EPILOGUE
Jameson
Messini, Greece
Four Months After Zoe’s Birth
Brynn had checked Zoe’s bottles four times.
The first was before breakfast. The second was after Zoe ate. The third was when Marina arrived.
Now she stood in front of the open refrigerator again, staring at them as though one might have disappeared in the previous six minutes.
“You don’t need to check them again,” I said.
“I know.” She shifted one bottle farther back on the shelf.
“The market is seventeen minutes away.”
“That’s far.” She closed the refrigerator.
“It wasn’t far yesterday.”
“I wasn’t leaving my baby here yesterday.” Her attention returned to Zoe.
“Our baby will be here when you return.”
She looked at me. “I know. I’m having a moment.”
“You’ve been having it for twenty-three minutes.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Outside, Marina waited beside the car with one hand resting on the open passenger door.
“We can turn around whenever you want,” she called. “Or I can drive through the market while you lean out the window and collect tomatoes without leaving the car.”
“Her next bottle is on the second shelf.” Brynn ignored her entirely.
“I know.”
She pointed toward the bassinet. “The blue pacifier is beside it.”
“I know.”
“She’s been fighting her morning nap.” Her hand moved over Zoe’s back.
“I noticed.”
Her mouth tightened.
She trusted me. Leaving Zoe for the first time was the problem.
For four months, she had known exactly where our daughter was. She woke at the smallest sound, reached across the bed before she was fully conscious, and checked that Zoe was breathing whenever the cottage remained quiet too long.
The market was seventeen minutes away.
To Brynn, it might as well have been another country.
Zoe slept against my chest, one cheek pressed into my shirt. I shifted her slightly higher.
“She’ll be here when you get back.”
Brynn studied her for another moment before nodding. “I know.”
She crossed the room and bent to kiss the dark curls beginning to form near Zoe’s crown. Her lips lingered there before she kissed me.
“Call if she needs anything.” Her hand remained against my chest.
“She will need several things.”
“You know what I mean.” She gave me a look.
“I do.”
Her fingertips brushed once over Zoe’s back.
Marina leaned farther around the open car door. “Brynn, if we leave any later, the tomatoes will have grown old waiting for you.”
“I’m coming.” She glanced over her shoulder.
She kissed Zoe once more, then finally left.
Marina’s voice carried across the yard, too muffled to make out. Whatever she said earned a laugh from Brynn, though the sound was thinner than usual.
The car started, gravel shifting beneath the tires before the sound faded down the road.
Zoe remained asleep, entirely unconcerned by the distance her mother had spent twenty-three minutes preparing to cross.
“Your mother won’t make it until lunch,” I told her. “Just watch.”
Her fingers opened slowly against my shirt.
“She’ll be back before you miss her.”
The cottage was quieter without Brynn. One of her notebooks remained open on the table beneath a half-finished cup of coffee. A blanket hung over the back of a chair, and her other shoes sat beside the door because she had changed her mind twice before leaving.
I carried Zoe toward the sitting room.
I had prepared for the morning. Her bottles were ready. Clean diapers were stacked beside the changing mat, with wipes, spare clothes, and burp cloths within reach.
A spreadsheet sat open on the table.
Brynn had called it excessive.
She had also stopped asking where anything was.
Zoe woke at 9:26.
Her eyes opened, found me, and narrowed.
“Good morning.”
Her mouth pulled downward.
“That seems unnecessary.”
The expression worsened.
“You were sleeping perfectly well thirty seconds ago.”
She began to cry.
I shifted her against my chest and checked the time. Her next bottle should have been twenty minutes away, but she had inherited her mother’s relationship with schedules.
I walked toward the window, and she quieted. The moment I stopped, she resumed crying.
I started walking again.
“Understood.”
By the fourth circuit between the window and the kitchen table, Zoe had stopped crying and begun staring at the ceiling with deep suspicion.
At 9:41, the spreadsheet stopped being relevant.
She rejected the bottle.
I tested the temperature against my wrist.
Correct.
I changed the angle.
No improvement.
I held her more upright.
Worse.
“You drank this yesterday.”
She kicked one leg free of the blanket.
“It’s the same bottle.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Fine. The bottle is clearly the problem.”
I resumed walking before she escalated. She accepted less than half an ounce while I crossed the cottage, then pushed the bottle away and regarded me as though I had personally disappointed her.
The measurements along the side were marked in milliliters.
Her bottles had arrived from a pharmacy in Kalamata, apparently under the assumption that I had surrendered every American measurement system when I crossed the Atlantic.
I had not.
“One-third of an ounce,” I told her. “That is barely an attempt.”
