The Baby Favor

by Andrea Laurence

  She wrapped up in her silk robe and crept downstairs as quietly as she could. As she did every morning, she started a pot of coffee, took her vitamins and stared blankly into the refrigerator for something to eat. When she found nothing, she shut the fridge and found herself looking at the nursery door just beyond it.

  Last night, with Luna crying, she’d ignored the sense of anxiety that normally kept her from going inside that room. She’d suppressed it all, scooped the crying infant from her crib, changed her diaper and run out into the living room as quickly as she could. She hadn’t allowed herself to look around at the cheery blue walls, the stuffed animals on the shelves or the fabric sign over the crib that read “Evan.” She didn’t need to. She knew every inch of that room despite having not gone in it in nearly fourteen months.

  This morning, there was no baby crying. No reason for her to charge in. Even so, she wanted to check on Luna while the coffee was brewing. She went to the door and stopped. It was harder than she’d expected to reach out and grab the doorknob without Luna’s cry urging her on. It was a simple action, yet an important one for her. The only sound in the whole house seemed to be her heart pounding in her chest as she moved her hand closer. As her fingers wrapped around the cold metal, she hesitated again.

  Scarlet didn’t know why this room meant so much. Why it was so important. It felt like all she had left of Evan, but that wasn’t really true. He wasn’t in that room. It was just wasted space filled with unused baby things. At least that was what Mason had tried to tell her.

  A few months after they lost Evan, he’d encouraged her to redecorate. If they weren’t going to try to adopt again, what was the point of keeping it a nursery? They could turn it into a home gym. Or a library. Or a storage room. He didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t a pale blue shrine to the child they’d lost. Scarlet had been aghast at the mere suggestion. That was where the conversation had stopped until Luna needed a place to stay.

  He was right. She knew that. Taking a deep breath, Scarlet turned the knob, allowing the door to click open. The early-morning sunlight streamed in through the window, highlighting the crib and the very awake baby in it. Luna had used the rails of her crib to pull herself up and was standing there with a slobbery grin on her face when she saw Scarlet. Apparently, the baby was a morning person.

  “What are you doing awake?” Scarlet asked.

  Luna immediately started babbling and bouncing up and down while she held to the rail. Scarlet couldn’t suppress her grin as she watched her niece. She had always been such a happy baby. It was unthinkable that she should have so much tragedy in her life so early. She supposed it was good that Luna wouldn’t remember any of it, but at the same time, she also wouldn’t remember what a good mother Rachel was, or how much Jay doted on his baby girl.

  That was the thought that propelled Scarlet one step, then two steps into the nursery.

  As she got closer, Luna reached out to her to be picked up. Without her grip on the crib, she lost her balance and fell backward, hitting her head with a loud crack on the wooden crib back. The grin vanished, followed by a loud howl of pain and fear. Scarlet didn’t hesitate to rush forward and scoop Luna into her arms. The baby was instantly red-faced with tears streaming down her fat cheeks.

  “Mama-a-a!” Luna wailed, making Scarlet’s chest ache as she thought about the mama who wouldn’t come.

  Scarlet cradled Luna against her breast, rubbing her back and mumbling the first soothing words that came to mind as they rocked back and forth. Gently, she let her hand smooth over the back of Luna’s head as she checked for a cut or a scrape, but she didn’t find any. Luna might have a bit of a knot in a few hours, but mostly she’d just scared herself taking a tumble.

  After just a few minutes with Luna curled up in her arms, the sobbing finally subsided. When Scarlet looked down, Luna was watching her with big blue eyes that were so much like Mason’s. Both he and Jay had the same unusually blue eyes and Luna had inherited them from her daddy. She also had the dark curly hair and dimples of the Spencer side of the family. Scarlet imagined that a stranger would have no problem thinking Mason was Luna’s father.

