30. Sloane Baby Problem
sloane: baby problem
I LOVED THE CHAOS OF everyone being home. You had to if you were a Murphy because it was your life and emotional state and, if you didn’t want chaos, you were in the wrong place. But there was also something really simple and sweet about being just back to us.
Adam and I were lying in our bed in Mom’s guesthouse, each of us with a hand on my belly. “It’s going to be really crazy here very soon,” I said.
I rolled over on my side, and Adam did the same. He kissed me. “I like the craziness. It’s kind of a Murphy family signature, you know?”
I nodded. “I know,” I said, my eyes filling with tears.
“What?” he asked, alarmed.
I shook my head. “Absolutely nothing. It’s just the pregnancy hormones. I can’t so much as think I miss Emerson and Caroline without bursting into tears, so let’s not think about it.”
“Speaking of,” Adam said. “Was Chase Aarons at all what you thought he’d be like?”
“Not at all. He was so cool and down to earth.”
Adam nodded. “I was expecting to share eye rolls with you the whole time they were here, but he’s the best. I hope he sticks around.”
“He seems kind of obsessed with her, right?” I asked. That wasn’t a new thing, really. Caroline had some sort of magical power over men. She always had. I used to be jealous. Now that I was happy with the love of my life, I could just step back and be in awe.
“Yeah. I mean, I kept reminding myself that he’s an actor, but he didn’t seem like he was acting. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one sticks around.”
“Poor James,” I said, kind of surprised.
“Poor James?” Adam asked. “Are you kidding me right now?” Adam had one of those perfectly straight internal compasses that didn’t allow for any moral gray area.
It was a good quality, one of his best. But it also made him much more of a stickler for perfection than I was.
In his mind, James cheated, he was finished.
It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him. I did.
In theory. It’s just that James had stuck around for all these years, still trying to prove himself to my sister.
He obviously made a huge mistake, but he was also obviously sorry and wished he could change it.
I knew I shouldn’t have sympathy for him, but I did.
Not so much that I wanted Caroline to get back with him or anything.
But I will admit that, pre-Chase, I had wondered if that’s where they were heading.
“Oh, it’s kicking!” I said, diverting the conversation. Both our hands flew back to my belly, and I scrunched my nose. “I hate calling our baby ‘it.’ ”
“Me too,” Adam agreed. “But it’s all going to be worth it when we get that delivery room surprise. Right?”
I nodded. “Totally.”
“I’m trying to say ‘he or she,’ but by the time I say ‘he or she is kicking,’ well, it’s just too long. You wouldn’t ever feel a kick.”
We both laughed. “It’s such a miracle,” he said.
“Thank you for this.” He kissed me again.
It was a miracle. I knew it better than ever now.
I had settled into this pregnancy, mostly because I knew that, now that I was thirty-two weeks, the chances were incredibly good that when this little one was born—even if it was now—it would be okay.
It would be a long, hard road, but chances for survival were good.
“Hey!” I said. “I know. Let’s give the baby a fake name.”
We hadn’t had to do that with AJ and Taylor because we knew what they were, so they were always AJ and Taylor. And, really, statistically, this was probably a boy too.
“What about Charlie?” Adam threw out.
I shook my head. “There was a Charlie in my third-grade class who was so annoying.”
He sighed. “It’s not a real name, Sloane. It’s a fake name.”
“I know. But I don’t want to fake associate my baby with an annoying person.” I paused. “How about Reese?”
“As in Witherspoon?”
Well, I mean, yeah. Duh. “No. As in the gender-neutral Southern name.”
“I will never associate that name with anything but a girl.”
That was fair. “Lee!”
“Lee?” He smiled. “Okay.”
I was shocked. I thought we had several more rounds of this. “Really?”
“Yeah. I had a buddy in the army named Lee. Cool guy. And then, you know, girls are named Lee too. Works for me for both.”
“Lee it is,” I said, as our bedroom door swung open and Taylor ran in.
“Is it today, Mommy?” he asked.
I pulled back the sheets and gestured for him to get in bed beside me. He cuddled up next to me and I breathed in the smell of him. Little boy when he’s just woken up. It was a potent drug. And he was all mine. “It’s today!” I said.
“What’s today?” AJ asked, stumbling in, bleary-eyed. He was older now, less excitable. It made me a little sad that his babyhood was behind him, but it was also thrilling to watch him grow. He lay down beside Adam.
“It’s the pumpkin patch field trip!” I was exactly as ecstatic as I sounded. I loved the pumpkin patch field trip. It was my favorite field trip of the year, and I had done the legwork. “Taylor goes at ten, and AJ, you’re at noon.”
“But that’s lunchtime,” Taylor said.
I nodded. “I know. The big kids have a picnic.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” Taylor whined as I brushed the hair from his face.
“But your class gets pumpkin painting, and his class doesn’t,” I whispered confidentially.
“Oh, that’s my favorite part,” Taylor whispered back.
He looked up at me and tried to wink, and it was so cute. There were those tears again. As we lay there, all cuddled together, Adam said the thing I was trying not to think. “Just a few weeks left as a family of four.”
