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“Nope,” I say. I’m going away for a while.
“Not this again,” Roger says. “You can’t stay in your country house. There will be press for the album—”
“That’s not where I’m going.”
“Where then?” Fritz asks.
I just look at him and tip my chin.
“Oh, shit,” Fritz says.
Karl looks between Fritz and me, trying to piece it together. “What? What am I missing?” he asks, annoyed.
Adrian laughs darkly. “He’s going to Kansas City.”
TWENTY-SIX
Sofia
Spawn shed her nickname on the day she was born at seven pounds three ounces. When they placed that disgusting-looking little bundle, head smeared with blood and white goo, in my arms, she turned into Audrey.
Audrey Ocampo Reindhart cried as she was forced into the world, but then the cry stopped, and she cooed gently in my arms. Ever since, Audrey has always cried for legitimate reasons and legitimate reasons only. If Audrey protests, she needs a diaper change or my boob.
Mandy calls her a miracle baby because otherwise, Audrey is pretty chill, and you wouldn’t know there is a baby in the house apart from bath time when she screams at the top of her lungs.
Mom left to be with Nana again two months after Audrey’s birth, and honestly, I don’t know how I would have managed without her—and Ileana and Mandy—those first few weeks.
Today, Mandy is coming over with baby Lucas, the son of a man she is babysitting for some reason. She already has two jobs, so I am not really sure what is happening apart from the fact that Lucas is the exact opposite of Audrey.
Now that Audrey is eleven months old, Lucas is closer to a year old, and he is running Mandy ragged.
“Make it stop!” Mandy begs the minute she steps inside the house.
Since having Audrey, my energy has returned a little, and my home is now as clean and neat as my apartment always was before I moved into this house.
Lucas is in Mandy’s arms, looking gigantic against Mandy’s small frame, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Nothing works,” Mandy yells as she tries to soothe the bundle in her arms. “He has a clean diaper; he just had a bottle; I burped him. I don’t know what to do!”
I am holding Audrey over my chest, patting her back gently because she finished eating only moments before Mandy arrived.
“Here,” I say. “Trade with me.”
Mandy sets Lucas down on the couch so I can hand her Audrey, and Lucas turns red in the face with his cry.
“This is the most unhappy baby I have ever seen,” I say, and Mandy sinks into the sofa, holding a perfectly quiet Audrey in her arms.
“Can we trade?” she asks with a pathetic little chuckle that sounds more defeated than humorous.
I laugh. “Absolutely not,” I say.
I take the red-faced Lucas over to Audrey’s baby swing and lay him down. I buckle him, place a pacifier in his mouth, and put a blanket over him. He squirms, trying to get back into human arms for a moment, until the swing begins to sway. He rejects the pacifier three times before the swing lulls him to calm down, then successfully keeps it in his mouth.
Mandy walks over to us, Audrey still in her arms. “How did you do that?”
“Baby swing,” I say. “Best investment you could make, though he’s probably getting too big for one.”
“I’ll tell Lulu’s dad,” Mandy says, and I smile at the nickname she has given the baby.
I take Audrey back in my arms so that Mandy can sit down and relax. I sit opposite her on the other couch.
