There was a small silence, while Elin and Mom and Devlin all looked at each other, shrugged and raised eyebrows and gestured—body language that was beyond Jodie’s ability to interpret right now.
“I guess that’s an option,” Dev said slowly to Elin and Mom. “For you to take her and Jodie to stay here.”
“That’s not—” What I meant. But the rest of it wouldn’t come, and the first bit had come almost on a whisper, and they were too busy making plans to hear her.
“She should transfer to the car without waking,” Dev said. “I have a couple of bottles made up in the fridge.”
“We have bottles. We have diapers, clothes, everything. You know that. She’s due for her bath.”
“I’ll drop Jodie home when she’s ready. She’s right. We need to talk. Have some space.”
They’d worked it all out between the three of them, while Jodie was still struggling to lift an arm to brush a strand of damp hair from her eyes. She was staying here with Dev to talk. The baby was going back with Mom and Elin. Going back before she, the mother, had even touched her.
She wanted to argue the plan, but the words wouldn’t come, so in the end she let it happen, and when the baby carrier was buckled into the car and Mom and Elin had driven away, she felt so relieved, and so ashamed of the relief, and so horribly, horribly tired. “I can’t—” she said to Dev.
“I know you can’t talk yet. Sleep first.”
“Two naps a day. I’m like—” She stopped.
A baby.
My baby.
“Just rest.”
“Why aren’t you in New York? Tell me why. In simple words. Because it seems to me that you didn’t have to still be here. Obviously DJ is being taken care of. Obviously she’s loved. Obviously I have the support. So why?”
He looked at her steadily, with some of the anger he’d clearly felt toward Elin and Mom still simmering below the surface. He seemed to be thinking hard before he chose his words.
“Because she’s my daughter.” The last two words came out with a simmering intensity. “Because we’re a family. You and me and DJ. Three of us. That’s not negotiable. Three of us, not two.”
“A family …” Jodie echoed foolishly, tasting the word and not feeling sure of how it felt in her mouth.
“Not a regular family, for sure.”
“No …”
“But DJ needs a family of some kind….” He paused for a moment, and she filled in the words he didn’t say, in her head. And not necessarily a whole cluster of over-involved grandparents and aunts. “I’m right here in the picture and I’m not going to go away. And we have a heck of a lot to do and talk and think about, to decide how that’s going to work.”
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