When You Least Expect It

by Whitney Gaskell

  He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “Look at him,” Jeremy breathed, as Dr. Jones held up our son for us to admire. He clasped my hand tightly, and tears streaked down his face. “Isn’t he amazing?”

  Hours later, we were still staring at him. Liam Christian Halloway had been bathed, dressed in a soft white one-piece kimono, and swaddled in a striped blanket, before being handed to us. As though he were ours. Ours to keep. Our son.

  Jeremy and I took turns holding him, snuggling his wee body, admiring every last inch: the snub little nose, the curve of his cheek, the dark downy hair, the tiny shell ears. I’d had the presence of mind to grab my Leica before we left my studio, and snapped photos of Liam lying in his bassinet and cradled in Jeremy’s arms.

  “Can we unwrap his swaddling?” Jeremy whispered. “I want to see his feet.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t know. What do you think? I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  We giggled over this and then, feeling rebellious, unwrapped the blanket that swaddled him. Liam’s feet were plump and round, and his toes were very short, like a row of pink candies. I ran one finger over them, marveling at the perfection.

  “I wonder how Lainey is,” I said. We’d been moved into a separate room shortly after the birth. Lainey needed to rest, the midwife explained, and it was better if we began bonding with the baby out of her presence. I was glad. As grateful as I was to Lainey, as much as I loved her for this gift, right now I just wanted to be alone with my husband and son. A perfect trio. A family.

  “She’s probably exhausted,” Jeremy said. “I can’t believe what she just went through.”

  “I know. She was amazing,” I said, and this time, I only felt the smallest twinge of jealousy. I was too happy, too in love, to give it any more energy than that. Now that he was here, in my arms, I no longer felt like an impostor mom. I felt like an actual, real live nag-your-kid-to-eat-vegetables and lift-a-car-off-your-trapped-child mom.

  “When can we bring him home?” Jeremy asked.

  “The on-call pediatrician has to sign off,” I said. “And we have to wait for Lainey to sign the papers, which she can’t do for forty-eight hours. So it will be at least two days, but hopefully not longer than that.”

  “I can’t wait,” Jeremy said softly. He reached out and put his finger inside Liam’s tiny hand. Liam’s hand reflexively curled up.

  “Who’s your daddy?” Jeremy cooed. “I am. I’m your daddy.” He looked up at me. “Is that just unbearably nauseating?”

  “Oddly enough, no.” I smiled back at him.

  The door to the room opened, and a nurse walked in. She wasn’t one of the nurses who’d assisted with the birth. She wore flamingo pink scrubs, had short dark hair streaked with gray, and looked very stern. The nurse glanced at Liam, lying unswaddled in his bassinet. Jeremy and I exchanged a guilty look.

  “I’m sorry we unwrapped him,” I said, hurriedly pulling the blanket up over the baby.

  “We wanted to see his feet,” Jeremy explained.

  “I gave him a bottle an hour ago,” I said. I had been shyly proud of this. Liam had sucked down the formula like a champ. I thought I’d done well, too, cradling him so that I supported his head with one arm while holding the bottle with the other hand. “How’s Lainey doing? Can we see her yet, or is she still sleeping?”

  The nurse hesitated, her lips pursed. She had gold-rimmed eyeglasses perched on her nose, and reminded me alarmingly of my foreboding third-grade teacher, Mrs. Simms. I suddenly realized she wouldn’t meet my eyes, and felt the first cold ripple of fear. Something was wrong. Was it Liam? He’d been with us for hours, but maybe a blood test or something had come back, and now she was here to tell us he was ill.

  “I’m here to take the baby,” the nurse said. “His mother wants to see him.”

  “I’m his mother,” I said sharply. What was she talking about? Lainey? Did Lainey want to see the baby? I didn’t mind if she did, of course—it was only natural that she’d want to meet him. But shouldn’t I be the one to take him in to her?

  The nurse sighed and finally looked directly at me. “You don’t understand. The baby’s mother has asked for the baby back. I think you should know that she’s having second thoughts about the adoption.”

