Nameless Series Boxed Set (28 page)

Suddenly, she
was filled with an entirely different sort of terror, and a whole flood of
implications rose up with crippling force. “Then don’t! Love her. Love her all
the way. Love her as much as you can.”

Seth slowly
raised his eyes to meet hers, as if they’d been too heavy to lift. “And you?”

She almost
choked at the question in his eyes. “We're partners. And we care for each other,
just like we’ve been doing.”

She was so
tired. So utterly leveled. And this was one trauma too many.

Her voice broke
on her final question, “Isn’t that enough?”

He didn’t
answer. His body was clenched so tightly that she was afraid if she touched him
he might break.

“Seth,” she
whispered, to make him understand. “The only good reason for us to be together
is if we were in love.”

His head jerked
away from her. As if she’d slapped him.

“Seth. Oh God! I
didn’t know—”

He jerked to
his feet, less graceful than she’d ever seen him. “Forget it.”

He stared for
an aching moment at their daughter in her arms.

Then shook his
head again. “Forget all of it.”

He turned
around and walked out of the room.

Erin called out
after him, “Seth!” Would have followed if she’d been able to move. “Seth!”

Her voice must
have been audible down the hall, but he was gone. He would walk out of the
maternity wing, down the elevator, out of the hospital completely. Back to his blue
luxury car, his intentionally impressive apartment, and the world he could
control.

It was a truth
universally acknowledged that he had no heart to break.

Not so long
ago.

Erin kept
staring at the half-open door.

But, this time,
Seth didn’t come back.

It had been three months since Erin
had really gone out, except to work or do errands.

It wasn’t that
she was particularly depressed or anti-social, but she didn’t have the time,
energy, or focus to do anything except trudge through her basic routine. She’d
gone back to work last month and also managed to get to the grocery store. Otherwise
she stayed at home and took care of her baby, often in a sleep-deprived haze.

This week,
however, Liz had been nagging her incessantly, so Erin finally relented and
agreed to have lunch with her sister that Saturday.

The pumpkin
came too, of course. Saturday was the nanny’s day off.

Erin actually
felt pretty good as they waited for their food to arrive at a casual sandwich
shop near her apartment. Her daughter was sleeping in a convertible
carrier—which hooked into both a car seat and a stroller—and, having just fed
her before they left the apartment, so far no screaming had occurred.

Erin was tired,
of course, but she was always tired now. She’d managed to catch a shower,
blow-dry her hair, and put on a decent outfit that morning during naptime,
which she wasn't always able to do on Saturdays.

It was kind of
nice to sit in a restaurant and have a conversation like a normal person.

The waitress
came over just then to bring them their paninis, and she stopped to gush over
the “sweet little baby.”

“How old is
she?” the waitress asked, leaning over and making cooing sounds, apparently not
caring that the infant was asleep and thus couldn’t hear.

“Three months,”
Erin answered.

“She’s
adorable. Those cute chubby cheeks. That sweet red hair. And the dress!” The
waitress tsked her tongue. “She looks just like a little pumpkin.”

Both Erin and Liz
broke into giggles at this, and the waitress finally left the table with a few
more appreciative bursts of baby-talk.

“I can’t
believe you actually found this dress,” Erin said, pulling down the brown skirt
to cover her daughter’s legs. “I hope it didn’t cost too much.”

 “Once I saw
it, I had to get it, no matter how much it cost.” Taking a huge bite of her
sandwich, she mumbled, “But it wasn’t too expensive.”

The dress was
orange and brown cotton knit, and it had little pumpkins lining the hem of the
skirt and a bigger one on the chest. While she straightened the dress, Erin
automatically assessed her daughter’s condition, making sure she was sleeping
well and didn’t appear to be too cold or uncomfortable.

“You know, one
day she’s going to hate you for that nickname,” Liz continued.

Erin shrugged
and stroked one tiny hand with her fingertips. “She still feels like the
pumpkin to me.”

“I don’t think
she really has red hair, though, like the waitress said. It’s more like blond,
isn’t it?”

“Well, it seems
to be getting a little redder now.”

Half-rising so she
could see better, Liz peered into the carrier. “I guess it’s kind of red. I was
hoping it would be blond.”

The baby-hair
had started very fair, but now the soft strands were closer to reddish-gold.

“It might be,” Erin
replied. “Sometimes babies start with reddish hair, and it changes back to
blond later.”

Liz was quiet
for a moment as they both gazed at the sleeping baby. Then she asked, in a
different tone, “Did Seth have red hair when he was a kid?”

Erin felt a
little clench in her chest at his name. “Yeah. I think he did.”

