She died two years later.
It feels like I lost her just as we’d begun to find each other. I’ve mourned my memories of Mom. The way she would sneak into my room and kiss me good night after returning from the lodge, thinking I was asleep when all the while I’d been waiting for her. The crisp fall mornings when things got a tiny bit slower and she’d wake me early to sit with her by the water while she drank her coffee. The way she introduced me as My Fern. Her pancakes. She was adamant about making them with buttermilk, though we never had any in the house. She’d mix lemon juice into milk so it soured instead. But I’ve also mourned the future we’ll never have, the relationship we were only starting to make solid.
I got so sick of crying—the stinging eyes, the stuffy nose, the feeling that I’d never be able to stop—that I tried cutting myself off a couple weeks after the funeral. I’ve slipped a few times, but now, trying to soothe an inconsolable five-month-old, I fall off the wagon. Hard.
The knock is almost imperceptible through the cacophony that is Owen. I stop shushing, and there it is again. Whitney and Cam must have cut their evening short. I’m so relieved, I don’t care if I’ve completely failed as a babysitter.
But it’s not Whitney and Cam I see when I open the door.
It’s Will.
I couldn’t say what it is about him that muddles my brain. The blue jeans and faded gray T-shirt. The sheer length of him. The fact that he’s here at all. But if I had to pick, it might be the hair. It’s shorter than it was back then, but seeing it like this, messy and unstyled, lying in a black stripe across his forehead, makes me feel like I’m twenty-two again.
“I’m here for the ritualistic infant sacrifice. Eight p.m., right?” Will says while I blink at him, Owen wiggling hotly in the crook of my arm.
I picture how we must look to Will: both puffy-eyed and tearstained. The baby is naked except for his diaper. My nose is running. I’m not wearing a bra or pants, and my gray tank top is speckled with my best friend’s breast milk.
“You heard the crying?” I ask, trying to sound as if I were, in fact, wearing pants and not in the midst of spectacularly losing my shit. I’m grateful Will keeps his eyes on my face.
“I think they can hear the crying in Alaska.”
“I’m sorry.” I raise my voice over Owen’s vocal pyrotechnics. “I’ll close the windows.”
“Actually,” Will says, “I was coming to see if I could help.”
“With the baby?” From the disbelief in my voice, I might as well have asked, With the infant sacrifice?
“Yeah. I know a thing or two.”
The smart thing to do in this situation is lie, to tell Will I’ve got things under control, then politely ask him to leave.
“So,” Will says, “can I come in?”
But the reality is that Owen has been out of his mind for at least twenty minutes, and I’m desperate. I hold the door open with my hip.
As soon as Will’s inside, I know I’ve made a mistake. He stands across from me in the hallway, and there is just so much of him so close to me. He’s brought his burnt sugar smell in with him, and when he leans down to Owen, I see the spray of freckles across the tops of his cheeks. I’ve imagined alternate endings of the day we spent together so many times, it’s shameful, but nothing has taken me back there so quickly as having Will Baxter in my home. Humiliation and desire hit me in equal measure.
Will puts his hand on my elbow.
“Why don’t you let me take . . .” He pauses.
“Owen.”
He squeezes Owen’s foot. “Why don’t you let me take Owen, and you can get dressed?” He looks up at me, and the mischief in his eyes almost makes me gasp. It’s the first glimpse I’ve had of the old Will. “Unless you two have some kind of pants-free policy going on here.”
“I spilled the milk,” I whisper. “On both of us.”
“I won’t tell,” he says. I shift Owen into his arms, and he lays him on his shoulder in one easy movement.
“The living room is to the left,” I say. There’s no way I’m leading him there. My underwear has monday written across the backside under a picture of Little Miss Grumpy. Plus, it’s Wednesday.
Upstairs, I splash cold water on my face, thankful I’m not wearing makeup and that my cheeks don’t have mascara tracks on them. I run a brush through my hair, swipe on deodorant, and throw on a bra, a clean tank top, and a pair of denim shorts. I give myself a once-over in the mirror.
When I come downstairs, Owen’s cradled in Will’s arms, looking up at him quietly while Will sings. I watch from the landing. Owen is now dressed in a turquoise sleeper, and Will, I realize, is serenading him with “Closing Time,” the song that ended every single elementary school dance I attended. When he’s done, he lifts the baby to his face, and Owen, the little menace, laughs.
“The undeniable power of Semisonic—works on grade-seven girls and babies,” I say, moving closer, and Will turns around. He takes me in, clocking my outfit.
“What?”
Will shakes his head. “I kissed Catherine Reyes dancing to this song.”
I laugh despite myself. “I kissed Justin Tremblay.” I give Owen a rub on his head. “How did you tame this dragon? Nothing I did worked.” I glance up at Will, and there’s so much warmth in his eyes, I take a step back. And then it dawns on me. “Oh. Do you have one?”
“A kid? No.” He sounds startled.
“You don’t want them?”
“No.” He pauses. “I don’t know. What about you?”
“I’ve got five,” I deadpan. “Owen’s the youngest.”
I’m rewarded with a miniature smile for that. Will peers down at the baby. “I saw you waving goodbye to a couple who I’m guessing are his parents.”
“My best friend, Whitney, and her husband.” I scan Will’s face for a sign that he recalls the name, but I get nothing. “It’s the first time I’ve babysat. Clearly.”
Owen lets out a well-timed squawk and shoves a fist into his mouth.
“Did you manage to feed him?” Will asks, twisting his upper body around to soothe Owen. “I think he’s hungry.”
“I tried, but he didn’t stop crying. I couldn’t really get him to drink. We can give it another go.”
I warm up the milk in the kitchen, and when I return, Will and Owen are snuggled in the armchair, a cloth bib around Owen’s neck. I hadn’t thought of a bib earlier. Will reaches for the bottle.
“I can do it,” he says. “Unless you want to.”
“Be my guest.” I fold myself onto the sofa.
“Hungry guy,” Will says as Owen begins glugging away happily.
I watch, astonished. Will looks up at me, and there’s no way he doesn’t see my shock, but he offers no explanation for his expert baby handling.
Owen starts to squirm and Will sits him up, patting him gently on the back until he makes an outrageously loud Homer Simpson burp, then slumps in Will’s hands.
When the bottle is drained, Will burps the baby again, wipes his chin, and takes him to the travel crib in the corner of the room, setting him down gently. Owen doesn’t make a peep.
“Is there another room we can sit in?” Will whispers, surprising me. I assumed he’d leave. “Unless you’d prefer for me to go?”
“Stay,” I tell him. “If he wakes, I’ll need backup.”
* * *
—
I lead Will into the kitchen. The shoeboxes of Mom’s diaries are still on the table, exactly where they have sat, unopened, since Peter gave them to me. I take a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, holding it up to him in question. He nods and taps a finger against Whitney’s babysitting FAQs, which lie on the counter.
“What’s this?”
“Proof my friend doesn’t trust me with her infant son?” I pour the wine. “No idea why she’d feel that way.”
Will reads from the sheet of paper. “Owen’s favorite lullabies are ‘Edelweiss’ and ‘What a Wonderful World.’?” He glances at me. “Advanced.”