“Thanks, Miz Trenholm. Back to those tubs now. I’ll keep you posted.”
As soon as he was outside, a door slammed upstairs just as a whirring and popping began deep inside the doll’s chest, and then subsided. We held our breaths for a long minute, waiting to see if it would speak. With a sigh of relief, Sophie carried it across the foyer and had almost reached the door when the high tinny voice that brought to mind raw fingernails scratching at the inside lid of a coffin screeched out at us. Help. Me.
CHAPTER 17
Isat on one of the gliders in the nursery with Sarah on my lap as I dried her chubby little toes and smelled her sweet fresh-from-the-bath baby scent. I needed to find a way to bottle that so I could whip it out and sniff it to calm me down when I was feeling stressed. Like now. I had yet to grow used to the furniture rearrangement, and now, adding to the chaos, there were upended bins of primary-colored plastic toys that didn’t match the décor at all. The carefully stacked and labeled bins of blocks and educational toys that I’d spent hours creating and organizing were untouched in their spots on the shelves against the walls.
I had to turn my head away from the mismatched outfits Jayne had laid out on the changing tables. It was too much for me. Instead I closed my eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of my baby. Even JJ’s cries of protest about being removed from the bathtub didn’t faze me.
Jayne emerged from the children’s bathroom with JJ swaddled in a baby towel and his head covered by a hood with panda bear ears. It was cute and made of organic and self-sustaining cotton—a gift from Sophie—but it didn’t match the one I’d used for Sarah. I closed my eyes again and took a big sniff of Sarah’s damp, dark hair.
I didn’t need to be in the office until one o’clock, so I’d offered to help Jayne with the twins’ bath time. I had it on the children’s spreadsheet to be done at night before bedtime, but JJ had upended his bowl of oatmeal over his head at breakfast. It was just easier to keep them both on the same schedule whether Sarah also needed a bath or not.
I’d wanted an opportunity to speak with Jayne about going back to the Pinckney house. I was meeting Jack’s mother, Amelia, there at ten o’clock to look at some of the decorative items and furnishings to determine value. Whether Jayne sold the house or not, she’d have to make a choice about what to do with everything inside it. Neither Sophie nor I was willing to make those decisions for her.
“Jayne,” I started at the same time she said, “Melanie . . .”
“You first,” I said, happy to wait a little longer.
She sat down on the other glider with JJ on her lap and began drying him gently with the towel. His eyes closed halfway as she rubbed his scalp and dried behind his ears, JJ looking remarkably like Jack when I massaged his shoulders after a long day of writing.
“It’s not like I’m going to go or anything, but I just wanted to let you know so that if she asks why I’m not there, you’ll know what to say.”
I stared at her, blinking, trying to unravel her words to make sense of them, but couldn’t. “Excuse me?”
She moved down to JJ’s toes, making him arch his back and squeal with delight. Sarah frowned at him. “Sorry. When I’m nervous or uncomfortable, I tend to babble and not make sense.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
She glanced up at me with a small flush in her cheeks. “You’re talking about Detective Riley, aren’t you? We’re supposed to have dinner on Friday night, but I’m thinking about canceling. I mean, I’d probably choke on my own tongue.”
“He’s a police detective,” I pointed out. “I bet he knows the Heimlich maneuver.”
She grimaced. “Point taken. We were supposed to go to dinner after reviewing the inventory of the house after what we thought was the break-in, but I couldn’t stand the thought of going back inside, so I gave it to Sophie to check and then canceled dinner. But then he called and asked again, so I’m stuck.”
“And you wanted me to tell you what I think?”
“Oh, no,” she said, standing to take JJ to his changing table and expertly fastening a disposable diaper onto him. “I mean, I’d love your opinion if you’d like to give it, but that’s not what I was trying to say. It’s about that party.” She wrinkled her nose. “I got an invitation, too.”
I opened my eyes wide, her words suddenly sinking in. “The book launch? They invited you?”
“I know—weird, right? But don’t worry—I won’t go. You need me to stay here with the children anyway.”
I carried Sarah over to her changing table and pulled out a clean diaper, weighing my words. I had a good idea of why Rebecca had invited Jayne, but I would never say it out loud. “I do agree it’s odd, but please don’t decline unless you really don’t want to go. I’m sure I could get Jack’s parents or my parents or even Nola to babysit.”