He turned the baby onto her stomach. Then he turned her back. He jostled his legs up and down like a carnival ride. He put her on his shoulder, then he tried the other shoulder. He walked the room. He lay down on the floor with her. He rocked her in the crook of his arm. He tried sticking his finger in her mouth. It didn’t do any good or stop the screaming.
At this point Hawley was desperate. He went back to the front door, holding the baby this time, and opened it again. It was getting dark outside, and he stared into the darkness, as if he could conjure Lily out of the night sky, out of the stars and the gathering moon. But there was no sign of her.
Hawley closed the door and went down into the basement, the baby still crying. He brought down a metal box from the shelf above his workbench, got the key from where it was hidden behind the boiler, unlocked it, reached inside and took out a flask.
At night Hawley still dreamed of the clepsydra, the feel of it filling with water and being ripped from his hands. He woke up sweating with the same dread he’d felt when the glacier cracked and the blue ice fell. The only thing that settled his mind was a drink. So he’d started to keep bottles stashed around the house, in places he hoped that Lily would never find. After the mess he’d made in Alaska, Jove had done his best to cover for him, but in the end King had sussed it out. Now both he and Jove were on the line for all of that lost money.
Hawley brought the flask upstairs and poured himself a glass. He threw the whiskey back in one shot and exhaled loudly. The baby’s sobs grew softer, and her eyes seemed to focus for a moment. Hawley examined her blotchy face. Then he poured another shot, dipped his pinky into the glass and stuck his finger into his daughter’s gaping mouth. She stopped crying instantly. She sucked on his finger and her eyes locked on to his face. Her tiny hand came up and wrapped around the side of his hand and she watched him and she sucked the whiskey off his skin.
The room vibrated with the silence she had left behind. Hawley took a breath. He took another. Then he collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs. He kept the shot of whiskey nearby. When the baby fussed he dipped his pinky into the glass again. As soon as the finger was in her mouth she went to work, her tongue pressing against his nail. The pull was wildly strong. A dark, animal need.
When he heard Lily come in the front door, he grabbed the shot he’d poured and threw what was left down his own throat, then quickly tossed the flask into the garbage can. His daughter was sound asleep, heavy in his arms. He’d kept his finger in her mouth for over an hour, not wanting her to wake and start crying again. The baby’s face was peaceful, and Hawley felt as if he’d earned that peacefulness, as if he’d made all that haunted them both disappear.
He wiped the inside of the glass with his pinky and slid it back inside the baby’s mouth. The baby breathed for a moment, then her reflexes kicked in and her lips closed around his finger. It was the first secret between them.
Lily came around the corner of the living room, carrying her shoes. Her face was tired, her makeup worn off, her hair loose around her shoulders. She lingered in the doorway, watching Hawley and the baby.
“You smell like cigarettes,” he said.
“I bought some. But they don’t taste as good as I remember.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To a meeting, down at the church. Then I drove some more and then I had some ice cream.”
“Did you bring me any?”
“Nope.”
“She’s been screaming all night,” he said. “The least you could have done was bring me some ice cream.”
Lily walked up to the table, picked up the glass and lifted it to her nose.
Hawley said, “It’s not what you think.”
“Tell me, then.”
He didn’t know how to answer. He knew only that the whiskey had worked. And now the pride he’d felt at getting things right with their daughter was draining away.
“You need to step it up if you’re going to be a parent. You can’t keep living like a criminal.”
“Is that what the folks at your meeting told you?”
“This group is full of midwesterners from the Wisconsin Dells. A priest and a librarian and a ballet teacher and a guy who does commercials on the radio. I couldn’t tell them the truth about why we moved here. I can’t talk about our real life, about you disappearing and getting shot somewhere out in the wilderness and almost dying. I know it was hard but I took care of you afterward—don’t you remember? And now I take care of her. And I’m so tired I forget who I am sometimes.”
She sat down at the table. She bent over and smelled Loo’s head.
“That’s what I do when I want a drink.”
Lily picked up the shot glass and walked over to the counter. She turned on the water, washed the glass with a sponge and set it on the dish rack.
“You regret this,” said Hawley. “Coming back for me at the diner. Getting married.”
Lily turned off the faucet.
“You like being the bad guy. But our story—it isn’t only about you, Hawley.”
She dried her hands on a towel, then came and sat down next to him again.
“I’m going to tell you what I shared tonight at the meeting. What I could share,” she said, wiping her lips. “When you went away on that job in Alaska, and you didn’t call and you didn’t come home, I thought you’d left me. I thought you didn’t want a baby and weren’t ever coming back. So I went to a bar. I went to two bars. But nobody would serve me because I was pregnant. I was waiting for the liquor store to open when you rang from that guy’s truck.” She reached over and took his hand. “You think you’re alone. You think you’re the worst. But you’re not.”
Hawley shook his head. There weren’t any words he could say and not start choking.
“Go on,” said Lily.
He leaned over the baby. He pressed his face into her soft, black hair. She smelled of orange blossoms and sweet, freshly churned butter.
“I thought she’d never stop crying.”
“Well, she did.”
“You can’t ever leave like that again.”
He tried to hand the baby over. Lily wouldn’t take her.
“You’re just scared,” she said. “I am, too.”
They watched their daughter sleeping. Then Lily leaned on his shoulder and closed her eyes. Hawley could feel himself dozing, too. He slipped his finger out of the baby’s mouth and then he carefully lifted her and carried her into the living room and set her down in the bassinet. She startled for a moment and he froze, terrified. Then she threw her arms over her head and turned her face toward the wall. He covered her with a blanket. Then he picked up the baptismal certificate that he’d tossed on the floor earlier that night.
“?‘Louise’ makes her seem old,” he said.
“You got another idea?”
Hawley peered down at their daughter. The baby was still asleep, her mouth open in a perfect pout, her tiny hands clenched in tight little fists.
“Lou.”
“That’s a man’s name.”
“Then we’ll make it prettier,” said Hawley. “Switch the u with an o.”
“Loo,” Lily said. “I like it.”
Hawley sat down on the couch and took Lily’s hand. Just above her wedding band there was a tiny callus, a bit of skin worn tough from the pressure of the ring. It seemed like this hardened part of her had always been there, though Hawley knew there was a time when it wasn’t.