Greg pulled into the hospital annex parking lot, found a spot and turned to Daisy. “So,” he said. “Last class before the big event.”
She nodded, but seemed distracted as she levered herself out of the car. Greg suspected it was probably because her mother had asked to accompany them today. Sophie had promised to be present when the baby came, and in order to do so, she had to attend at least one class. As she got out of the backseat, Greg saw the flicker of apprehension in his ex-wife’s eyes. Welcome to my world, he thought. Hell, he’d felt that same fright, he felt it every single day. But he knew avoiding it wouldn’t make it go away.
As the three of them walked toward the community center adjacent to the hospital, he felt an unexpected sense of detachment. He hadn’t known what it would be like when Sophie arrived. He’d braced himself for a storm of hurt, the kind of hurt that burned right through to the soul, which was what he’d felt the final year before the divorce, when it became clear to both of them that the marriage was over. Yet the pain never came. He found himself capable of looking at Sophie and seeing a person he’d once loved but didn’t any longer. As the mother of his children, she owned whole chapters of his life, but she didn’t own him. They knew each other in ways they’d never know anyone else, and that was all right. He was no longer being civil to her for the sake of the children. It was simply because he had moved on.
When that had happened, he couldn’t say. He suspected it had been a gradual process of figuring out who he was when he wasn’t part of a couple and moving on from there. And lately, of course, he was distracted by something far more delectable—Nina Romano.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Daisy remarked as they went inside.
“Do I?” Greg hadn’t realized he was smiling.
“I guess you’re pretty glad this is almost over,” Daisy said, supplying him with an excuse.
“Just, um, looking forward to the next stage,” he said, lying through his teeth as he held open the door for Daisy and her mother. The thought sobered him, even though his mind lingered on Nina. His feelings for her hadn’t exploded overnight. They’d been growing for a long time, but in a dark, unacknowledged place. Once he finally cut them loose, they were like a force beyond his control, a forest fire, an obsession.
He thought about her all the damn time, even now, as he and his ex and their pregnant daughter headed for the floor mats in front of the video screen.
Focus, Greg reminded himself. All this was about Daisy. To that end, he introduced Sophie to Barbara Machesky, the childbirth instructor. Barbara was, at first glance, the quintessential, crunchy-granola, Birkenstock-wearing New Age childbirth guru—at least, that was the first impression she projected. Later, her students would discover her no-nonsense, drill-sergeant nature. Still, the contrast between her and Sophie, in her European-designer outfit and beauty-parlor-blond hair, was almost comical, and Greg sensed Sophie’s opinion forming.
His ex, he remembered, had a way of instantly sizing people up, passing judgment with the swiftness of a falling guillotine. He had always loved it when she got it wrong, which she was in the process of doing right now, with Barbara. “Daisy tells me she’s learned so much from you,” Sophie said in the tone she used with unsatisfactory schoolteachers and household help.
“You don’t say,” Barbara replied. She’d clearly caught the condescension. Her students, Greg included, were completely devoted to her. She inspired confidence in all of them, from the emigrant couple from Korea to Daisy, who was the youngest in the class. “Take a seat, everyone. We’re down a pair today. Randy and Gretchen’s little girl was born last Wednesday, and they’re all doing fine.”
The news was greeted with murmurs of appreciation. Bonds had formed in the class, which was to be expected, given that they were all about to experience the same life-changing event. It was an interesting enough mix—married transplants from the city, a gay couple and their relentlessly cheerful surrogate, an unhappy pair who seemed grimly determined that the baby would fix their marriage, a tattooed teenager who had so many facial piercings she looked as though she’d fallen headfirst into a tackle box. Randy and Gretchen had been nicknamed the Honeymooners, since they fought and loved with equal ferocity. Sophie took everyone in with a sweeping glance.
Greg had watched his son being born, he’d cried the moment it happened, but a part of him had dwelled in blissful ignorance. Coming here once a week with Daisy was quite a different experience. He found himself focusing on all the things that might go wrong—a compressed cord, abnormal presentation, bleeding, infection…His head was filled with all the terrors in the world, and he had to act as though everything was going to be fine.
“Since this is the last class in this cycle, let’s review final-stage labor and delivery,” Barbara said, her brisk tone and downstate accent belying her mellow exterior. She put a list up on the screen. “Let’s focus on pushing….”
Greg had a hard time focusing, period, even when Barbara moved on to topics such as bringing the baby home. With each passing day, the idea that Daisy was going to give birth became more and more real to him. The notion of a baby in the house—a new baby boy—was overwhelming.
This is going to be so cool, he thought.
Daisy caught a glimpse of herself in the window of the store where they’d stopped on the way home from class. As always, the image startled her. I’m a linebacker, she thought, studying her pudgy face and neck, her thick legs and ankles under a sundress the size of a circus tent.
“Are you all right, honey?” her mom asked, taking her hand.
I was until a second ago. Daisy didn’t say so aloud, but damn. It was bad enough looking at all the weight she’d put on. When her mother—her gorgeous, perfect, skinny mother—stood next to her, it made Daisy look like a parade float.
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”
She observed her parents acting like polite strangers, and it made her incredibly sad. The thing about this divorce was, there was no villain. Just two people who couldn’t live together anymore, no matter what. Although nearly a year had passed since the family had shattered apart, Daisy still felt the occasional sting of pain. Maybe she always would. She still felt pretty bad about the way it had worked out for her mom. Last fall, when all the broken pieces were making a landing, there had been endless discussions—okay, fights—about where Daisy and Max would go and who would be in charge and what was best for the kids. Mom had wanted Max and Daisy with her, of course. Since the mother was almost always the default custodial parent, it was decided that they’d go with her.
