His failure is your fault.
You’ve never deserved him.
“What is it?” he asks, hazel eyes wide with worry. “The baby?”
I shake my head no and smile, though it’s work. He’s the last person who can know about the voice, and yet he’s the only person I’d ever trust enough to help.
He twists one of my fuzzy curls and lightly pulls it before tucking it behind my ear. “I’ll text when I’m coming home. If you need me at all . . .”
This conversation wakes my pride, steels something formerly mushy within me. I want to be closer to who I was before. For both of us. “There is something I need to do.”
“What’s that?” he asks, surprised.
I head to the changing table and almost reach for a folder I hid in a drawer. It contains four articles about Belina’s murder, those I managed to save from the paper without Jack noticing.
You would think of that now.
Terrible mother, not caring for your baby.
This is where trouble always starts for you, girlie.
I refold onesies until my nerve is back. “I have to check on Alec,” I say about my friend. Technically, our friend.
“Not today,” Jack says, softly but firmly. “They’re still investigating Belina’s . . . case.”
“He didn’t respond to my texts. All my calls have gone to voice mail,” I say. “Something isn’t right.”
Jack’s jaw rolls side to side, his tick when he’s trying to solve a problem. “Okay,” he says and leaves. He returns with a present, wrapped in an old Sunday Times. “I was saving this for the weekend.”
I run my finger along the paper’s creases before slowly peeling off the tape. Inside is a long strip of fabric in a gray chevron pattern. It’s soft and has a flex to it. “A baby wrap?”
“There’s a YouTube video on how to do it,” Jack says with his typical confidence. “You should start walking again. You miss it.”
My muscles ache for the activity, but my mind whirls in alarm. “I’m not sure.”
“The baby will be safe, covered completely by the wrap.”
He thinks you’re fat.
You’ve never been his type.
Now you’re repulsive.
Tears burn, but I blink them back. I’m still wearing my maternity jeans because my C-section scar is only now healed over. The soft material of the band is all I can stand against the raw incision.
“Dev, listen. There’s always a reason not to do something.”
I hate it when he sounds like a crappy Tony Robbins, but he’s right. I miss my long walks through the East Side streets and along Blackstone Boulevard. But the cracked sidewalks are too bumpy for the stroller. Or at least that’s what I theorize because I haven’t left our home. Yet.
“She’ll be safe against your chest,” he says too eagerly. “You need to walk again.”
I want the truth to be that I will walk because I want to do it. But it’s actually that I’d bounce on a pogo stick to bring back a sliver of my old self.
She’s long gone, girlie.
This pathetic lump is all that’s left.
As a tear falls, I hear Ester in the bedroom. “Oh no. She’s up,” I say, but Jack takes my arm.
“I got her,” he says. “Let’s try the wrap, please. The video says wearing calms them down.”
I want to argue but let him leave the room instead. Her cries soften as I hear him pick her up. She’s quiet when he walks into the nursery. The sight of her in his arms, their twin black hair, releases some kind of maternal hormone in my brain, and I can breathe again.
“Let me put her down,” he says. “We’ll get the wrap on you first.”
She almost killed you.
He wishes she would have.
Not the first person to love you and then wish you were dead.
“She’ll wake up,” I say too loudly.
He dips his forehead, as if stepping into a windstorm, and continues with his plan. As he eases her into the crib, she does not cry. My fingers flex to check to be sure she’s breathing. She always cries when I put her in the crib.
Jack is grinning victoriously as he faces me. “Okay?” he asks.
I can only nod.
“First step is like a tube top,” he begins as he finds the center and wraps the fabric across my chest. “Then cross it in the back. Pull it over your shoulders like a parachute. Then tuck each side through the tube top.” The fabric not wrapped around me only just touches the floor. “It needs to be tight,” he says as he’s pulling. “For her head and neck support.”
I purse my lips as if he’s told me something new. As if there’s a corner of Pinterest and mom blogs and local “kangaroo care” Facebook groups I haven’t analyzed for the leading ways to baby wear. I made notes, observing moms and nannies wearing babies (ring sling versus soft wrap versus carrier versus carrier with insert).
Jack may have guessed as much, but he knew the most relevant fact: I hadn’t pulled the trigger on a carrier.
In the long mirror across the room, I watch him finish tying the wrap as efficiently as his double Windsor. My heart aches with gratitude.
“Okay, now for baby girl.” He hurries over to Ester, still quiet in the crib. He doesn’t bounce her but is gentle.
He’s going to drop her.
Her tiny skull will crack open on this cheap rug.
“Bend over a touch, babe.” He directs me slightly forward so the tube top becomes a pouch. He slides Ester against me, and my arms come around her small body.
He tightens the fabric and wraps it around my waist a few times before finishing with a knot.
I take a deep breath, so relieved to have her close. “This is nice,” I whisper. I snuggle her against my breasts, regretting I didn’t pump as soon as I got her to nap.
“You’re ready,” he says as if assuring us both. He gently slides an organic cotton knit hat over her black hair. “Wear your maternity coat, and zip her up.”
He’s impressed me with his present, a solution for how I can finally check on Alec. My chest warms at the idea of Jack caring about me. It never stops being a surprise.
I keep my arms protectively wrapped around Ester, so she’s able to nuzzle into my chest. I bend my neck to make sure I can kiss the top of her head, one of a dozen safety tips I remember.
I stare at both of us in the mirror. Jack watches me, likely wondering if I’ll do something odd. The kind of behavior that will lead him to make excuses for missing the big meeting and stay with me. A week or two ago, I’d have been oblivious to his attention. I’m getting better. A bit more sleep, and who knows? Maybe the voice will leave too.
I step toward the hallway. “Help me into my coat?”
He is close behind and keeps a steady hand on my back as we ease down the stairs as if they’re covered in ice. My C-section scar burns, but I don’t let on. The real pain is when we reach the landing where there’s a blank spot on the wall. Ester’s birth photo should be there, both Jack and I proud but exhausted, beaming at the camera. But with the emergency surgery, her NICU stay, and my long recovery, it’s blank. I couldn’t even muster the energy for two-month photos.
You don’t love her like a real mother would.