointers from you. And it’s not just us. Valerie is going to be a part of this.”
“Ah, Valerie, yes. I’m sure you’re thrilled at that prospect,” he said with a grim laugh.
“Okay, I know I’m supposed to be like, ‘don’t let Olivia know that I don’t like Valerie,’ but she’s going to be smart. She’ll figure it out.”
“You’re very bad at disguising it,” Neil reminded me, as if I needed reminding.
“I’ll try to hone my skills. Olivia is lucky. Not every kid gets three parental figures who want so badly to succeed in raising her.” I rose on my tiptoes to kiss Olivia’s head. There was no doubt in my mind that, maternal instinct or not, I’d love this kid. I just wouldn’t ever feel like a mom. It was going to take a while to feel like I had the right.
Neil had clearly been thinking along those same lines. He lowered Olivia into her crib and started her mobile spinning, then said softly, “I feel guilty, every time I feed her, or get up with her in the night. It means Emma isn’t here. I’m not supposed to be doing the midnight check-ins, Emma and Michael are. And the guilt is just…”
He stopped and looked down, and I saw a tear fall. I put my arms around him, not knowing what else to do. He returned my embrace, his arms closing around me hard.
After the week we’d had, we’d gotten really good at holding each other up.
When he straightened and wiped his eyes, I felt like I had to say something to make him smile. “Maybe this isn’t the right time to bring it up, but you do look real, real sexy holding a baby.”
He snorted. “Yes, well, try to remember that when I’m covered in baby sick.”
Maybe it was gruesome, to be joking when we’d just that morning been at Emma and Michael’s funeral, but being near Olivia made everything seem a little more hopeful.
Right now, hope was the only thing we had to keep us together.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The weeks following the funeral were the type of roller coaster that breaks down and firemen have to come to the amusement park to help the riders safely walk down from the top. There were days when Neil was a wreck, obviously. There were days when I was a wreck. But having Olivia there meant neither of us could be a wreck at the same time, and that seemed, if not healthy, at least convenient.
I’d closed up my home office; my Long Island staff now either telecommuted or regular commuted, and I wasn’t making the trip into the city as much, anymore. Things with me and Deja were…tense. She tried to be understanding, but her patience was wearing thin. We’d started the magazine together, and now, she was basically running the show on her own, while I was working just when I felt like it.
To assuage my guilt, I paid out-of-pocket for her and six of our staffers to go and cover Paris Fashion Week. They even took the private jet.
The truth was, if I’d been worried about juggling work and family when the magazine had first started, it was ten times worse, now. I’d never had to care for an infant before. Beyond changing Olivia’s diaper, feeding her an occasional bottle, and keeping her from rolling off furniture, I had no clue what I was doing. Even all the young cousins who had always been around my grandparents’ house when I was little hadn’t prepared me for the sheer panic of being totally in charge of another human life.
The first few weeks were heartbreaking. Any time anyone would open the kitchen door or enter a room, Olivia’s little head would whip around to see who it was. To see if Emma or Michael were coming back. She cried more almost every night, and Neil would stay up with her, walking circles around the nursery or rocking her. He talked to her and read her picture books, and that usually worked to calm her down. More than once, I’d woken up to hear Olivia grunting and whining while Neil cooed, “Look, Olivia. See the kanína?” which I assumed was Icelandic for rabbit, since her favorite book seemed to be Pat the Bunny.
Watching Neil with Olivia, how he spoke to her, how he would point out things I would never think to explain to a baby, only drove home how insufficient my skills were.
“See?” he said to her one day as we stood in the kitchen. “See what Sophie is doing? Hot.”
“Thanks,” I said, automatically. Then, “Oh. You’re talking about the stove.”
“I could be talking about both.” He winked at me. Then, to reiterate, he pointed at the stove and said gently, “Hot. Ouch.”
“This is why I’m glad we didn’t have kids of our own. They would all be dead because I wouldn’t think of stuff like, ‘hey, don’t touch the stove.’” I lifted the baggie of breast milk from the boiling water. Case in point, I’d tried to microwave the donor milk once. Neil caught me just in time and explained patiently about microwaves and hot spots.
At six months old, Emma had introduced some solids into Olivia’s diet, but since her parents’ deaths, Olivia had been less and less interested in real food. She still took a bottle—and would, Neil assured me, for a while—but other things about her were regressing, too. She was almost nine months old, and aging in reverse. She’d started to crawl before, but now, she just rolled over. She barely even sat up, anymore. The pediatrician had warned us to expect that after such a big emotional trauma, but it still freaked me out. Was it something we were doing? Could we prevent it if we worked harder?
“I think I’m going to mash up some avocado,” I said, surprising myself with a loud yawn. “And I still have to go over that massive PDF of the March issue. I’m way behind.”
Neil made a face at my dietary suggestion. “Babies are truly the most ill-treated creatures. You’re really going to spoon that disgusting green slime into her poor little mouth?”
“She loves it,” I told him with a warning glare that was only half in je
st. I was pretty sensitive about the whole raising-a-baby-thing. “Besides, no matter what you put into her poor little mouth, it all turns into green slime, anyway.”
Olivia leaned away from Neil, toward me, whimpering in what I recognized as her pre-cry warning system. He shifted her in his arms and said, “Take her, I’ll finish this and mash up that abhorrent fruit.”
I took her in my arms and smelled exactly why she’d been fussy, and why he’d handed her off. “Damn it, Neil!”
“Cursing,” he reminded me in a pleasant sing-song. “Green slime in, green slime out. It’s the circle of life, really.”
“Oh…fudge you!” I laughed and headed for the nursery. When we were out of earshot, I kissed her fat little cheek. “Your afi is a real pain in the ass, sometimes.”
The nursery was, in Neil’s opinion, too far from the master bedroom, despite being the only other bedroom on the main floor. He planned to remodel the bonus room and full bath beside it into a small suite for the nanny we still hadn’t gotten around to hiring. For the time being, there was a lovely sleigh-style daybed already in place for when Olivia got old enough to use it, and Neil occasionally spent the night in the nursery with her.
The room still smelled faintly of fresh paint and new carpet, both a baby pink chosen by Neil. I hadn’t objected to them, but I was a little disappointed. I would have liked to pair the color with a lovely chocolate brown trim, or some striped wainscoting. But, when Olivia got old enough to show a preference for decorating, the point would be moot; I would back her on every battle.
The fierce protective instinct I’d developed in spite of my lack of parental instinct surprised me. I was getting all mentally riled up over hypothetical future paint color fights with my husband on this baby’s behalf.
My phone pinged from my back pocket. I laid Olivia on the changing table and pulled the phone from my pocket one-handed, the other on her tummy so she couldn’t flip or squirm away. She squawked as I unlocked my screen.
The Baby (The Boss #5) Page 11
