“What? No. Hey!” The last was shouted as he opened the door to our room. “Why can’t I get the food?”
Luther just rolled his eyes. Right. No naked girl babies around the kid.
“Does she really need a bath?” I asked. “It’s not like she’s been jogging or mud wrestling.”
“May have been a while since she’s had one. She smells a little funky.”
“Fine.” I waved my hand. “Go.”
He started to, then paused and glanced back. “You know you can’t leave her alone in the tub.”
“Duh.”
“You have to hold on to her every second. You only need an inch of water. Not too hot. But she can still drown in an inch.”
“You sure you don’t want to—”
He stepped outside and shut the door.
“Guess not.”
Faith was having a very important conversation with her toes. I took the reprieve to hunt through the diaper bag for anything that seemed like bath stuff. Finally I gave up, grabbed both the bag and the baby, and went into the bathroom.
Five minutes later I was as ready as I was going to get. I had an inch of water in the tub—not too hot. I’d dumped the diaper bag and found a washcloth and towel, along with some baby shampoo. I’d managed to remove Faith’s pink sun suit, as well as her diaper, without making her cry.
I lifted her and set her in the water. Faith’s eyes went wide and she caught her breath. If she screamed, this was going to be the world’s shortest bath. Instead she gurgled, kicked, splashed, cooed, and—
Grrrr.
Growled?
I peered at the washcloth I was running over her chubby, slippery body. Not a dog in sight. Nothing on the shampoo bottle but an unbelievably cherubic child with a head full of suds. No anti-slip stickers on the bottom of the tub. What the hell?
Maybe she was just imitating Luther. Although I couldn’t recall him growling in her presence, that didn’t mean he hadn’t when I wasn’t around. Could babies this young imitate sounds? Only one way to find out.
“Can you say Liz?” I asked in a chirpy voice that made Faith stop kicking and stare at me wide-eyed. I couldn’t blame her.
“Liz,” I tried again.
Faith blinked. Maybe Liz was too difficult. There had to be a reason children said Da-Da or Ma-Ma first.
“Luther? Say Luther. Lu-Lu-Lu.”
“Glurg,” Faith said. I felt like an idiot.
Quickly I finished washing then drying her. I slapped on a diaper and found a one-piece deal with feet that snapped from the ankle to the neck. It was soft and yellow and looked like pajamas to me.
Faith began to tug at my shirt again so I grabbed a clean bottle and the can of formula, read the directions, and managed to get her fed before Luther returned.
She was falling asleep on my lap when he came in. “Wake her and die a thousand deaths,” I whispered.
He grinned before setting the bags of takeout—hamburgers and fries from the smell of them—on the dresser. “You did fine.”
“Piece of cake.”
“I’ll put her down.” He leaned over to take her but I tightened my hold.
“She’s okay. Go ahead and eat.”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I’ll wait.”
I couldn’t explain it but I didn’t want to let the baby go right now. She was warm and soft. She was quiet. Her mouth continued to suckle even though the bottle was nowhere near. When she rubbed her cheek against my breast, the scent of water and trees wafted upward.
My eyes stung. How could she smell just like Sawyer?
I held her for an hour. The steady pace of her breathing lulled me. I hadn’t felt such peace since—
I’d never felt such peace. My life had been one long, unholy jumble of chaos.
While I held Faith I opened my mind, tried to see anything that I could. But she was a baby. She lived in the now. All I saw in her head was a swirling array of faces—mine, Luther’s, Megan’s, Anna’s, Quinn’s—then a bottle and the binkie. Not a hint of Mommy, not a trace of Daddy. Must be nice to have such simple dreams.
Luther took a shower and crawled into bed. He flicked on the television, kept the sound turned low. Before I fell asleep in the chair, I set Faith in the middle of my mattress, quickly ate a cold hamburger while I researched a few things on the Internet, then yanked off my jeans and climbed in. I lined the far side of the bed with pillows and curled my body around hers.
“Sawyer,” I whispered. “Why the hell did you think this was a good idea?”
I awoke to a darkness so complete, I immediately understood the power had gone out. The only thing that glittered was a thin slice of the moon. Every security light in the parking lot was black, the neon of the sign cold and bleak, the glow from the complimentary night-light long gone.
“Liz?” Luther breathed, not even a whisper.
“Shh.”
I listened for the whip of the wind, the slash of rain, distant thunder. A storm having gone through would explain the power outage—although I couldn’t believe I would have slept through it.