“Is he asleep?” Savilla asked, peeking over my shoulder. Her expression was awe-filled.
“Nope,” I answered.
The baby, whom I calculated must be about six weeks old based on when Aunt DeeDee had mentioned the birth, gazed up at us with wide eyes. Then his face began to crumple into a whimper, as if to say that I was not the person he would choose to hold him, which then made me afraid that he was about to let out a new round of wails.
I held him away from my body as a kind of offering to Lou, who picked up his popcorn bucket and shook his head.
“What? Don’t you like kids?” I tried to say the question in a way that didn’t show my own aversion.
“They’re fine on a case-by-case basis,” he grumbled, as he shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
I thought that might be a pretty good summary of my own feelings, but I couldn’t exactly leave the kid on the counter, tucked in among the bags of candy.
“He’s probably just hungry,” Savilla said, extending her hands. “Give him to me.”
I hadn’t even considered that as an option. Savilla had never seemed the baby type. If someone offered her a new pair of Manolo Blahniks or a piece from Harry Winston, sure. But a baby?
The infant had found his fist and was rapidly shaking his little head in sporadic jerks. I maneuvered the baby into Savilla’s arms while I fumbled with the diaper bag, finally finding the bottle in a refrigerated compartment.
“You’ve got to warm it up,” Savilla informed us, turning toLou. “Can you get a large cup of hot water? We’ll drop the bottle in for two or three minutes.”
He went behind the counter to do as bid, and Savilla put the baby on her shoulder, pacing with a bouncing march back and forth across the lobby.
“How do you know how to do that?” I asked.
“Babysitting,” she said with a lifted shoulder, as if it wasn’t a surprise that an heiress had spent time working for a few dollars an hour as a babysitter at one point in her life. She cooed down at the infant, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she rubbed her cheek against his fuzzy bald head. “Ollie isn’t my first wailing baby. No, he isn’t.”
For the first time, I noticed a piece of tape with all capital letters written across the front of the diaper bag. I pointed it out to Savilla. “His name is Oliver.”
“Oh, I know,” Savilla said easily. “But he goes by Ollie. I visited him in the NICU and brought him a stuffed bunny with his name stitched along the ear. It’s blue and fuzzy and so cuddlicious,” she continued. Then, catching my bemused expression: “What? Valerie and I are friends—or, at least, friendly-ish.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised by the clarification. Honestly, the Valerie I’d known in high school didn’t have many true friends. Frenemies, sure, but she was the kind of girl who pushed people away eventually.
“Valerie has been stressed and lonely, so I’ve invited her to The Rose for lunch a couple of times.” Savilla sniffed the top of Ollie’s head, grinning at him as if she’d won him as a prize. “I think she and Will are going through a rough patch too. He’s constantly looking for work to pay the hospital bills, and Valerie feels”—she considered the best word—“adrift.”
Lou brought the warmed bottle, and Savilla nestled the baby into the crook of her arm before plopping the formula into Ollie’s eager mouth.
“Good luck,” Lou said. “If you keep him quiet, you two can head back inside.”
Lou sounded as if he was planning to keep an eye on us, even if it was just to make sure the baby didn’t spit up in his theater.
We followed him into the dark space. The first thing I saw was Valerie Hurt in the back row, her frame slouched in the seat, her head tilted at an awkward angle.
She was fast asleep.
FOURTEEN
As the credits rolled and we tossed candy and popcorn boxes into the trash, I was still determined that this night would proceed as planned.
“Whose baby is that?” Jemma asked, narrowing her eyes, as if I’d been hiding a surprise—and unwanted—twist to the evening. The sugar and the length of the movie had sobered her up, and she was back to her usual critical demeanor.
“Valerie Hurt’s,” I said quietly, trying not to wake the baby, who’d finished his bottle and promptly fallen asleep on my chest while Savilla was in the restroom. “Remember? Valerie was at the reunion weekend.” I mimed her pregnant belly.
“Ah, yes. The self-righteous whale.”
I heard a snicker from the direction of the cousins, and I was fairly certain it was Charlotte who was getting a laugh at Valerie’s expense.
“I just love babies,” Savilla said, returning from the bathroom and reaching again for the bundle in my arms, which I was more than happy to release.