Zoe yawned.
“That is not a defense.”
Ten minutes later, she fell asleep against my shoulder. I continued moving until her fist loosened from my collar, then approached the bassinet.
Her eyes opened as soon as I lowered her.
I lifted her, and they closed.
On the second attempt, they opened again.
“The bassinet hasn’t changed since yesterday either.”
Zoe tightened her fist.
Every feeding time on the screen depended on her behaving exactly as she had the day before.
She had no intention of doing that.
I closed the laptop.
The cottage door opened behind me, startling Zoe awake. Her face compressed as Leo stepped inside carrying a wooden crate filled with olive oil.
“I thought we discussed knocking.”
Leo stopped just inside the doorway. “We did. You said I must knock between seven at night and seven in the morning.”
“You should knock every time.”
“That isn’t what you said.” He lowered the crate beside the counter.
“The rule has been revised.”
His mouth twitched. “Because what I walked in on last week was not between seven at night and seven in the morning?”
Zoe began to cry.
“She was asleep,” I said. “That is why you should knock.”
Leo raised his brows. “Zoe was asleep last week also. It did not seem to slow either of you.”
“That is precisely why you should knock.”
“And if I had knocked and woken her, you would revise the rule again.” He leaned one hip against the counter.
I considered that. “Yes.”
Leo laughed.
He washed his hands at the sink before coming closer to inspect Zoe. “Give her to me if you need.”
“I don’t.”
“Fine.” He pulled a chair away from my path, then retrieved the blanket Zoe had kicked onto the floor and folded it over the back.
I resumed walking while Leo unpacked the olive oil.
He placed one bottle separately on the table. “The new system completed its first run.”
I looked at the bottle as I passed.
The fill level was exact. The cap had sealed correctly.
The label was two millimeters too far to the left.
“The alignment is wrong,” I said.
Leo stared at me. “It filled, sealed, and labeled four hundred bottles without anyone touching the controls.”
“The label is still wrong.”
“It contains olive oil,” he said.
“That was not the only requirement.”
Leo picked up the bottle and inspected it. “No one else will notice.”
“I noticed.”
“That is because you designed the program and have been waiting for something to be wrong,” he said.
“I was verifying the result.”
“You were hoping to find a reason to change it.” Leo set the bottle down. “The machine can wait until tomorrow.”
“Today would be more efficient.”
“You have your daughter today.” He nodded toward Zoe. “The machine will survive until tomorrow.”
I looked down at her.
She had shoved two fingers into her mouth and was biting down hard enough to turn the tips white.
“The machine can wait,” I said.
He nodded toward her hand. “Looks like she may be starting to teeth.”
“She’s four months old.”
“Yes.” Leo reached for another bottle.
“There’s no visible tooth.”
“The tooth does not need to be visible yet,” Leo said. “It can trouble her before it comes through.”
Drool had soaked the front of her shirt. She released her fingers long enough to make a low, unhappy sound, then pushed them back into her mouth.
“My grandmother used to put one drop of ouzo on the gums,” Leo said.
“No.”
“I am only mentioning her remedy.” He lifted both hands.
“You brought it up as a solution.”
“My grandmother raised six children,” Leo said. “She knew something by the end.”
“That is a survivor count.”
Leo laughed as he reached past me for a clean cloth. “Then we begin with cold water and spare your American nerves.”
He ran the cloth beneath the tap, wrung it out, and passed it to me.
Zoe closed her mouth around the cool fabric as soon as I held it against her gums. The crying stopped.
“Sometimes the old women know things.” Leo returned to the crate.
“This doesn’t validate the ouzo.”
“I said nothing about the ouzo.” His shoulders moved with another quiet laugh.
He had been thinking it.
Zoe gnawed on the cloth for less than a minute before pushing it away and beginning to fuss again. She turned from the bottle when I offered it, then rejected it a second time after I adjusted my hold.
Leo held out his hands. “You have both had enough of this argument for now.”
“That isn’t true.”
Zoe’s cry sharpened.
I passed her over.
Leo settled her against his chest without comment, one broad hand covering most of her back. Zoe quieted enough to stare at him, her fist closing around the front of his shirt.
He picked up the bottle and studied the markings. “How much did she drink?”
“Less than half an ounce.”
He turned it toward the light. “And how much is this in milliliters?”
“I refuse to participate in that.”
“You live in Greece.” Leo glanced at me.
“I’m still American.”
“You married a woman who measures distance by whether she can outrun someone.” He adjusted Zoe higher. “Perhaps the measurements are not the greatest cultural difficulty in your home.”