Chapter 2 Eloise
Eloise
I’ve always thought it a strange phrase: delivering a baby. It sounds so gentle, like passing along a message. In reality, birth is a battle zone, bloody and brutal, where a brand--new human is dragged literally screaming from safety into the unknown.
When I delivered Molly, I had wanted my mother there. Even though I had not spoken to her for years; even though she’d previously been completely useless in a crisis.
So when Jesse called to say that Molly was in labor, I ran so fast out the door of my apartment that I didn’t even bring a coat or my purse. When I held Molly’s hand during contractions, I tried to press confidence and conviction into her skin, like an invisible tattoo.
Jesse texts me at work: It’s a girl! 193/4 inches, 7 lb. 8 oz!!!!
Over my lunch break, I race to the hospital again.
I knock softly at the door of her room, in case Molly is napping, and Jesse opens it a moment later.
He’s got circles under his eyes, and his hair is sticking up every which way, but joy filters through him.
“Congratulations!” I say, and he grins. Then he steps aside, so I can enter.
Molly is propped up in bed, her hair braided neatly again, her cheeks flushed. In her arms is a tiny, swaddled, sleeping newborn, a swirl of strawberry--blond hair peeking out.
I am so captivated by this—-by my grandchild—-that at first I don’t notice the other people in the room. Evie sits in a chair near the window, Adam standing at her side.
Immediately, I freeze. “I’ll wait outside. This is a family moment.”
“But, Eloise,” Adam says, “you’re family.”
Then I feel Jesse’s hand on the small of my back, propelling me forward, until I am next to Molly.
“Georgia,” she says, “would you like to hold Adie?”
Knowing they named the baby after my sister—-it feels like a peace offering I didn’t earn. Sometimes we lose the people we love. And sometimes we find ways to keep them with us.
Adam is remarkably at ease, given how shocked he was the last time he saw me.
But Evie excuses herself to go to the bathroom the moment I take Adie into my arms. She doesn’t look at me or say hello.
When she slips out the door my gaze follows, but then the baby stretches and I find myself lost in Adie’s navy eyes, zeroed in on my face.
“She’s trying to figure out who you are,” Adam says.
Get in line, I think.
It is almost an out--of--body experience, holding a newborn. The last time I was in this situation, I was numb—-with only a tenuous grip on reality. Now, I have the wherewithal to appreciate the peach of her cheek, the fragility of her neck, the warmth of her body.
Adam comes to stand beside me, drawn by the magnet that is Adie.
He looks down at her over my shoulder, and then his hand comes around me to touch her peapod toes.
It is almost like an embrace, and I feel myself swaying into him, muscle memory, before I remember to straighten my spine and keep my distance.
Had things been different, this is how we might have stood marveling over our grandchild.
I hand Adie back to Molly just as an alarm goes off on my phone, startling the baby.
“I’m sorry,” I say, silencing it. “I have to go back to the office.” I let my gaze skate from Jesse to Molly. “But . . . maybe I could stop by and see her when you’re back home?”
Molly smiles down at the baby, smitten. Just like people did with the first Adie, everyone has already fallen in love with her. “That would be great,” she answers.
I say my goodbyes and leave—-but when I turn a corner in the hallway, I smack into Evie. “Hi,” I breathe.
“Eloise,” she says.
I shake my head. “Just Georgia, now.”
At that, Evie dissolves into tears. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
I am eighteen again, and she is curling my hair before a party. I am twenty, lying on my back on the grass between her and Adam as we share a joint. I am twenty--five, and she’s looking down at the newborn in my arms.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur.
There’s so much more I want to say—-I never meant to hurt you; I wish you hadn’t seen me at my worst; thank you for loving them in my stead. But before I can, Evie blinks.
“You’re sorry?” she says. “I’m the reason this happened. I’m the one who called Adam. I’m why you were at the Twin Towers.”
“You obviously couldn’t have known!”
She swipes a hand over her eyes. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“I know.” She held my family together. She raised my daughter. When I cannot find words to hold all my gratitude, I take her hands and squeeze them, hoping to convey what I can’t say.
Evie’s dark curls are streaked with gray. There are lines at the corners of her eyes. But I can still see her in there—-the girl who fought for anything and anyone she considered her own. “Twenty--five years,” she chides. “Why didn’t you come back?”