  Fourteen

  LAINEY

  After it was over, everyone left. A nurse took the baby away to be washed and evaluated in the nursery. India and Jeremy followed the baby out, barely looking back at Lainey as they departed. The nurses buzzed around for a bit, and Dr. Jones checked to make sure that the placenta was all out and that there wasn’t any tearing that necessitated stitches. But once she was cleaned and resting comfortably, Lainey was left alone in the hospital room. The television was on and turned to a cable news station, the sound muted. Lainey watched the silent flickering picture—the female anchor with her white-blonde hair and glossy lips, the male anchor dapper in his suit.

  They looked, she thought, like the sort of people who glided through life without any problems.

  The nurse-midwife had instructed her to get some sleep, and Lainey thought she would—she’d never felt so wrung out, so bone-achingly exhausted, in all of her life. But instead, she just lay there, numbed and sore, and feeling as though some essential part of her had been removed and taken away.

  Lainey finally picked up the phone and dialed Flaca’s number.

  “Hello?” Luis answered, his voice thick with sleep.

  “Is Flaca there?”

  “Lainey, is that you? What’s wrong?” Luis asked, sounding more alert.

  “I’m in the hospital. I just had the baby,” Lainey said.

  “Oh, man. Are you okay? Wait, here’s Flaca.”

  A moment later, her friend was on the line. “You had the baby? How are you? How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine,” Lainey said. And then she burst into tears.

  Candace arrived two hours later.

  “Hi, little girl,” Candace said, beaming from the doorway. She was as blonde and blowsy as ever, but Lainey could see subtle changes in the landscape of her mother’s face. Lines that hadn’t been there before, puffiness around the eyes, looseness at the chin. It was hard to believe Candace was only thirty-seven. She looked easily fifteen years older.

  “What are you doing here?” Lainey demanded.

  “What do you think?” Candace swept in. Lainey saw that her mother was holding a plastic pack of Pampers with a pink bow stuck to the top. “My baby girl just had a baby!”

  “Did Flaca call you?” Lainey asked.

  “No. I had to hear about my new grandbaby from Flaca’s mother. You should have called me as soon as you went into labor,” Candace said.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Lainey said flatly. She kept expecting to feel a hot rush of rage at Candace’s presumption, but Lainey was too tired, too empty, too numb to feel anything other than a distant contempt for her mother.

  “Of course it does! You couldn’t keep me away from my grandbaby.” Candace dropped the pack of diapers onto an empty chair and looked around. “Where’s the baby?”

  Lainey closed her eyes. “With India and Jeremy. I’ve already told you. They’re adopting him.”

  “I think we need to talk about this before you rush into making a decision that you can’t take back,” Candace said. She pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down.

  “The decision’s already made. I agreed to it months ago,” Lainey said. She opened her eyes and tried to focus on her mother’s face. But she was so, so tired. Everything seemed to have gone fuzzy at the edges.

  “I thought the mother has the right to change her mind,” Candace said.

  Lainey nodded. “We sign the papers forty-eight hours after the delivery.”

  “See? That means nothing’s set in stone. You have two whole days to make up your mind,” Candace said.

  Lainey felt like her limbs were so heavy they could sink right through the bed. “I’ve already mad
e up my mind.”

  “But that was when you thought you were going to have to go through this on your own. Now I’m here. You and the baby can move in with me,” Candace said.

  These words—you and the baby—caused Lainey’s heart to leap and her stomach to tighten. The baby … her baby … only he wasn’t hers now.

  “Where’s Al?” Lainey asked.

  A shadow crossed Candace’s face. “Long gone. And I’m just rattling around in that house all by myself. There’s plenty of room for you two. I was thinking, we could set up a nursery in the second bedroom, and put up a swing set in the backyard for the baby. Maybe even get one of those little wading pools.”