  It made her chest tighten to think that any babies they could’ve had would have looked like Luna. They would’ve made beautiful babies if they’d been granted the ability to do so. As she looked down at her, Luna reached her fingers up to touch Scarlet’s face. Her eyes started to tear up at the innocent gesture and she felt the last of her resolve starting to crumble.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to keep her distance so she didn’t get too attached to another baby she couldn’t keep. This baby was going to be raised by her husband. Her future ex-husband. Not her. That meant she was at a high risk of getting her heart broken again, the one thing she swore she’d never let herself do. Scarlet knew how she was—any baby turned her to butter. A beautiful, happy baby who needed a mother more than anything in the world? That was impossible to resist. Perhaps she was wasting energy fighting it.

  Once Luna was soothed, Scarlet was able to take a deep breath and realize that she’d been standing in the nursery for a good five minutes. Nothing had happened. It was just a room filled with furniture and things. The specter of her lost baby didn’t haunt her the way she thought it would. It was a relief, and yet the relief was tempered by the fear that she was happily embarking on another path to heartache.

  Looking down at Luna, Scarlet realized there was nothing she could do about it. She could try to stay objective, try to remember that this situation was temporary, but telling herself that she could resist this baby girl was a damn lie. She wanted to smell her baby shampoo and rock her until she fell back to sleep.

  In fact, she decided to do just that. Scarlet walked over to the rocking recliner and sat down for the first time since she’d handed over her adopted son to child services.

  Sitting in the rocker with him had been one of her favorite things. Some nights, Mason had to force her to put Evan in his crib because she wanted to just stay in her chair and hold him all night while he slept. Cradling Luna in her lap now felt different, but still good.

  Before long, Luna had drifted back to sleep and Scarlet felt her own eyelids getting heavy. She closed her eyes for what seemed like a second and a half.

  “Scarlet?” a voice whispered.

  She opened her eyes and saw Mason standing in the doorway of the nursery. He looked just as surprised to see her in the nursery as she was to see him fully dressed in one of his suits and surrounded by late-morning sunlight. Scarlet winced at the glare coming through the window where there had only been soft dawn light a moment before. “What time is it?”

  “After eight. I’ve got to go into the office today. Carroll just left to see the doctor. Will you be okay with Luna by yourself? Do I need to call someone to help?”

  She hadn’t just blinked; she and Luna had both dozed hard for almost two hours. She’d slept better in this chair holding her than she had in months. In a year, even. How was it that having a baby in her arms made her so much more contented and relaxed? Suddenly, it felt silly for her to demand a nanny around to care for Luna while they were staying with her. She obviously didn’t need the help. It was only to keep her from getting too close. She feared that was an unavoidable risk, nanny or no.

  “No, we don’t need help. I’m sure we’ll be okay,” Scarlet said.

  Mason watched her curiously for a moment, narrowing his gaze at the two of them sitting in her rocking chair. “You’re sure? I could call Mom.”

  Scarlet shook her head vigorously. “Don’t you dare drag your mother into this. Really, just go. We’ll be fine. I think we’ll have some Cheerios and maybe a little fruit, then go play on the beach for a bit. It looks like a clear, sunny day for splashing in the ocean. Maybe we’ll even get in the pool if it’s warm enough.”

  “Okay.” Mason seemed reluctant
, but whatever was going on at work would trump his concerns. It always did. You didn’t turn a single store into a national chain by sitting idly by and letting things evolve naturally. “I’ll see you later this afternoon. Call me if you need anything,” he said before slipping from the doorway and disappearing down the hall.

  With him gone, Scarlet looked at Luna. She was awake now and chewing on one slobbery fist. With all that chewing and drooling, she was probably getting some more teeth. She made a mental note to check Luna’s bag for a teething ring she could put in the freezer. “I think someone is hungry. What do you say we get that diaper changed, find us both an outfit for today and have some breakfast? Does that sound good to you?”

  “Dafin!” Luna said.