How do I explain that it got exponentially harder to convince myself that I belonged there? That there were a thousand selfless reasons to stay away, and just one selfish one to return? So instead, I give Evie back her own words. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” I say.
She nods.
I go on, “And I don’t think I could have stayed away without knowing that Molly and Adam had you.”
Something in Evie stills. “And now,” she says, “they have you again.”
It has been years since I thought about the luminosity of Evie’s face back in college, when she told me she’d met a guy at a diner, when I teased her about planning the wedding. Then everything had changed, and the wedding had been mine.
When I’d first seen pictures of Evie and Adam on Facebook, it hurt to look at them. But I had convinced myself it was what Molly needed, what she deserved.
I studiously avoided thinking about the fact that Evie was not just Molly’s de facto mother, but also Adam’s wife.
None of us are the people we were a quarter of a century ago, but we both feel it: the sand shifting under our feet, the realization that, once again, Adam Ambrose is standing between us.
So I swallow, thinking of what I said twenty--five years ago in a cramped dorm at RISD. You and me against the world, right? “I know that things . . . are different now. I don’t want to ruin your life, Evie. I came back because I wanted to make sure what happened to me didn’t happen to Molly.”
“So you’re not mad at me?” Evie says, her voice small. “For . . . Adam?”
I shake my head. How can I blame her for falling in love with a man I, too, fell in love with? For comforting him when he thought I was dead, for holding together his household, for raising my daughter into a smart, confident woman?
All the same, I feel my stomach turn as I say, “You’ve been with Adam five times longer than I was. If anyone has a claim to him, Evie, it’s you.”
I watch her soften at this benediction. She blinks back tears. “I cannot tell you how many times I talked out loud to you, begging for advice about some problem Molly was dealing with, or a fight I was having with Adam.”
“So . . . you don’t hate me?” I ask. “For leaving?”
Her gaze holds mine. “I may not have been her real mother, Eloise, but I would have done anything to take care of Molly, too.”
A current passes between us, a memory: Evie holding my baby, staring at me in horror. Eloise . . . what are you doing?
But then she grabs me, hugging me tight. “I missed the hell out of you,” Evie says.
My arms fold around her. “I missed you, too,” I say.
I take my three weeks of vacation all at once, so that I can help Molly with the baby—-and keep an eye out for any strange behavior.
When Molly and Jesse bring Adie home, I meet them at their condo.
I help Jesse put together a changing table and the bassinet.
I cook them dinner, then leave them to their first night with an infant.
When I return the next morning, Molly looks weak with exhaustion and Jesse is nowhere to be found. She holds a wailing Adie against her chest. “He went out for diapers,” she says over the baby’s shrieks. “And food.”
“I could have done that for you—-”
“I told him that. I think he wanted to get out of the house—-she’s been up all night crying.” Molly shakes her head, eyes bleary. “Is she still crying? Or is that just ringing in my ears?”
“Still crying.”
Molly’s face crumples. “I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to nurse and she’s been changed and she already burped and why is this so fucking hard?” She bounces the baby frenetically. “I can handle an active shooter threat. But I can’t figure out how to soothe a crying baby?”
Gently, I tug Adie from her arms and place her belly against my shoulder, patting her little back as she hiccups. “When you were a newborn, you liked this position best,” I say.
“You remember that?”
I nod. “There are a few things I recall from before things got . . . strange.”
Adie’s sobs abate, and then between one blink and the next, she goes limp and sleepy. I raise my eyebrows at Molly. Carefully, I peel the baby off me, holding her out to Molly.
Molly stares at us. “What if I hurt her?” she asks, swallowing.
I don’t tell her she’s being ridiculous; I don’t say, You won’t. Instead, I look her in the eye. “Do you feel like you want to hurt her?”
She shakes her head.
“Do you hear anyone else in your head, telling you you’re going to hurt her?”
Molly is quiet for a moment, as if taking inventory. “No,” she says.
I nod. “What you need is to sleep. Let me watch her. Take a nap.”
There is just the slightest hesitation, but it’s enough for my shame to surface.
My face goes hot. Molly only just found out that I once tried to murder her when she was a newborn; I am the last person she should be leaving this baby with.
“I’m sorry. I . . . I wasn’t thinking. As soon as Jesse’s back, you can lie down—-”
Molly puts her hand on my arm. “No,” she says. “I trust you.”
I trust you.
It is so much more than I deserve.