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The last time I’d seen Emma, she’d been sweaty and miserable. Now, she was practically a nightlight in the dim room. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she looked absolutely wired with happiness. Valerie stood beside the bed with a wrapped bundle in her arms, cooing and grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh my god!” I squealed, rushing at Emma. “You had a baby!”
She put her arms out, and I hugged her hard. Neil was already weepy with happiness, even before he saw the baby. The baby that he hoisted from Valerie’s arms without so much as a “please”.
“Oh. Oh, oh.” Tears shone in his eyes as he tucked his grandkid into the crook of his arm with the skill of someone far more comfortable with babies than I was. “Look at you. Oh, you’re getting a pony.”
“Dad,” Emma scolded.
“She’s absolutely perfect,” Valerie enthused, squeezing Emma’s shoulder.
Never taking his eyes from the baby, Neil said, “Well, she gets that from me, obviously.”
I crept around the foot of the bed to take a better peek at the little, hat-covered head barely showing from above the blanket. Neil turned to me, but his rapturous gaze was firmly locked on the baby.
On Olivia.
This baby was not winning any beauty pageants. Her eyes, two grotesque lumps swollen shut beneath lids, were bruised purple. Her face was red and a rash of pinprick white pimples covered her nose and cheeks. Her teensy face was scrunched up in anger; she looked like a little gnome. One skinny arm had slipped from the confines of her wrapping, and the skin was mottled with red. She was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
And I loved her. At first sight, I loved her. She—or he, only time would tell—was a person. A whole little person who hadn’t been there just an hour ago. A combination of two people I considered my family, and a new member of my family, as well.
“Do you want to hold her, Sophie?” Michael asked gently. Of everyone in the room, I think he was the only person who understood my distrust of myself when it came to babies. I’d seen him trying to awkwardly balance Neil’s niece at his wedding.
“Oh, I don’t know if I should.” I stepped back, afraid that even the suggestion of me holding her would cause her to come crashing to the floor.
“Of course you should,” Emma said, gesturing to the chair. “You can sit down, and we can put her in your arms like you were the proud big sister.”
“Har har.” I rolled up my sleeves and took the chair, feeling exactly like the unsure child sibling Emma had described. Neil leaned down and helped me get Olivia just right in my arms before stepping back.
“She weighs less than a gallon of milk,” I marveled. “She reminds me of when I got my new laptop and I almost threw it taking it out of the box, because it was so much lighter than I expected.”
“Please don’t do that with my child,” Emma remarked dryly.
I glanced up at Neil and grinned. “Look, this pretty much proves I love your kid, okay? Because I wouldn’t hold a baby that came out of just anybody.”
“We forgot to tell you,” Michael said, clearing his throat. “We changed her name a bit. Instead of Olivia Jane, we’ve decided on Olivia Rose. For your mother, Mr. Elwood.”
A flicker of bittersweet pain
crossed Neil’s face, but he held himself together. “She would have been so proud.”
“Quietly proud,” Emma said with a small laugh. “I suppose we’ll have to come up with some ridiculous nickname for her, like she had for all of us.”
“Wait, what was your ridiculous nickname?” I asked. Neil had been his mother’s little bird. There was also a hedgehog, and a cabbage, though it was hard to keep straight who was who.
“Pudding,” Emma responded with a roll of her eyes.
“Because she was such a fat baby,” Valerie explained.
I looked down at gross little troll-faced Olivia. Her mouth worked in a frown—there was so much of her mother in her, already—before she yawned and wriggled in her swaddling blanket. She was so small I was afraid I was holding onto too much blanket and not enough baby.
I gave a little “aw” and stroked her cheek with one finger. For someone having what I hoped would be the worst acne outbreak of her life, her skin was remarkably soft. “Well, if we’re going by weight, I’d say she’d have to be Pot Roast. Because they weigh about the same.”
“Pot Roast it is,” Michael exclaimed with a laugh that was silenced by his wife’s death glare.
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t call Olivia Pot Roast in front of her parents.
* * * *
