Before I Let You Go(79)

Which would mean more days that she’s safely in the hospital.

The nurse leaves me with Daisy, and I stare at her. She is asleep, her translucent eyelids resting over her eyes, eyelashes hanging down low on her cheeks. I lift my hand, and I very gently touch her face. There is so much of Annie in this baby . . . so much of my father in her. The light hair, the shape of her eyes. I’ve seen Daisy mostly cry and sleep over these weeks, but she’ll soon adapt to a more typical schedule and begin to hit normal newborn milestones. The rigidity in her muscles should fade and she’ll become floppy—the way newborns should be. Soon she will smile. Soon she will laugh.

She is my responsibility. She is my problem. For the time being, she is also my privilege. I need to love Daisy, because somehow newborns know if they are loved. I’ve read studies of infants raised in orphanages and the difficulties they face with attachment later in life—Daisy literally needs me to love her. Daisy has had a very rough start to life, but she’s not out of the woods yet. Somehow, we need to get Annie well quickly and in a position to provide Daisy with a stable upbringing.

If we don’t, there’s every chance that I’ll spend the next twenty years repeating what I’ve been doing for the last twenty—caring for Daisy, caring for her mother. And if Daisy is damaged, she will damage others—just as Annie has. She will damage herself, just as Annie has.

I haven’t trained for this. Unlike clinical practice, there’s no supervision of standin parents—I’m on my own. There’s no textbook or reference charts for when I feel out of my depth. This is real life. This is an innocent, fragile and somewhat blank canvas—and I need to start the painting of her life, then hand her over to her mother.

It is all too much, and yet, once again there is no one else but me. I take a deep breath, a sharp breath, and I add mentally with some force—no one else but me and Sam.

Quite suddenly I find that I need him. There are still ten minutes left on this car seat test, and now I’m shaking because I’m terrified. I dial Sam’s cell and the call is picked up on the second ring. But the voice that comes down the line doesn’t belong to Sam. It’s Cathryn.

“Hi, Lexie—Sam had to go back into surgery. Can I get a message to him?”

I feel hot tears running over my cheek. I take a deep breath, and ask only for him to call when he gets a chance. I set the cell down on the table beside the car seat, and I look at Daisy again.

My head is full of information on how to care for a baby. I’m more than up to this challenge. Maybe if I tell myself that enough times, I’ll start to believe it.





32


ANNIE


Luke,

Let’s talk about my sister, shall we? I can tell by the way that you keep asking that you’re dying to dig into that fucked-up mess of a relationship.

I’d lived away from Lexie for almost six years by the time things started to fall apart for me. She’d finished med school and was halfway through a residency at a hospital in Montgomery. We were far too busy to visit each other often, so we generally saw each other only for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but we still spoke on the phone every week—in fact, we hadn’t missed a Sunday night call in the entire time we’d been apart.

But after I lost my job, my phone got cut off. I was in such bad shape by then—on the tail end of a weeklong binge—I didn’t even realize it was Sunday and that she’d be calling. Monday morning, Lexie rang my office looking for me. They told her that I’d been fired, and she was on the next flight back to Chicago.

I had no idea who was thumping on my door that day. I ignored it at first—assuming it was probably my landlord, who was surely starting to wonder where my rent was. But the thumping continued, and then I heard someone yelling, so I eventually realized I had to answer it. I rolled over and sat up, and saw my kit on the floor beside the mattress. I dropped a pillow onto it, pulled a sweater on and stumbled to the peephole.

My stomach dropped when I saw Lexie. She was wild-eyed and panicked, and I turned to look at my apartment. The living area was completely empty—just books and garbage, and a tattered rug left in the middle of the floor. Of course I was aware of the space emptying out as I sold my possessions, but it was only in that moment that I really realized how little was left.

“Lexie! What are you doing here?” I asked, feigning delight to see her. I pulled her close for a hug and hoped I didn’t smell too bad—when did I last shower? I had no idea.

She stared at me, and I felt like a specimen in a laboratory right up until the moment she said, “What the hell is going on, Annie?”

“What do you mean?” I asked her mildly, and then I followed her gaze to the empty apartment. “Oh, this? I’m moving.”

“You’re moving?” Her incredulity was palpable, but I shrugged easily.

“Yeah, I’m moving in with some friends. My furniture is already there.”

“And your job? I called and they said you had been fired. I spoke to you last week and you didn’t mention moving or being fired.”

“I’m—” My mind was so foggy. I couldn’t keep up with having to produce convincing lies on the fly. “I have a new job.”

“It’s three o’clock. You’re at home, and you’ve been asleep. What kind of job do you have that lets you sleep in until three o’clock?”