The Swap(59)

So I sat on an orange Naugahyde sofa and waited to be summoned. Even as the minutes ticked into hours, I had no doubts that Freya would want to see me. I was her best friend, even more than that. And she had no one else. No family. No Jamie. Just me. And Max, who was standing by her though he knew her baby couldn’t be his. The pair seemed locked in some kind of sick, codependent partnership full of lies and abuse and emotional distance, and yet . . . they had each other’s backs.

As if summoned by my thoughts, Max appeared in the entryway. He looked pale and worn; the toll of witnessing his wife give birth to another man’s child was etched on his face.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I stood. “Is Freya okay? Can I see her?”

“She’s fine. She had a baby girl.”

She had a baby girl. Not we.

“Come with me.”

I followed his hulking form down the buffed hallway feeling petite and girlish next to him. Max still elicited a little a thrill in me. Once the baby was out of the picture, he would fade into the background, or disappear completely. But for now, I didn’t mind having him around.

The number on the door was eighteen. Max pushed it open and held it for me to enter. Freya was propped up in a narrow hospital bed, her face fully made-up, her white-blond hair brushed to a sheen. She wore a pale pink robe . . . the robe I’d seen on her the night she’d attempted to stab Max with a fork. Other than some puffiness around the eyes, you would not have known she’d just been in labor, had just had a child cut out of her stomach.

She greeted me with a weary smile, and my heart filled up.

“I’m so glad you came.”

Freya wanted me here at this seminal moment. I was the most important person in her life.

I noticed the tiny bundle sleeping in a clear plastic bassinet next to Freya’s bed. The baby was tightly swaddled in a white blanket, a few blond curls peeping out of the pink cap on her head. I moved closer, taking in the full pink cheeks, the long lashes, the rosebud lips. She was beautiful, not shriveled and purple like Eckhart had been. I’d wished the child away so many times, but she was perfection. Just like Freya. I felt something like awe as I stared at her . . . awe and fear. Because Freya might fall in love with this pretty baby.

“Her name is Maggie. After Max’s mom.”

I looked over at Max and met his dark eyes. We both understood the significance of this moniker. It was a bold move; a fighting stance. It meant that Freya was determined to pretend her baby was Max’s. That she would never admit that Brian was the real father. And she was not going to hand her child over to Jamie’s loving maternal arms. Freya was going to fight for her child.

Damn it.

“Pass her here,” Freya instructed me. I reached into the bassinet and scooped up the little bundle. Maggie didn’t stir as I settled her in her mother’s arms. Freya gazed down at her daughter, her face alight with maternal adoration. She looked radiant, beatific, almost saintly. Love emanated from the pair like a visible halo. Then Freya looked up at me.

“Do you have your camera?”

“Uh . . . no.”

“Why not?”

“I heard you were in labor. I raced over here.”

“Take a photo with your phone then.”

“It’s in the truck.”

“Well, go get it,” she snapped, handing the baby to Max, who returned her to the bassinet. “Before Maggie wakes up and starts screaming her head off.”

Dismissed, I scurried down the polished hallway—past doctors, nurses, and patients, absorbed in their own dramas. Freya’s curt tone had hurt me, but in a way, I was relieved. Her bonding moment with Maggie had been nothing but an act, a stunt for the cameras. She wanted to keep Maggie for appearances only, was going to fight Brian and Jamie on principle alone. But she didn’t know that they had a secret weapon in their struggle for custody.

Me.

When I burst through the sliding doors, I expected to see my boss and her husband waiting patiently in the cold, crisp night, but Jamie and Brian were gone. Maybe a security guard had shooed them away. Or Max may have called the cops. Or perhaps the hours without word had worn them down. But they should have stayed. They should have been more devoted to their baby. As I stalked across the darkened lot, I felt a prickle of concern.

I slid into my truck and reached for my phone in the glove box. With trembling fingers, I texted Jamie.

The baby is healthy. Seven pounds two ounces. Not a preemie.

And then, for good measure. . . .

She looks like her dad





spring 2020





56


jamie


On the fifth day after my husband’s daughter was born, we saw a lawyer. Her name was Nancy Willfollow—her office a renovated heritage home on the edge of town. She had been a customer at my store on occasion, breezing into the shop in her shapeless black Eileen Fisher togs. Despite the slow pace of island life, she exuded an air of frazzled efficiency. She had three sons away at boarding school and a retired landscape architect husband who devoted himself to the care of their home and garden. Perhaps the townspeople of Hawking had more pressing legal issues than I thought?

My cheeks burned as Brian told the fiftyish woman about the night he bedded Freya upstairs while I was in the basement guest room with Max. It was entirely possible that Nancy and her landscaping husband were swingers. They might have moved to the island specifically for its open-minded, sexually adventurous culture. The attorney’s features remained blank, unreadable, but I was mortified, nonetheless. It could have been worse, I told myself. It’s not like we were using whips or chains or animal costumes. But still . . . the conception of Brian’s child sounded tawdry and sleazy.