The Perfect Child(59)

“Is there anything we can do to help him?” Christopher asked.

“You could try gripe water. Sometimes that works,” Dr. Garcia said.

The problem was, we already knew that it didn’t work. Christopher was obsessed with finding something to make Cole stop crying. Once while I’d fed Cole, he had scoured the internet, searching for a solution, and gripe water was one of the first things he’d stumbled across. It’d done nothing, much like everything else we had tried.

Thankfully, my mom was coming tomorrow. I couldn’t wait to have someone around who knew what they were doing. Christopher tried to help, but his solutions didn’t make sense, like suggesting I go shopping while he stayed at home with the baby. Never mind that the baby would starve without me—I could barely walk and hadn’t stopped bleeding. Nobody had told me you bled so much after birth. I tried to hide my annoyance with it, but sometimes I couldn’t. It’d be nice to have someone around who knew how to help.





THIRTY-SEVEN

CHRISTOPHER BAUER

Lillian had only been gone for three days, and Hannah was already stretched to her limit again. Cole was a voracious eater and fed every two hours, sometimes sooner, and she wasn’t sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Even when she slept, she wasn’t completely relaxed. She jolted awake at the slightest sound. Cole was in a bassinet next to our bed, and she obsessively woke up to check and see if he was breathing, terrified of SIDS.

“When he’s sleeping, you should just let him sleep,” I’d said last night after she’d gotten up to check on him for the third time.

“I’m just making sure he’s okay.” She’d looked insulted that I’d even suggested it.

The lack of sleep made her jumpy and edgy in a way I’d never seen her act before. I worried what she’d do if Janie gave her any trouble when I went back to work tomorrow. I wasn’t ready to go back, but I was out of paid time off since I’d taken so much of it when we’d got Janie. Nobody was ready for it, least of all me.

“I want you to be good while Daddy is at work today,” I said to Janie while I poured the milk into her bowl of Cheerios the next morning.

We’d been arguing for weeks about getting help at the house, but Hannah refused to hire anyone. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she needed it but that she didn’t like the idea of having someone in the house with her; she said it would feel like she was under a microscope all the time. I couldn’t get her to budge.

I tried not to worry as Hannah paced the living room, jiggling Cole back and forth, treading a path across the room. She’d been up since two. He’d woken up, and she hadn’t been able to get him back to sleep. I’d offered to take him from her so she could rest, but she’d insisted she be the one to do it since I was going to work in the morning.

I chopped up strawberries and put them in a bowl next to Janie’s cereal. “Mommy is really tired because she’s been up all night taking care of baby Cole, so I need you to go easy on her and help her out today. Can you do that for me?” I asked.

She smiled across the table at me. “I’ll be good.”



The house was trashed when I got home. It was clear Hannah had let Janie do whatever she wanted. Goldfish cracker crumbs formed a trail everywhere Janie had been, leading in and out of the living room and back again. Half-empty juice boxes were strewn around in the kitchen and in her bedroom. Her toys were scattered around the house. She’d created an obstacle course in her room, and it looked like she’d spent most of the day trying to get Blue to run through it like she was a dog. We’d watched the Westminster Dog Show a few nights ago, and she’d been obsessed with it ever since. I kept telling her that cats didn’t do tricks as easily as dogs, but it didn’t matter. She was determined to get Blue to perform. She was still in her pajamas, and her face was dirty, but she looked happy.

“I was a good girl today,” she said.

I gave her a big hug and high-fived her. “I’m so proud of you. Where’s Mommy?”

“She’s in her bedroom.”

“I’m going to go say hi to her, and then I’ll make us something to eat. How’s that?”

She nodded and went back to trying to loop a jump rope around two of her toy bins.

I walked down the hallway and into our bedroom. Hannah was curled up on the bed with Cole cuddled close to her. At first, I thought she’d fallen asleep, but she jerked her head up when I came into view.

“Shhh, don’t come in here. You’ll wake him up,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“Okay. I—”

Cole twitched and started to wail.

“You woke him up. I just got him to sleep.” She glared at me. “I told you to be quiet.” She scooped him up and brought him to her breast.

“I barely said anything. I think he woke up on his own. How long has he been sleeping?”

“I just got him to sleep two minutes before you walked in the door.” She said it like I’d done something wrong by coming home.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. “Do you want me to take him?”

“He’s eating,” she snapped.

“Maybe we could start trying to get him to take a bottle?” I felt bad that I couldn’t help more with feeding him. At least if he took a bottle, I could alleviate some of her responsibility.