The Family Next Door(16)

“Yes,” Ange said. “Here!”

She still desperately needed to pee.

She tapped Ollie. He opened his eyes, then immediately closed them again. On her third try, she managed to haul him into a standing position and lead him toward the doctor. Before she proceeded through the doors into the ER, she glanced back at the doors out to the parking lot. Lucas was nowhere to be seen.





10


BARBARA


Barbara kept patting Mia long after she’d fallen asleep. It was official: that little girl had her wrapped around her little finger. Whether she wanted an extra bedtime story or a second biscuit, Barbara was utterly powerless to say no to her. A few months earlier, over dinner, Barbara had asked Essie and Ben: “How long do you pat Mia’s back at bedtime?” They’d both fallen about laughing.

“Pat her back?” Essie had cried. “Let’s see, approximately zero minutes.”

“I’d say it’s definitely a grandma thing,” Ben had said, grinning.

Kids had a knack, Barbara knew, for finding a weak link, and grandmothers were nothing if not weak links. In spite of what Essie and Ben said, whenever Barbara had her granddaughters for a sleepover, she still rubbed their backs until her wrists ached, and there was nothing she’d have rather done.

One thing you didn’t realize until you were a grandparent was that little children were a tiny glimpse of magic in a dreadfully difficult world. They had to be disciplined, sure, but they also had to be enjoyed. Parents worked so hard these days that often they didn’t make time to enjoy them, but grandparents knew better. The days were long and years were short, that was what everyone said these days. But as far as Barbara was concerned, the days were short too. And she was perfectly happy to spend them patting her granddaughters to sleep.

When Mia was snoring, Barbara moved to Polly’s crib and gazed down at her. She’d wrapped her in a white cotton sheet, but Polly’s hands had come free and now they were stretched out on either side of her head as though she was reaching for something. Darling child. She was, in many ways, the polar opposite to Mia. Chubby where Mia was petite, dark-haired where Mia was ginger. Brown-eyed where Mia was blue. And—thank goodness—easy where Mia had been challenging.

Barbara reached out and swept a damp curl off Polly’s forehead. Essie had bonded so quickly and easily with Polly. At first she’d even declined all offers from Barbara to babysit because she just couldn’t bear to be away from her. It would have been reassuring, if Barbara didn’t worry that she was burning herself out. Barbara knew, on some level, that Essie was trying to prove that this time she could do it.

“But you don’t have to do it alone,” Barbara kept telling her. She knew, better than anyone, how hard it was to do it alone. Essie’s father had run off while she was still pregnant with Essie. He’d promised all the right things—financial support, a role in the child’s life—but of course, he’d produced none of them. Barbara had been forced to move to Melbourne for family support. Her great-aunt Esther wasn’t exactly a lot of family, but back then, she was all Barbara had. So, yes, she knew about doing it alone. And she was determined her daughter wouldn’t have to do the same.

Essie had spent two weeks as an inpatient at the Summit Oaks—a psychiatric unit attached to the hospital—after she’d left Mia in the park that day. When she’d been released, she’d returned home with a psychologist’s card in her pocket and a prescription for Zoloft and had been expected to get on with her life. It wasn’t enough in Barbara’s opinion.

“You’re always worried,” Essie had told her.

“I’m your mother,” she’d replied. “It’s my job.”

But Essie may have been right. Now that Essie was asking her to babysit more often, Barbara was still worried. Call it a mother’s instinct, but these past few weeks Essie had seemed a little … off. Barbara hoped it wasn’t the beginning of something.

She snuck out of the spare room, leaving the door ajar, and made herself a cup of tea. She’d been trying to stay off the tea and drink more water lately, but she had a feeling she was coming down with a cold and she needed the comfort.

“Drink the damn tea,” her friend Lois had told her when they’d discussed it recently. “Everyone is always denying themselves these days. No sugar, no gluten. No dairy! For Pete’s sake, what is more natural than dairy?”

So Barbara made the tea, then slipped on her glasses to check her phone messages. Lois had sent her a text—a cartoon of two people with a smaller person between them. Barbara squinted at it. What on earth was that supposed to be?

Barbara hated texting. She much preferred speaking to people on the phone, but when she said it out loud, it made her sound so appallingly old that she just pretended to be happy with texting. She put up with texts from Essie and Ben, but why did Lois have to do it, for goodness sake? She punched in her number and called her. This was always her silent protest.

“Did you get my text?” Lois said. No ‘hello.’”

“I did. But I have no idea what it means.”

“Teresa is having a baby!”

“Oh!” she cried. “Lo, that’s fantastic. Congratulations to you all.”

Barbara felt a thrill that was perhaps disproportionate to the occasion, considering that Teresa wasn’t even a relative. But Barbara loved nothing more than a newborn. Besides, Lois’s daughter had been trying to get pregnant for two years. For the last year Lois had kept Barbara so well informed about Teresa’s fertile dates, ovulation cycles, and vaginal mucus that Barbara had felt positively shy around Teresa. According to Lois, they’d been about to try IVF. Now they wouldn’t have to.