She grinned. “Right. Well, I’m not the one wearing yoga pants with a hidden compartment for doughnuts.” She shook her head as she gave the baby swing a gentle push.
I eventually got tired of watching her while I held a baby on each hip, and put the twins in two adjacent swings. When Sophie wasn’t looking, I used the hem of my shirt to wipe the places on the swings where the babies might touch them and then tried not to hyperventilate each time they brought their fingers to their mouths.
We chatted about work, children, husbands, and the joys of yoga—Sophie did all the talking about the latter—until the conversation settled on the Pinckney house. “I’ve never been given such a carte blanche on a restoration,” Sophie admitted. “And neither has the restoration company I’m working with. It’s a great feeling, knowing I’m not going to be nickel-and-dimed, or second-guessed, or yelled at when something new and unexpected comes up.”
“I’ve never yelled at you,” I protested.
“No, but I can tell when you want to, and that’s almost as bad. Anyway, it’s been really easy working with Jayne on this project.”
“Has she told you what she wants to do with the attic and its contents?” I asked, trying not to cringe as JJ leaned over and began mouthing the safety bar in front of him.
“No, not yet. And we really need to start working on the roof. A tarp only goes so far. I can’t repair the ceilings on the second floor until we’ve got the roof issue addressed. I’ve been up to the attic with my restoration toys and have measured the moisture in the walls and I have to say it’s not good. We’ll probably have to rip everything back to the studs—and I hate doing that because you never know what you might find. I’m just hoping we won’t discover black mold, because that’s a whole different ball game. If you could talk to Jayne soon to get an answer, that would be great. I suppose we could just move everything to another room on the second story, but everything there was just so . . . personal. Every time I go up there, I’m left thinking that Button wanted Jayne to take care of that stuff. Otherwise why didn’t she just get rid of it all after Hasell and Anna died?”
I stopped pushing, Sophie’s words resonating with me. Why had Button left Hasell’s room untouched all those years, almost as a shrine, and then left the disposal of it to a perfect stranger?
“Why are you letting him do that?” Sophie asked, watching JJ gnaw on the metal safety bar.
“You said we should let our children touch things so they’re exposed to germs.”
She reached over and gently lifted JJ’s head. “Within reason. That’s metal. Why are you letting your baby chew on metal?”
I whipped out a cloth diaper from the diaper bag—Jayne kept it well stocked according to my checklist I kept next to it in the mudroom. At least that was one thing she did according to my instructions. While Sophie was busy hoisting Skye up in the swing to keep her from slipping out one of the leg holes, I knotted the clean and bleached diaper around the safety bar just in case JJ felt like chewing on it again.
We resumed pushing, enjoying the quiet morning in the park and watching off-leash dogs running in circles as if they couldn’t believe their luck at being set free. I’d brought General Lee, Porgy, and Bess here once, but the puppies had been insistent on running in opposite directions, and General Lee was torn among trying to supervise them, and barking them into submission, and chasing something—or someone—that only he could see. I’d been more exhausted than they had when we returned home, and I’d sworn to never do that again.
“So, how’s Jayne working out as a nanny?” Sophie asked. She had opted to share parenting duties with her husband, Chad, an art history professor at the college, instead of hiring a nanny, and the two of them took turns wearing baby Skye while they taught classes. I had no idea what they planned to do once the baby was big enough to walk, but I was sure it would be as unappealing to me as wearing my baby to work.
“All in all, pretty great,” I said, remembering the broken night-light, the rearranged nursery, and the incomplete spreadsheets. “The children really respond to her and seem to love her, so that’s all good.” I could see her preparing to ask a more pointed question, so—always one to avoid conflict—I said, “And Jack says she has the patience of Job dealing with the twins.” He’d added “and you,” but I refrained from mentioning that part to Sophie.
“It doesn’t bother you that she’s so attractive?” Sophie managed to squeeze in.
There. She’d said it. The way Sophie could read my mind was pretty close to psychic. It was why she was my best friend. Because she and I both knew that I could never avoid the ugly truth when she was around. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to try.
“Is she?” I said. “I guess she’s pretty, in an all-American athletic kind of way. I don’t think blond is her natural hair color, so she’s probably closer to average when she wears her hair naturally.”
Sophie responded with raised eyebrows.