“I wonder what
he was like as a kid. He was so wild and…I don’t know…
hard
when he came
to town. I can’t imagine him as a little boy.”

“His
grandfather just ignored him, I think. He was basically all alone.”

They were both
silent for a minute, in mutual recognition of this reality.

Then Liz
scowled. “You’d think that, after having a sucky childhood himself, he would have
tried to be a decent dad.”

“I think he
wanted to be.”

“Yeah. Well,
this is a great way to be a father. Not laying eyes on his own daughter since
the day she was born.”

Shifting
uncomfortably in her chair and chewing on her bite of sandwich, Erin didn’t
respond. She preferred not to think about Seth more than she had to. His
absence in her life now was like a gaping hole that she had to carefully avoid
falling into.

“Bastard,” Liz
muttered, ruthlessly ripping into her sandwich with her teeth.

“He’s not,
really.”

“Well, what
would you call him then? He doesn’t get what he wants so he abandons both of
you completely? Even after you tried to apologize to him over and over?”

Erin winced at
the thought. She’d tried to call Seth every day for a week after he’d walked
out on her in the hospital. She'd left long, earnest, embarrassingly babbling
voice-mail messages, trying to apologize. When that hadn’t worked, she’d
written him a 3200-word email, explaining why she’d been confused and how she’d
never wanted to hurt him.

No reply. No
emails, no calls, no visits. Nothing.

Apparently, to Seth,
she and her daughter no longer existed.

When Erin
didn’t answer the question, Liz huffed, “It’s called being a bastard. And a
childish, sulky one at that.”

“It’s not all
his fault.” While she agreed with much of Liz’s assessment, she just couldn’t
look at it so simplistically. “I did things wrong too. I treated him very
badly.”

She still felt brutal
guilt every time she thought of how much she’d messed up—every time she
remembered the look on Seth’s face when she’d told him they weren’t in love.

“Ha! So you
were dense and thoughtless. You’d just gone through twenty hours of labor. What
the hell did he expect?”

“He thought I
felt the same way and that we’d live happily ever after.”

“Yeah, well,
it’s a good thing you didn’t, if this is the way he’s going to act. He claims
to love you, but then he drops you completely because he gets his feelings
hurt. That’s not love. That’s selfishness.”

Sometimes Erin
was just as resentful and betrayed as Liz was.

But most of the
time she was just sad.

“Maybe,” she
admitted. “But this is Seth, and he’d just managed to open himself up for the
first time…maybe ever. Only to be utterly crushed.” She leaned back in her
chair. Looked over to her pumpkin for comfort. “He’s not going to open up
again.”

Liz was shaking
her head irritably.

“It’s the way
he protects himself,” Erin added, trying to explain what she knew about his
nature. “That was why he went so wild back in high school. Mac was trying to be
family, and Seth just ran away from it. He took a huge risk with me, and it
backfired. Which means, I guess, that he won't even see us. At least, his
accountant is still covering the childcare expenses, or I don’t know what I
would do.”

“Selfish,” Liz
insisted. “Because, while he’s protected in his cold, empty world, his daughter
now doesn’t have a father.”

Erin looked
back at her little pumpkin—sleeping with her eyes squeezed shut, breathing in
fast, little inhales.

She wanted to
give her everything. Knew there was at least one thing now that her daughter
would never have.

Erin’s face twisted
briefly.

“I’m sorry. I’m
an idiot. Y’all will do great, even without him.” Liz paused for a moment.
“Have you changed your mind about
him
?”

“No. I’ve never
felt romantically about him. I did...do care about him. And not having him in
my life really hurts.” She took a few deep breaths and regained her
matter-of-fact outlook—a stronghold that hadn’t failed her yet. “Especially
since it’s not just
my
loss. It’s hers.”

“Bastard.”

“Yeah.
Sometimes I convince myself that, if he’s going to act like this, then it’s
just as well he’s not in her life. And, you know, even if I
had
been in
love with him, I would never have accepted his implied ultimatum—get together
with me or I won’t be a father.” She sighed. “But I should have handled it
better, and I hate for
her
to have to pay for my mistakes.”

Liz had
finished her sandwich and was starting on one of the iced molasses cookies
they’d gotten for dessert. She gave Erin a slightly wary, sideways look. “So
you
really
weren’t in love with him?”

“Why is that so
hard to believe? He’s not completely irresistible, you know. When I first got
pregnant, I was so scared of his potential to be overly controlling. He’s not
really what I thought, though. He’s really very giving. And patient. And funny.
And…and sweet beneath all the cool arrogance. I liked and trusted him. But, Liz,
that doesn't equal love.”

