“It’s bad?” Faye asked.
Molly rolled her head, stretching her neck and jaw. “She’s right there. If I could—” She paused and her teeth clenched—“stick my fingers in, I could touch her and take care of her and make whatever is bothering her better.” She held her belly with both hands like a medicine ball, shushing the baby.
Faye had carefully twisted a lock of Molly’s hair around her finger before letting it spring back. Oh, if only a mother’s touch could solve all a child’s problems! “If it’s any consolation at all, you look good. You’re almost there.” She hesitated but brought up the sore subject anyway. Molly had been clear. She would do this on her own. The father was out of the picture. “We can still call Leo ...”
Molly yanked her shirt down. “Will you please—I’m begging you, Mom. You and Maeve and Daddy. Wendy! All of you. Please, drop it.”
“I’m sorry. I am. It’s just—”
“No, it’s not just anything! God, I can’t believe I’m here.” Molly had stuck it out as long as possible in DC, but those people she’d been living with—“the hippies,” Molly called them—had told her she couldn’t live there with a baby because a baby couldn’t follow the quiet hour rules, of all things. And finding a new place that she could afford when she was seven months pregnant had proved impossible. Her petulance, while understandable, was hard to take.
“We’re not so bad . . .”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Mom. I’m not you. Maeve was right. I don’t even like kids. I hardly like anyone.”
“Oh, Pix. That’s the hormones talking. You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“Am I? What if I’m terrible at it? That’s why you all want me to call Leo. You think I’ll fail at this.”
She fell into Faye’s arms then, her little girl, suddenly so at odds with the world. Was it sudden? Molly had been fighting for so long. Maybe motherhood would be the thing that would correct Molly’s course, though it was true that Faye had her doubts. “You’ll be happy to have her,” Faye said, rubbing Molly’s shoulders. “Like I was happy to have you girls. We both were.”
Molly cinched herself in. “I’m going to find Dad.”
Faye smoothed the flat sheet, then whipped the quilt into place. From the window, she could make out Molly’s splayed legs now, stretched into the sun that flooded through the white-and-black barn. Only William could keep her from blowing her top these days. He had stripped the crib that Maeve used for both Dylan and Opal, giving it a fresh coat of white paint for the little girl Molly would have any day. He’d walked her through every detail of his process, lulling her like a hypnotist. Since his heart attack he’d honed that gift, her husband. The gift of keeping his cool. It seemed nothing could rattle him anymore.
“She doesn’t want advice,” he said, when she’d come home bearing news that she was not going back to college after all. Instead, she washaving a baby. “Not from you and definitely not from Maeve. Her little wheels are spinning up there.”
The revelations had happened right on top of each other—boom, boom, boom—the thing with Maeve and Wendy, then Molly calling to say she was done with being a nanny, that she found another job and was staying in DC. Faye had doubted both of her daughters. But Maeve had proven her wrong—so wrong. She had been steady through the breakup with Sam, both of them so patient with Dylan and Opal. And the transition of Wendy into their lives had been ... well, it had been fine. More than fine. Faye was charmed by Wendy, her ease, her air of assumption that she could be herself and that everyone could come around at their own pace. She was as fresh as those clean sheets. Now, if only Molly could surprise her too.
Faye sat for a moment, pressed Molly’s pillow to her face. She couldn’t hear a single sound except the gentle buzzing in her own ears. Soon enough there would be baby noises and baby smells again in the house. Oh. And laughter! God how she missed Molly’s laugh! She never wanted to admit to herself that maybe she and William had let Molly down, that maybe they shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss her sullenness. It was so long ago, when her laughter faded.
She straightened a bobby pin that had come loose behind her ear, fighting the urge to flop down and swaddle herself in the freshly laundered bedding. “Pshhh,” she said, flipping her hand. No time for nonsense. No time to dwell in the past. Molly needed her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
1993: Mid-Coast Maine
Molly woke from shallow sleep to the sound of Nola Wren mewling. She stumbled to get to the baby before her tortuous crying began. When Molly got any sleep at all, it was in the only thing that kept her cool, a white poplin nightgown smocked with ribbon that she bought when she was with Leo, thinking it was romantic and sweet and virginal. She hushed the baby, writhing now as Molly changed her soaked diaper. Moonlight doused the yellow room in blue, and Molly felt dunked in it. She looked down. What had she stepped in? What was on her feet? At first, she thought she’d bled through her nightgown. But it was her own milk, summoned by the baby’s cries, cascading onto her bare feet. “No, no, no,” she whispered, hurrying to finish the diapering, to get to the rocking chair to feed the baby before what milk she had went to waste.
She held her boob like a sandwich and tickled the baby’s lip with her nipple. “Pastrami on rye,” she tempted. “BLT ...” But the baby squirmed and wailed, snapping at the nipple like a turtle. Her breasts would never be sexy again. She felt like a dairy cow, a wet nurse, reduced to what her body could produce to sustain another person, which, it turned out, was not enough.
She propped the baby with a pillow, trying to balance her weight and get that nipple into the mouth. Finally, Nola Wren accepted it, reluctantly sipping and whimpering. Molly’s shoulders burned, but she couldn’t risk adjusting herself and jarring the baby free. She put her head back, closed her eyes. She was stretched thin, tenterhooked.
Wendy had come over to the house with Maeve the day Molly brought Nola Wren home. Everyone was together, including Dylan, Opal, and even Sam, each of them taking turns holding the baby, counting tiny toes, nibbling tiny fingers. Molly collapsed into a chair next to Wendy and mentioned she’d had a lactation consultant in the hospital.
“Plenty of new moms have trouble breastfeeding,” Wendy said. “It’s not your fault.”
“Tell that to my sister. She managed it with both kids. If I can’t do this—I mean, it’s literally what boobs are for—what good am I?” She knew she sounded hysterical—God, that word—but she felt that way. “Plus, I’m bleeding to death.”
Wendy went right out and got Molly heavy-duty pads and put them in the upstairs bathroom. While Molly practically wept at the gesture, it also left her feeling shut out and wanting, witness to the kind of life she herself would never have.
Maeve had told Molly breastfeeding was the easiest thing and cheap too. No formula to mix, no bottles to clean. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s a breeze.” But where was Maeve now? Where was Maeve when she needed her? Sleeping with Wendy Walker at the cove house while Molly was here, alone, trying not to wake up her mom and dad (the last thing she needed was advice from them), trying not to disturb the ghost that haunted this place. No one else noticed or, if they did, they didn’t mention it. But the white paint on the section of railing in front of Maeve’s door had a different quality. It lacked richness of years and layered coats and had a blue tint, skim versus whole milk. When Molly ran her scarred hand along it, she felt the texture change, felt it grab at her then let go, the way Glenda had grabbed her wrist at the bar.
Her head snapped forward, and she jerked awake when the baby unlatched and slipped down her relaxed arm. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” she whispered.
Molly could not pinpoint when it started. The lowts, she told herself, opposite of heights. It simply washed over her, liquid despair. She would sit down to nurse, turn on the music, drink a glass of cool water the way Wendy had instructed, and hold Nola Wren to her breast. The moment the baby latched on, Molly was swallowed. If she had been on top of a tall building, she would have jumped.Do it,the voice told her, though she had nowhere to jump to, no height around her, only her child at her breast, the lowts choking her like quicksand. And Nola Wren would suck away, extract all life from her, until it was over and Molly could hold the baby, rub her back, and catch her own breath.
When the baby rejected her, Molly assumed her milk tasted like her body felt—sad, bitter, and regretful. Ashamed.