  “Dolphin?” Scarlet repeated. She was surprised Luna remembered her new word from yesterday. Seeing them must have made quite an impression on her. “Do you want to go see the dolphins again?”

  Luna just grinned, showing off the four little baby teeth that had come in up front. That looked like a yes to her. Scarlet stood up and laid Luna out on the changing table. She unsnapped her onesie pajamas and put on a clean diaper. As she pulled on the last of the new outfit she’d chosen for her, Scarlet eyed the nursery wall. The wall the crib was on had no windows. It was just a big expanse of blue with Evan’s name sign strung across it.

  It was time for that to come down, Scarlet decided. She propped Luna on her hip and reached up to unhook the ribbon that was tied around one nail, then the other. The plush fabric letters fell to the floor in a heap. She held her breath as she looked back up at the now bare wall for the first time since they’d hung that sign over a year ago.

  It felt good. She thought she might burst into tears at the sight of Evan’s sign crumpled on the ground, but it actually made her feel as though a weight had been lifted from her chest. Mason had been right, although she wouldn’t ever admit that to him.

  Taking a step back, she looked around the room. There were some other things in here that were due for a change—baby boy clothes that could be donated, some toys that Luna was too old to be interested in, all that could go to make room for more of Luna’s things. And as for the big empty wall, Scarlet had an idea brewing for that.

  With a satisfied smirk, Scarlet looked at Luna. “I think we’re going to do a little redecorating today.”

  Luna grinned and clapped her chubby little hands together. She was a girl after Scarlet’s own heart.

  * * *

  It ended up being a longer day at the office than Mason anticipated. He had planned to help take care of Luna so Scarlet wouldn’t feel overwhelmed with Carroll gone, but he couldn’t get away, and then he got stuck in the infamous LA traffic.

  Mason wasn’t quite sure what he was going to come home to that day, but he never would’ve bet on what he actually found. Carroll’s car was still gone, making Mason nervous that Scarlet had been alone with Luna all day. He rushed through the front door, then stopped to listen. The living room and kitchen were empty and quiet. He couldn’t see anyone through the wall-to-wall windows along the back of the house, so they weren’t outside on the deck. Then he heard a giggle.

  He set down his briefcase by the door and slipped out of his suit coat. He tossed it over the back of a chair as he made his way toward the nursery. There, he stopped short.

  Finding Scarlet in the nursery that morning had been a surprise. Finding Scarlet back in the nursery—this time on a stepladder with a paintbrush in her hand—was another matter entirely. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of cutoff shorts that made her legs look four feet long. Her hair was pulled up into a messy knot on top of her head, exposing the long line of her neck and shoulders. She wasn’t wearing makeup or even a bra as she worked, but Mason was captivated by her as usual.

  Seeing her like this reminded him of the early days in their marriage when he would interrupt her work because he couldn’t stand not to make love to her right that second. Things had been so easy between them then. Children were a far-off idea, not a recent source of constant heartache. It made him want to go back to the times when he could use his fingertip to play connect the dots with the tiny splatters of blue and green paint that decorated her pale skin after she worked.

  Luna squealed, drawing his attention to where she was sitting and dousing any thoughts of messing around with his estranged wife. Luna was buckled into a bouncy chair on the floor, playing with a Taggies blanket that she seemed to prefer over her head. Behind her was all the nursery furniture that Scarlet had moved to the opposite wall so she had room to paint the mural.

  Not just any mural, but a Scarlet Spencer original of dolphins swimming in an enchanting underwater scene. There was kelp drifting through the water like undersea trees, colorful schools of fish and coral providing highlights against the dark blues and greens of the water...and two half-painted dolphins as the centerpiece of the scene.

  Scarlet had done a couple large-scale murals on the sides of aquariums and such, but she’d turned down repeated requests to paint a mural in a private residence. It made sense that the first one she did was in her own home, though. He just wondered why it had taken over seven years for her to think about doing it here.