  Lainey hesitated at this vision of Candace acting like the mother Lainey had always wished she would be when she was growing up. A mother who didn’t drink, who didn’t always put her boyfriends first. But she swallowed it back and shook her head hopelessly. “No, Mom. It’s over. The decision’s been made.” As she spoke she was startled to find that she was starting to tear up again.

  “There’s more,” Candace said. She took a deep breath, let it out in a slow, loud exhale, and said, “I’m on the wagon. Clean and sober.”

  Lainey looked sharply at her. “Really?”

  Candace nodded proudly.

  “Oh. Well … good for you,” Lainey said. She looked down, smoothing the rough hospital blanket over her legs.

  Candace rifled through her handbag and pulled out a tissue. She handed it to Lainey. “So, what was it?”

  “What was what?” Lainey asked. She pressed the tissue against her eyes, hoping it would stop the tears from spilling out.

  “Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “A boy.” Lainey thought of that last wrenching push, the sharp pain that felt like she was being ripped in half, and then looking down and seeing Dr. Jones holding the baby up, bloody and covered with something that looked like white paste. When he cried, his mouth had been lopsided with anger. His outrage at being pushed out into the world had made Lainey smile. He was a fighter, just like her. “They said he was perfect. Very healthy.”

  “I bet he’s beautiful,” Candace said. “You were a beautiful baby.”

  Lainey’s throat felt like it was closing. “He was,” she said, wondering why she was speaking in the past tense. He wasn’t gone; in fact, he was probably just a few rooms away. A wave of longing seized her then, so strong it took her breath away.

  Candace hesitated. “Trav came with me,” she said.

  “What! Where?”

  “He’s out in the waiting room. I called him. I thought he had a right to see his baby. He was worried you wouldn’t want to see him,” Candace explained. She clasped her hands together in her lap. “So I said I’d talk to you first.”

  “He’s right. I don’t want to see him.”

  “You should at least talk to him.”

  “You talk to him. And tell him from me that he can fuck off,” Lainey said.

  “Lainey, it’s his baby, too,” Candace said.

  “No it’s not. He kicked me out of the apartment when I told him I wasn’t having an abortion, so I think he’s pretty much given up any rights he might have had.”

  “He’s really sorry for how he acted, and how things ended.”

  “I don’t give a shit what he feels. I can’t believe you brought him here!” Lainey was feeling a bit more like herself for the first time. Her anger at Trav—and now at Candace, too—allowed her to momentarily think of something other than her aching sadness. “Why can’t you just stay out of it? This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me? This is my grandson! My first grandbaby! It has everything to do with me.”

  “Mom, I’m not keeping him.” Sorrow began to rip at Lainey again. She thought of India and Jeremy. They’d both cried when they first saw the baby. Lainey had never believed in love at first sight—it was, she thought, a bullshit theory—but seeing them at that moment, their twin expressions of joy as they stared at him, she wondered if she’d been wrong. Maybe it did exist. “The couple adopting him … they’re great. They’ll give him a really good home. He’ll be—” Lainey swallowed, trying to push back the welling grief. “Happy there.”

  “No one can give him what you can. You’re his mother,” Candace said stoutly.

  “What would I do with a baby?”

  “You’re older than I was when I had you,” Candace pointed out.

  Lainey laughed bitterly. “Is that supposed to be an argument in your favor?”

  Candace frowned. “I may not have been the best mother, but I did love you. I loved you more than anyone else could have. You don’t give away your blood, Lainey.” Her face softened. “And having you and the baby move back home with me would be like a second chance. We could be a family. A real family.”

  Lainey stared at her mother, pain and possibility blooming inside of her. What if Candace was right? What if this baby could be a second chance? For both of them. And the idea of getting him back … Lainey was suddenly filled with desperation to feel his weight in her arms, to see his wide eyes looking up at her, to run her fingers over his soft skin. Should she have insisted on holding him, just for a few minutes? Could she still?

  “I don’t know,” Lainey said, her heart starting to pick up speed. “I promised India and Jeremy.”

