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Chapter 21
NOAH
The slam of the front door boomed through the house, and I knew what was going to come moments later. Sure enough, the soft sobbing of the babies upstairs turned into full-on wailing, both of the twins letting loose with all the power their lungs could muster.
“I’ll get them,” I said, finishing off my whiskey and getting up.
Sadie was stunned. Hell, so was I. It was hard to wrap my head around how harshly Cammy had laid into Sadie. She’d come at her with knives out, and it was going to take some time for her to recover from that.
Sadie snapped out of her daze, shaking her head, and pushing herself off the couch.
“No. Let me help.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Two of us, two of them. No sense in you doing all the work while I sit here like a lump.”
She was ready to get back into action. All the same, I stepped over to her and placed my hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
“We did the right thing,” I said. “And it’s over now.”
More tears trickled down her face, and she wasted no time wiping them away.
“It’s fine. It’s over.”
There was no doubt in my mind that she hadn’t fully processed the situation yet. Her best friend had just told her to screw off forever. There was no blowing past something like that, not even for a woman as strong as Sadie.
“Come on then,” I said.
We made the trip upstairs in silence. I went into Andy’s room, and she into Emmy’s. I went to work slipping my boy out of his jammies and checking his diaper. Sure enough, a blue line down the middle of his nappy let me know he was set for a change.
As I sat him down, putting a pacifier into his mouth to help calm him, I considered how, so many years ago, I’d thought I’d put on my last diaper. I wasn’t sure exactly how old Camilla had been. But one day, a short time after she’d gotten the hang of potty training, I’d put a diaper on her not knowing it was going to be the last one.
I remembered what I’d thought at the time, how I’d lost track of how many diapers I’d changed, how many dirty nappies I’d tossed into the trash. However many I’d changed, I realized, I was about to deal with twice as many over the next few years.
As I changed Andy, I found myself thinking about Cammy. When I’d changed her so many times as a baby all those years ago, never,everdid I think it would end up in the situation I’d just dealt with, sitting on the couch while she tore into me for my indiscretion. Life never took you to the places you’d think it would. The baby boy in front of me was proof of that.
When he was changed and back into his jammies, I held him in my arms and left the room, heading toward Emmy’s. But when I poked my head in, they were both gone.
“I’m downstairs,” Sadie called.
Andy in my arms, I went downstairs and into the kitchen. She was there with Emmy curled up in one arm while Sadie heated a bottle of breastmilk under warm water.
“I’m afraid to breastfeed them right now,” she said. “I’m so anxious I don’t want the stress hormones coming out in my milk.”
I stepped over to her, Sadie standing with her eyes on the stove. I could tell just by her posture that she was taking it hard.
“It’s all going to be ok.”
Sadie pursed her lips, checking the bottle to make sure it was warm.
“I think it’s good.”
That done, we each prepared a bottle of the milk and went into the living room. I sat down and she sat next to me, the two of us wordlessly feeding the children.
“I love this about babies,” I said. “Feeding them like this. No matter what happens, no matter what’s going on in your life, everything seems to come to a halt when you’re holding a baby with a bottle in their mouth.”
“Yeah. The world hasn’t come to a halt, though. Cammy’s pissed. And she might be pissed at me for the rest of her life. And the worst part is, she’s totally in the right.”