  Mason had always loved watching her work. When she was painting, her focus was 100 percent on her piece. Her canvases were typically so large that painting was almost like a ballet for her—reaching and turning and flicking her wrists to apply color in just the right place. When they had Evan, she switched to nontoxic paints and put an air purifier in her studio because she couldn’t stand being apart from him long enough to work. She would swaddle him in a Boba Wrap, tucked against her chest, and he would sleep happily while she painted. Watching them move together was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

  And watching her try to paint after they lost him was one of the most heartbreaking things he’d ever witnessed. He was suffering from the loss of their son, too, but somehow watching Scarlet go through her stages of grief had been harder than feeling it himself. Perhaps because he blamed himself for all of it. Somehow, he’d managed to hurt—not even hurt, nearly destroy—the one person he loved more than anything else. More than himself. That was why he’d walked away to give her a chance to be happy.

  Capturing this perfect moment made him glad to see her so light of spirit again, but it also scared him. Was bringing Luna into her life temporarily going to hurt her again? Was coming back here with Luna going to ruin everything he’d done to help Scarlet move on with her life?

  He hadn’t thought about it that way when he asked her to play along with the marriage for Jay’s sake. He’d only been focused on his grieving brother. When Scarlet took a distant stance from him and Luna, he’d almost been offended by it. But now that he saw what it truly meant for her to let her guard down and let Luna, at least, into her life, he understood how much he’d really asked of her.

  He felt guilty, but it was too late to change it now. All he could do was hope that being with Luna for a few weeks would help her heal and move on from losing Evan. Maybe it would even inspire her to find that new family with someone who could give her the biological children that she wanted.

  Mason watched Scarlet dip her brush into a gray paint and start to fill in the space where one of the dolphins would be. He knew from watching her that there would be layer after layer of color and highlight on top of this, but it was a start. Considering she’d begun the mural when he left for work, she was moving along amazingly fast. That typically took a big dose of inspiration for Scarlet.

  “Wow,” he said, the words slipping from his lips.

  Scarlet’s brush hand stiffened and pulled away before she turned to look at him. She smiled and set the brush on the tray so it didn’t drip down the wall and ruin her work. “Hello there. I didn’t hear you come in. Luna and I have been very busy today.”

  “I noticed. What’s all
this about?” he asked.

  Scarlet climbed slowly down the stepladder and wiped her hands on the jean shorts that were already speckled with a million different colors of paint. Before she could answer, Luna pointed at the wall and said, “Dafin!”

  They both looked at Luna and smiled wide. “That, right there,” Scarlet said, “is what it’s all about. That’s all she’s been saying since she saw that pod yesterday. Today I decided that this room needs a face-lift and who better to paint her a mural with dolphins than me?”

  It all seemed perfectly logical when she said it, and if he hadn’t battled with Scarlet for months over changing this very same room, he might be able to follow along. Instead, his gaze fell on the stack of boxes and bags in the corner. Evan’s things. “What about all that?” He gestured to the pile.

  Scarlet followed his gaze and nodded. “We’re starting fresh. Luna isn’t going to use any of that stuff, so I decided to donate it to someone who could. Right now, it’s just in her way. Isn’t it?”

  She turned her attention to Luna in her bouncy chair. Luna grinned and flung her Taggies blanket out of reach. Scarlet unsnapped Luna’s safety belt and lifted her up out of the seat. As she held her, Luna reached out to touch a smear of dried blue paint across Scarlet’s cheek.

  “Am I messy?” she asked, but the baby just grinned. Instead, she turned to Mason. “Do I need to hose down in the yard?”

  “It’s not that bad. I think the shower will be adequate.”

  Scarlet frowned and walked over to the mirror that was attached to the dresser. “You’re a liar. I’m an absolute mess.”

  Mason just shrugged. “You know I always liked you messy. Just like you always liked me with saltwater hair and wet-suit tan lines.”