  “Who are they to you?” Candace scoffed. “They’re not family.”

  “They’ve been good to me.”

  “Of course they were. They wanted your baby,” Candace said.

  “No, it was more than that.”

  “Baby girl, they played you. If they really cared about you, where are they now? I found you lying here all by yourself,” Candace exclaimed. “And after what you’ve just been through.”

  A bubble of doubt rose inside Lainey. It was true, they had left her alone. The birth had been thrilling, and scary, and painful, and after going through all of that, India and Jeremy had just left her. India hadn’t even checked up on her to see how she was feeling. They had deserted her.

  “You don’t owe those people anything,” Candace continued.

  “They gave me a place to stay. And money and clothes and things.”

  “I thought you were working for her.”

  “Yeah. So? It’s not like I was a slave. She paid me more than I was making at the nail salon.”

  “It’s not like they were giving you money for nothing, baby girl.” Candace laughed. “She really played you, huh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They stuck you out to live in a back house and put you to work at her business. And somehow she still managed to convince you that she was doing you a favor!”

  “She never said that,” Lainey said, although she couldn’t help wondering if Candace was right. Had she been played? Had India and Jeremy taken advantage of her? Had India just been pretending that she cared about her, Lainey, while all along using it to cover that they were giving Lainey less than she was entitled to? And all along, had they planned to take the baby and then shut the door firmly in her face?

  “It’s not like you’ll ever hear from them again,” Candace continued, as though reading Lainey’s thoughts. “Once they get that baby, you’ll be out of their lives like that.” She snapped her fingers. “They’re not going to want you hanging around.”

  Lainey could feel the beat of her heart starting to pick up, the muscles in her jaw tightening, an angry heat rising up to fill her lungs and throat. Candace watched her daughter carefully.

  “There’s no shame in changing your mind,” Candace said. “He’s your baby, not theirs. You don’t have to sign those papers.”

  “I would like to see him again,” Lainey said softly.

  “I’ll go get the nurse,” Candace said triumphantly.

  The thing that most amazed Lainey was how peaceful she felt while holding her son. The rest of the world fell away, until there was just him and her. A perfect pair. She searched his little face—the wid
e eyes, the snub nose, the rounded chin—and tried to see herself or even Trav there. But the baby was already, at the tender age of only a few hours old, his own person. She gazed at him, enthralled by his absolute presence, his energy, the knowing look in his eyes as he stared back up at her.

  “That’s right. You know me, don’t you?” Lainey said softly to him. “I’m your mama.”

  “He looks just like you did when you were born,” Candace said, leaning over to look at him.

  Lainey barely noticed her mother. She let Candace hold the baby for a few minutes, but then, growing anxious, had insisted on having him back. And as soon as he was with her again, her mother ceased to be an irritation. Even when Trav came in, a pathetic bouquet of wilting daisies clutched in one hand, Lainey had felt nothing more than a flicker of annoyance. She held their son up for his father to see, and said proudly, “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “Let Trav hold him,” Candace urged.

  Lainey cut her eyes toward Trav, not at all sure he was up to the task. But he shook his head vigorously and held his hands up. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.”

  Candace chuckled. “Babies are tougher than you think,” she said.

  But Lainey tucked a protective arm around her son, glad that he wouldn’t be leaving her, not even for a moment. It wasn’t a decision she had to consciously make—now that she had him here, in her arms, she knew she’d never be able to let him go.

  “What are you going to name him?” Candace asked.

  “We could name him after my father,” Trav said. “James Michael. We could call him Jimmy for short.”

  “No,” Lainey said. “I don’t want him named after anyone. He’s his own person. He’s going to have his own name.”

  Trav shrugged and nodded. He seemed more intimidated by this focused, contemplative Lainey than he ever had by the louder, more aggressive version he’d once lived with. “It was just an idea,” he said. “You pick the name.”

  “Griffin,” Lainey said suddenly. “That’s his name.”

  “Griffin,” Candace repeated. “I like it. Where’d you get that from?”