Back at the town house, Julie and Cheryl were working at a frenzied pace amid a flurry of plastic bags. Julie was measuring, Kevin was hammering, and everyone was sweating.
“Boys,” I called, “I’ve got some big pieces we need moved in. And I brought reinforcements.” I pointed at Amelia.
“Amelia!” Cheryl trilled.
“Sorry I don’t have time for niceties, Amelia,” Julie called while hanging a painting of a pair of ballet slippers over the crib.
“Wow,” she said. “Y’all are incredible. This is really coming together.”
“We’re just taking over this poor woman’s house,” Cheryl said. “I’ve got a load of baby towels and new onesies on quick wash in her laundry room.”
Amelia looked around and said, “I’ll make up the crib.”
My work here was done. With the ladies handling everything in the nursery, Drew cursed me for all the heavy lifting, so I gave them a hand.
“Boy can bench one seventy-five but complains about a third of an old armoire.” I wished I had sounded less out of breath as I said it.
We put it in place, and, while the boys got the other pieces, I got my drill and a small electric saw from the toolbox in my truck and cut a tiny hole out of the back of the antique while Amelia wiped it down with Pledge. I hooked up Daisy’s TV.
Amelia was just fluffing pillows she had grabbed from the house and arranging a stack of back issues ofSouthern Coaston the coffee table when Daisy walked in. My first thought was how sparkling she looked, even after a long day of work. Her skin was dewy and fresh, and I wanted to kiss her right then and there, something I had yet to do.
She gasped. “Mason! Amelia! I was expecting an old crib, not a total home renovation.” She took in her front rooms. Amelia had evenmanaged to cut a few fresh hydrangeas for the dining table. Daisy wrapped her arms around me and kissed my cheek. Then she hugged Amelia.
“Wait until you see the nursery!” I said with an excitement less masculine than I’d intended.
“Ladies! Are you ready in there?”
“We’re ready!” Cheryl called.
I put my hands over Daisy’s eyes. Before I removed them, I took in the crib, the changing table, the artwork, the giraffe. The moms had arranged all the diapers and wipes already, folded baby clothes to fill the drawers in the white wicker chest that someone had donated. DSS would never know we had put it together in a few hours.
I thought of Maisy, of her little warm body on my chest, of how connected I had felt to her, of how I kept waiting for that feeling that I wanted to protect her, would always protect her, to pass. And yet it didn’t. This was Maisy’s room.
I removed my hands from Daisy’s eyes, and Cheryl made a Vanna White motion toward the crib. I stepped up beside Daisy and saw her eyes fill with tears as she ran her fingers across it. From the closet, Julie turned, and I saw her eyes widen in the split second before Daisy turned and noticed her.
At the exact same time Julie whispered “Daisy!” Daisy said, “What the hell isshedoing here?”
I looked at Amelia, whose eyes were wide. How did Daisy and Julie know each other? I did the only thing I could think of: I put a protective arm around Daisy’s waist. I didn’t know why she was so upset. But I was Team Daisy all the way.
TILLEYHello, Dolly!
It is true that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help herself. Tilley should know. Because, for nearly forty years, her sister tried to get her help. She took Tilley to neurologists for scans Tilley did not want and general practitioners for medicines Tilley would refuse to take. Therapists for mental exercises Tilley would not do. When one therapist suggested that Tilley simply did notwantto get “better,” she balked at the insinuation. But, as Tilley came to see nearly four years after the therapist’s proclamation, she was one hundred percent correct. Tilley did not want to get better. Because getting better would mean having to be a willing participant in her own life. Getting better would mean having to look her demons in the eye and face the scars of what she had been through—the things that people knew and the things they didn’t know.
But, ever since Amelia and Parker brought the twins home from the hospital three years ago, Tilley had found herself making tiny tiptoes toward getting back to herself. She willfully allowed herself to have the thoughts she had missed out on. By retreating into herself after Robert’s accident, she had chosen not to have another man in her life. She had chosen not to be a mother. Tilley realized once hergreat-niece and -nephew arrived that she was still here, and, if she worked really hard at it, she might have the chance to be their great-aunt Tilley in a bright and beautiful way.
She wasn’t sure whether anyone else noticed. But Tilley did. She did exercises to keep herself in the moment, to allow herself to breathe through uncomfortable feelings. Not every time. Not all the time. Butsometimes, which was better than the none she had done before. She was taking her anxiety medications as prescribed. She was, as her therapist advised, taking small steps each day to do things that brought her joy and kept her tethered to the present.
One of those things? Every single morning, she got up with the sunrise and baked something delicious for her darling niece and her precious children. Then Tilley poured herself a cup of tea, grabbed theCape Carolina Chronicle—she might have been the only person who still read it—and scuttled up to her little balcony so Parker and Amelia could have morning family time with their children without her in the way.
They thanked her every single day. And every single day she felt happy that she could help. Today, as she pulled the fresh banana bread out of the oven and set out little bowls of butter and mandarin oranges—the twins’ favorite fruit—she smiled at how the simplicity of combining ingredients in a bowl, of creating something beautiful, could make her feel so full. As the teakettle sang, she reminded herself to stay in the moment, to enjoy the warmth of the mug in her hands, the smell of the peppermint, the steam rising so gorgeously to the top.
She heard the children stirring upstairs and was about to go back up to her room when something wonderful happened: “Aunt Tilley!” Amelia called.
“Yes, love!” she called back.
Amelia appeared at the top of the stairs. “I overslept! Would you mind feeding the twins?”
Tilley was ebullient. Oh, to be needed. To betrusted. She put her arms around the children as they ran down the steps and sang “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” with them as she sliced the banana bread and slathered it with butter and put the mandarin oranges on the plates. The children were always excited for breakfast, eagerly climbing up on the barstools to gobble it up.
