She passed Nina into my arms and I found a quiet corner to hide in at the end of the hall. I knew Tori would be bombarded by guests with their own cases of baby fever for most of the party, so I was happy to have a few minutes with my niece all to myself.
When Tori found us, I was rocking Nina in my arms, my lips pressed to her forehead.
“You’re a natural,” Tori whispered. “I brought you a champagne flute so we could trade.”
I laughed. “Thanks.”
Once we returned to the party, I discretely tipped the champagne into a potted plant and grabbed a bottle of water instead. I still hadn’t shared my big secret with my sisters-in-law yet.
The agenda was packed full of party games and gift opening and generally being elbow-to-elbow with people I didn’t know. Between the loudly chattering guests and my usual nausea, I couldn’t force myself to sit with the group for too long, so I settled into a chair at the edge of the room and picked at a cupcake while Brooklyn’s best friend Mateo set up the games.
The first involved trying to put cloth diapers on balloons with safety pins, which resulted in many popped balloons, a lot of laughing, and one spilled drink (not mine).
Up next was a trivia game about Brooklyn and Luka, where we were given a list of traits and we had to guess who they described. I knew Brooklyn was crazy about chocolate-covered strawberries and that Luka was the better ice skater (thanks to his many years on the boys’ hockey team), but I still lost the game, too distracted by my thoughts to finish filling in the blanks. I missed Ford.
After that, we sat around decorating diapers for Brooklyn and Luka to use during late night changings. We were supposed to write words of encouragement, draw pictures, sign our names. I sketched Mr. Kibbles, Luka and Brooklyn’s greyhound, and drew a little speech bubble coming out of his snout that said, “CHANGE IS RUFF!”
The dog part looked pretty good, but I’d never said I was a comedian.
All the while, women were circling Tori and Nina and talking about what a pretty baby she was, how tiny, how perfect, how precious. Telling stories about their own babies, their own pregnancies, their remedies for colic and teething and overall reassuring Brooklyn that she was going to do great during the delivery, that everything was going to be completely wonderful.
On the outside, I was smiling. Inside, it felt like there was a knife in my chest.
Of course I wanted to be happy and excited for Brooklyn, but being at her shower was just a painful reminder of all the things I wouldn’t be getting when I eventually told people about my surprise New York baby. The baby that everyone would “know” was the result of an affair.
The Malones wouldn’t have to spread a word of that rumor, either, because everyone could do the math. Thanks to all of Ford’s foot-dragging on signing the divorce papers, I’d run out of time to pretend that we’d gotten divorced first and I’d gone to a sperm bank afterward. Now it would just look like he’d found out I was cheating and we’d separated because of it.
Not that I could blame him for refusing to sign. His heart had been in the right place.
But even so…just thinking about what could have been still hurt.
Thankfully, Luka was done passing out cocktail weenies and Stefan was leaning against a wall with a whiskey in his hand, so I wasn’t completely on my own. In fact, my brothers looked almost as out of place as I felt. Most of the guests were Brooklyn’s friends, so it was a lot of screaming women helping her open gifts and taking pictures of everything she unwrapped.
“This almost makes me not want to have kids,” Luka said, coming to stand by me with a freshly opened beer.
“No, it doesn’t,” Stefan said.
Luka grinned at his extremely pregnant wife who was sitting on her baby shower throne looking gorgeous and glowing. I was pretty sure that when I started showing, I wasn’t going to look anything like Brooklyn and Tori had. I was too short and too curvy already—a baby would just make me look like a beach ball with legs.
“Sorry you have to be here without Ford,” Stefan said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry for all of it,” Luka added quietly.
They were trying to console me on the sly, since their wives still didn’t know anything about the Bratva, or how seriously close we had come to losing the family business…or what the cost had been for me personally. But although I truly appreciated their efforts, there wasn’t anything my brothers could say that would help, that could change the fact of my impending divorce or make the situation any better.
I was always going to be playing this role in our family. The martyr. The one who got the crumbs while they feasted. It was like I was goddamn Munchkin: a little dog, always curled up at their feet, waiting for attention. I wished that Munch was with me now. He wasn’t a substitute for Ford, but he had always been a great comfort to me.
“What are you three scheming about?” Tori teased, walking over to us with the baby in her arms.
“Work stuff,” Stefan said, kissing his wife and then Nina. “Nothing important.”
“I’ll bet,” Tori said with a smile.
All of a sudden the lights in the room dimmed, and everyone stopped talking. I turned in my chair to see Tori’s stepmother Michelle walking slowly into the room, carrying a white frosted cake decorated with gold leaf and real peonies, ablaze with candles. It was beautiful. The smell of vanilla and flower petals had my mouth watering already.
“A birthday cake? What is this?” Brooklyn asked, looking delighted.
“Birthday wishes can be made in advance,” Tori’s stepmother said with a smile. “So let’s all wish good things for Brooklyn and Luka’s little one.”
