Part 2
Joyce guided her daughter to the chair beneath the balloons and put a package in her lap. Tessa stepped backward, studying her screen, while the rest of us shifted our chairs to face Lauren. A woman near me set down her plate without having eaten anything on it.
The first box held an outfit in soft gray fabric. Lauren lifted each piece separately, read the label, and thanked the giver with the clothes held against her stomach. Joyce straightened one sleeve so Tessa could get a better view. I looked at the little cuff and wondered how long it would stay that clean.
There were sheets and a matching nursery set, followed by a pale diaper bag with polished metal fittings. Lauren unzipped the bag and admired the compartments while Joyce explained where it had come from. Marjorie leaned toward me, keeping her voice low.
“That one looks afraid of children.”
I pressed my lips together. Walter would have wanted to know whether the bag could hold a muddy shoe, and his sister would have offered to find one. For the first time that afternoon, I wished I had been seated somewhere I could laugh freely.
The stroller required Nathan again. He crossed the room, demonstrated how it folded, and held it steady while Lauren checked the handle. She thanked him with a smile that looked easy and familiar. When he returned to the window, I remembered the pleasure on his face the day he called to tell me about the baby.
For a few minutes, I let myself enjoy the room. Whatever else was difficult between us, my son was going to be a father. I wanted to see him reach for his child with the same certainty Walter had once reached for him.
Joyce took away another piece of wrapping paper. “You two are going to have everything you need.”
“And a few things we probably don’t,” Nathan said.
Lauren glanced at him. He lifted his drink and smiled, and the room moved on to the next box. Beside me, Marjorie settled deeper in her chair.
“I should have worn my hearing aid,” she murmured.
“You don’t have a hearing aid.”
“Exactly.”
When Joyce reached my gift, she read the card aloud. “From Grandma Evelyn.”
Lauren smiled toward me before she opened it. I sat forward, my tote upright between my feet. The shorter letter was inside it, ready for after she found the pocket. I had checked the envelope twice before leaving home.
The bow came undone with one pull. Lauren folded back the tissue, lifted the blanket, and spread it across her knees. One corner hung over her wrist, the blue boats turned toward us.
I rubbed the sore joint at the base of my thumb, hidden beneath the edge of my tote. Now that the blanket was in somebody else’s hands, I could see its whole shape without having to hold it up myself. The border lay flat. Those last evenings of taking out stitches and trying again had been worth the trouble.
“You made this?” she asked.
“I did. There’s something I’d like to—”
“She worked on it for months,” Marjorie said.
Lauren pinched a place near the border where one stitch sat a little higher than its neighbors. I knew the spot. I had repaired it twice and decided that taking the row out a third time would do more harm than leaving it.
“It’s handmade,” she told Tessa, holding it up again.
Joyce gave a small laugh. “How very resourceful.”
I had heard her say it often enough to know where the emphasis would fall. I waited for Lauren to lay the blanket back on her lap so I could show her the seam. Instead, she glanced toward the nursery bedding piled on the sofa, then toward the tall metal bin Joyce had set out for wrapping scraps.
She stood with the blanket bunched loosely in her hands. The hidden pocket was near her fingers, and for a moment I thought she had found it. I began to rise, ready to help.
Lauren turned toward Tessa’s phone. “The nursery is strictly designer. You all know how we are.”
She dropped the blanket into the bin.
The blue border caught on a crumpled sheet of silver wrapping paper. One sailboat remained visible near the rim, tilted sideways above a paper plate. Lauren let go of the last corner and brushed her hands together.
A few women laughed. Someone near the fireplace lowered her eyes to her cup, and the woman beside her started smoothing the skirt over her knees. Joyce clapped twice, as though Lauren had finished a clever performance. Tessa kept the phone pointed at her.
I stayed halfway out of my chair. My knees had straightened, but one hand was still braced on the seat. I could hear a glass being set down behind me and the faint crinkle of tissue in Joyce’s hands.
Nobody moved toward the bin.
Marjorie had gone very still. She looked from the blanket to Lauren, then at me, her mouth open without a word coming out. I had never seen her unable to find one before.
I turned toward my son.
Nathan’s face had lost its color. His fingers tightened around his glass, and then he gave a little laugh, quick and nervous, the sound he used when he wanted a difficult moment to pass. He took a step away from the window.
I waited for him to come to me. His lips parted. Then he closed his mouth and stayed where he was…
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