It wasn’t that I wasn’t thrilled about the baby. I was incandescently over the moon. But change was always hard and, in making something new, you were always letting go of something old. Our time as a family of four had been so sweet. Adam took my hand, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
I cleared my throat to keep from crying and said, “Okay. Well, let’s get up because I have to run by the house before field-trip time.”
The house was coming along swimmingly. We were roughly two weeks from getting our certificate of occupancy, thank goodness.
Caroline was managing everything from New York, God bless her.
How she kept up with all the stores and her kids and my house and all the steamy sex she was currently having, I would never know.
“I’ll deal with the house today,” Adam said.
“You have those meetings this morning, and you need a day to savor your favorite field trip.” Taylor wiggled beside me, and Adam kissed me again.
He was right. I did have two meetings before ten.
Meetings that I was realizing, increasingly, I did not want to take.
And, when the baby got here? We hadn’t even begun to discuss how we were going to handle everything.
Caroline had floated the idea that since filming would be done, maybe Emerson could take over for a few months.
But God love her, Emerson was not a calming influence on stressed-out franchise owners.
“That’s sweet,” I said, deciding that that was a problem for another day. “I’ll take you up on it.”
Nine pumpkin pancakes with cinnamon butter, two meetings, and a quick shower later, Mom and I were walking toward the pumpkin patch downtown.
A member of our church allowed it to use the lot across from his house, right on the water.
It was so much fun to watch them bring all the pumpkins in and to see children and adults alike enjoy it all fall long.
My friend Anna walked by, pushing the big red preschool tram with the red-and-white-striped awning, full of eight preschoolers. “Hi, Anna!” I called.
She waved and called, “This will be you again before you blink.”
I laughed.
“It really will, you know,” Mom said.
I nodded. “I’m so glad. I was so sad to think that that part of my life was over. No more babies. No more preschool.”
“No more pumpkin patch,” she added.
“Exactly. This feels like the fresh start I really wanted.”
“And don’t give a single thought to Sloane Emerson. Okay?”
I scrunched my nose.
“Okay, well, I know you probably will give some thought to it.”
We turned toward the pumpkins and looked out over the water toward Starlite Island. “I’m just so glad you’ll be next door,” I said. “It’s the best feeling to know that your mom is always right there if you have a baby problem.”
She smiled at me, but there was something fake in it. I put my hand on my mouth. Because she might not be here. She might be in Chicago. Before I could delve deeper into an update, my phone beeped.
I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Adam with a problem at the house. It was a text from Emerson.
Have you seen this?
I clicked on the link and gasped. It was an article and the picture at the top was Caroline and Chase with the french fry in their mouths. But now, there was a big red line running through the french fry. The headline: A-LISTER AND D-ESIGN MOGUL CALL IT QUITS.
Kind of a clever headline. Unless they were trying to say that Caroline was D-list, which was not polite at all. I would give them the benefit of the doubt and focus on the design pun. I handed the phone to Mom.
“Oh no…” Mom said. But there was a knowing in her voice. “She broke up with him?”
“I guess.” I paused. “Wait. How do you know he didn’t break up with her?”
Mom shook her head. “She was talking about potentially being Emerson’s surrogate, but I think she knew she couldn’t have it both ways.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. Chase is great, but watching your girlfriend be pregnant with and carry someone else’s baby is a lot—especially this early in the relationship.”
“Why does she do this?” Mom asked.
I wanted to ask what, but I knew. “I don’t know, Mom. It’s like she thinks happiness is weakness or something. You know how she hates weakness.”
Mom shook her head. “That’s very insightful. Please tell her that.”
I would. In fact, I would right now. But then, I heard little voices and turned to see eighteen children—one of them belonging to me—rushing past the crossing guard to pick their favorite pumpkin.
I was story reader today, so I had a big job to do, and I couldn’t be distracted by Caroline’s love life. Not now.
“We’ll call her after?”
Mom nodded. “And, hey,” she said. “If this is the culprit, Emerson doesn’t know she’s going to try to be her surrogate.”
“Yeah. In case it doesn’t work.”
“Exactly.”
I turned in time to see Taylor flying at me. “Mom!”
“Tay!”
Mom leaned down to a little girl and said, “What color pumpkin do you think you want?”
“I love the ugly ones,” she said with glee.
“Me too!” Mom said. “You must have very good taste. Maybe you’ll be a decorator like me one day.”
The little girl—Kayla—nodded seriously. “I think so, Mrs. Murphy.”
Mom winked at me, and Taylor handed a pumpkin up to me. It was small and round and symmetrical. “What about this one for painting?” he asked. “I think I want to paint Paw Patrol on my pumpkin.”
I smiled at him. “That sounds perfect, sweetheart. I’ll help you with that.”
As we walked over to the paint station, I knew how important it was for me to stay present, to be in all these little moments that were so fleeting. But I couldn’t help but let my mind wander to New York, to my sister. And I couldn’t help but wonder why she insisted on breaking her own heart.