“Me too,” Sloane whispers, sliding her fingers through mine. “You know, you’re going to be an incredible aunt.”
I grin. “Yeah. Aunt E. I’ll teach her all about music and art. I can’t trust her parents to do a good job on those topics. The poor thing will end up a Swiftie.”
Sloane bumps my shoulder, then rests her head on it for a while. The world is quiet, even with the city humming all around us.
We’re all woken up at three in the morning by Meena’s shriek. She’s got a right set of lungs on her. Sloane and I never made it back to my place. Instead, we crashed on the couch after Todd took Pia and Meena up to bed.
When I hear Meena scream again, this time at a more decent hour, I stumble into the nursery to find Pia wide awake, hair wild, but eyes clear. I can’t say I’m as with it as she is. As soon as Meena shrieked, I went into panic mode, thinking something was wrong. It’s not, the little sausage is just dramatic like her mum.
“Wanna help?” she asks. I’m not sure I can stomach baby shit at this time in the morning, but I’ll give it a whirl. Can’t let Pia have all the fun, eh?
When Meena finally drifts off to sleep again I head back to the couch, utterly content and stinking of poop. What the fuck has the kid eaten to have produced what I just saw? I feel like it’s ingrained in my skin.
Sloane mumbles as I climb back on and scoot into her body, but she doesn’t wake. I’m just about to nod off again when the bloody doorbell starts ringing.
It’s going to be a long day. Jesus, it’s going to be a long few years if this is what having Meena in our lives looks like.
18
Sloane
The first thing I hear is Eden shouting, “For the love of god, keep the noise down, you’re going to wake the baby!” Which is rich, because it was only three hours ago that the baby in question—Meena, destroyer of sleep—was screaming like she’d invented crying.
It’s a surprise to find myself already awake. The room is chilly and I’m lying on the Sawyers’ living room couch, my arm completely dead from Eden’s head pinning it all night. Now she’s abandoned me, leaving a suspiciously Eden-shaped dent in the pillow, and there’s chaos in the hallway making its way to the kitchen.
I get up, blinking my way through a sleep-deprived headache, and shuffle towards the noise. I swear the scene I walk into is from a sitcom pilot. There’s Eden, who’s in boxers and one of her baggy hoodies. Liz, in her pajamas, already wielding a coffee pot as if she will die if not granted caffeine every six seconds. Jenna, sitting at the breakfast bar, face pale and eyes wide, but not fully engaged. And at the center of it all, two new people. A small woman with black hair and a man who looks like he could build you anything out of wood in his shed. They’re both wearing nearly identical zip-up fleece jackets and clutching mugs of tea.
Milly and John Sawyer, aka Gran and Granddad. I haven’t met them before, but I’ve heard enough stories from Eden over the years to know who they are on sight. They look quintessentially British.
Eden notices me first. “Oh, she lives! Sloane, come meet the reinforcements.” She uses her spatula to gesture.
I want to be charming. Instead, I’m barefoot and braless, hair in a Medusa tangle, and wearing Eden’s Slipknot t-shirt. There’s a smear of baby formula on the hem.
Milly, unperturbed, does a little hop off her stool and comes at me with open arms. “Oh, sweetheart, look at you.I thought you’d be taller.” She engulfs me in a hug that manages to compress my spine while also infusing me with a scent of lavender, menthol hard candy, and a faint tang of airplane gin.
I stammer out, “It’s lovely to meet you,” while she gives my back an adjustment.
Milly pulls away, peers at my face as if she’s looking for signs of hereditary insanity, and says, “Oh, you poor lamb. You’ve got the face of someone who was up every hour on the hour.” She turns to Eden. “You take care of this one. She’s delicate.”
Eden looks pleased as punch. “I try.”
John, meanwhile, does not rise. He merely inclines his head in my direction, raises his tea mug, and says, “Morning.” His accent is the full Dick Van Dyke, all dropped h’s and casual vowels, but there’s a glimmer in his eyes that makes me want to hug him too, even if he’d probably rather eat a fork.
Liz watches the proceedings, clearly enjoying the role reversal of parent/child.
“Did you two really get on the next flight over?” Eden asks.
Gran, resuming her place, sniffs. “Of course we did. Your mother called us and said you were all in the thick of it.What’s the point of being a grandparent if you don’t turn up at inconvenient times?”
I try to picture the logistics—Eden’s family and jetlag and the possibility of multiple emotional breakdowns per hour—and immediately want to lie back down on the couch.
“Gran is a legend. She once threatened a Heathrow gate agent with her handbag.” Jenna laughs.
Eden cackles. “Yeah, and she got us all on the flight to Barcelona. No one argued with her.”
Gran picks at a crumb, her eyes glinting. “If you let the airlines walk all over you, you’ll never get anywhere, will you?” She directs this at me as if imparting a sacred trust.
I nod, still feeling slightly out of my comfort zone, but I can see why Eden worships this woman. Gran is formidable.