They were both
silent for a moment.

Then Erin blew
her hair out of her face. “I really wanted him to be her father. I think he
could be a good one, but now he’ll never let himself be one.”

“Bastard.”

Erin couldn’t
help but smile at Liz’s grumbling, repeated refrain. “Maybe, but he’s a lot of
other things too.”

Liz’s face
softened. “I guess I didn’t realize it was so hard for you. You always seem so
matter-of-fact about his disappearance. In fact, Dad seemed more upset about it
than you.”

Erin gave a
huff of bitter laughter, as she thought about how disappointed her father had
been when they’d realized Seth was backing off for good. She’d done her best to
treat the issue lightly around her dad, so he would never know how deeply hurt
she was.

“I’m not
depressed or in the depths of despair. I’ve been really emotional lately, but
I’m not sure if it’s a postpartum thing or just being bone tired.” She glanced
back over to the baby carrier, realizing she hadn’t checked on her daughter in
at least three minutes. “How could I not be happy with her? It just makes me
sad to think about what she almost had.”

***

As soon as they got back to
Erin’s apartment, Liz started digging into her bag. “Wait until you see the
present I brought.”

“You didn’t
have to—” Erin began, but then she stopped when she saw what her sister had
pulled out.

It was a tiny,
infant’s t-shirt with the logo of their high school football team on the front.

Erin laughed
and clapped her hands appreciatively. “It’s perfect. We’ll try it on her after
I nurse her. She’s hungry now.”

She picked her
daughter up out of the carrier and brought her over to a chair in the living
room. Then adjusted her shirt, unhooked the cup of her nursing bra, and
positioned the baby at her breast.

Liz wandered
away casually. She never seemed to want to hang around as Erin breastfed, even
though Erin was perfectly comfortable and mostly covered.

“Are you
hungry, pumpkin?” Erin murmured, brushing her nipple lightly against her
daughter’s lips. The little mouth immediately latched on and began to suck.

Erin sighed.
She wasn’t a particularly knowledgeable or experienced mother, and she was
barely muddling through a lot of the time.

But at least she
was good at breastfeeding.

In fact, she’d
had no problems with it at all—with her milk, her nipples, or getting her
daughter to feed. It had been easy, intuitive, perhaps the only thing in this
whole experience which had come naturally for her.

Erin knew that
some women had a lot of trouble with it, so she was glad that for once things
had gone smoothly for her.

The only thing
she didn't like was having to express milk with the breast pump. Other than
that, she enjoyed nursing more than she’d thought she could.

She loved being
needed in this most fundamental of ways. Loved being able to completely answer
those needs.

Loved how quiet
and simple the world seemed to be when she could just sit like this. Feed her daughter.
Know that she was making her happy.

“Shit, Erin,” Liz
called out from Erin’s bedroom. “This is ridiculous.”

“Hey! Watch the
language.” Liz still didn’t always remember to curb her mouth. “What’s ridiculous?”

“You’ve got a
mountain of laundry in here.”

Erin exhaled,
hating to be reminded of it. “I know. I was trying to hide it in the closet,
but it won’t all fit in there anymore.” She glanced down. Saw that the little
mouth was still sucking steadily, making the wet noises that had become somehow
comforting to Erin over the last three months.

“How do you
have enough underwear?”

“I didn’t,” she
admitted. “I had to buy some more.”

She heard Liz laughing
from the bedroom and wondered what she was doing in there.

“How long has
it been since you did laundry last?”

“I don’t know.
Three weeks. Maybe longer. I just don’t have the time or energy, and now it
seems like such an exhausting ordeal.”

Stella, the
middle-aged woman who worked as her nanny during the week, did chores that
revolved around childcare—the baby’s laundry and cleaning the nursery or
kitchen after she’d used them. Sometimes, Erin suspected that Stella was
secretly cleaning up while she was at work, but she hadn't yet been able to
confirm her suspicions. For the most part, the apartment was livable, but piles
of junk had collected that Erin just didn’t have energy to sort through.

Her laundry had
suffered the most.

Liz came back
through the living room with a load of laundry in her arms.

Erin blinked.
“Thanks, Liz. But you don’t have to—”

“Don’t worry about
it. I’m just putting it in the washing machine. You’re the one who’s going to
have to fold or hang it up.”

Erin groaned.
That was the worst part.

While Liz put
her laundry in the washing machine—which was part of a stacked unit just off the
kitchen—Erin finished nursing.

Then she picked
up her daughter, holding her upright to burp her. After just a minute of
rubbing and patting her back, she was rewarded by spit-up on her shirt.