But there was a catch. Mom was saving the world. More specifically, she was saving a small principality in southern Africa, prosecuting a warlord for crimes against humanity. People would live or die depending on the outcome of the case. So in order for Mom to continue her work, she had to live in The Hague, home of the International Criminal Court. She’d had a school all picked out for Max and Daisy, an international school any kid should feel privileged to attend. It should have been simple—a divorce, the kids go with Mom. Happened every day.
Disaster. Max had lasted mere days in the hostile environment before total meltdown; Daisy hadn’t gone much longer, getting violently ill. Later, of course, they would all figure out that it was the pregnancy. Daisy was still haunted by the look on her mom’s face when she and Max said they wanted—needed—to live with their dad and move to Avalon. The Bellamy family had a long, distinguished history in the town. It was a safe place to adjust to the changes in their lives. And Mom, usually such a fighter, spent hours in consultation with their family therapist, and then said she understood. Given the trauma of the divorce, she didn’t want to make things worse by forcing her kids to live an ocean away in a world of strangers. But neither could she turn her back on the case to which she’d devoted herself, even though she said she would.
Daisy could still remember the tremor in her mom’s voice when she said, “I’ll stay in the States with you guys.” Both Daisy and Max recognized her turmoil.
And both Daisy and Max knew it would never work, their mother trying to turn her back on her mission. Daisy, in a moment of cruelty that still shamed her, did her part by telling Mom it was pointless for her to move back to the States when they wanted to live with their dad, anyway.
So Mom made the transatlantic flight to see them every few weeks, grimly racking up the frequent flyer points. The visits were often strained and forced, weighed down by her mom’s guilt, Max’s hurt and Daisy’s defiance. Max had gone to visit Mom a few times, but not Daisy, although the invitation remained open. Cynically, Daisy figured the fact that her kids went with their dad after the divorce seriously messed with Mom’s constant struggle to be perfect—the perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect international jet-setting lawyer saving the world. The thing her mom finally had to accept was that she couldn’t be perfect at everything. Just some things.
But that didn’t stop her from trying to be the perfect grandmother, which was the primary reason for the current outing.
The store was called New Beginnings, and it billed itself as one-stop shopping for expectant parents. Daisy already had the basics—crib, carseat, carrier—and her cousins had given her a shower worthy of a royal princess, but her mother had insisted on getting the layette. Daisy figured, why the heck not? Her mom was dying to do something, and she was better at shopping than anyone Daisy knew.
Walking between her parents, Daisy felt a brief, false flash of security that took her back to childhood days when things were so much simpler. After her parents had first separated, Daisy had entertained the idea that maybe they’d change their minds, get back together. She knew better now, though. But not Max. He still lived for the fantasy that his parents would reconcile. Pretty soon, Max would know what their mom had figured out a long time ago. A reconciliation was no longer an option. That train had left the station.
Daisy knew that what she had suspected for a while, what she’d hoped for, had come true. Dad was with Nina. A couple of nights ago, Daisy had gotten up for the hundred-and-seventy-fourth bathroom break and she’d heard a noise. It was her dad, coming in the back door at like 4:00 a.m. He’d told her he heard raccoons in the trash.
Yeah, right.
She saw a salesclerk eyeing the three of them. The clerk was probably trying to figure out what the deal was. Her parents didn’t look anything like grandparents-to-be. An observer might think they were adoptive parents, and that Daisy was going to give them her baby.
Such a thing wasn’t unheard of. The family-planning counselor encouraged her to explore adoption, including intra-family. Daisy had done so, gamely entertaining the notion for, oh, say, ten seconds before concluding that it wouldn’t work. It was one of the few choices in this ordeal that she’d found easy. Early on, she’d contemplated terminating the pregnancy, but she couldn’t do it. Then, once she committed to keeping the baby, she was determined to keep the baby.
She wished she could experience an indisputable, firm conviction about her future, a feeling so strong she heard music playing in her head, the way girls did in made-for-TV movies. No such luck. Sure, she’d made the decision and she was going to stick by it, but that didn’t mean she knew what the hell she was doing.
She’d been trying to figure out a way to tell her parents that Logan O’Donnell had refused to surrender all parental rights. He’d shown up out of the blue, and his reaction to the situation had been completely unexpected. He not only refused to accept her terms, but he’d put forth some terms of his own. Which, of course, she’d refused to consider. So they were at an impasse, and Daisy didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t ready to discuss any of this with her parents.
There was one topic she needed to talk to them about, though. Her future. Still, she kept putting it off, certain her dad would blow a gasket when he heard what she was planning.
Her mom held up a sailor suit the size of a Cabbage Patch doll. “What do you think?”
“Adorable,” Daisy said. Maybe it was hormones, but just the sight of baby clothes made her feel all soft and mushy inside.
“So we’re liking the sailor theme?” Mom asked.
“Sure,” said Daisy.
Her dad was checking out crib mobiles and seemed sold on the golf-themed model. The tension between her mom and dad hummed like an incoming storm. Daisy felt stretched between them like one of those rubber-armed tug-of-war dolls. Why had she thought coming here together was a good idea?
Because, married or not, they were her parents. They were Emile’s grandparents. They’d better get used to the idea.