Chapter 23: Holding Her

I went to Willa alone.

Gavin drove me to the Aldercott gate and waited in the car with the engine off.

Simon opened the front door himself, in shirtsleeves, with a burp cloth over his shoulder.

He looked ten years younger and very tired.

"She's upstairs," he said. "She hasn't left the room since the paper ran the story."

"Where's Miriam?"

"At her sister's. She said she couldn't bear to look at the nursery."

"Which room did you give the baby?"

"Not the guest wing," said Simon. "I wouldn't."

I climbed the stairs of the house I had lived in for three years and had never once felt welcome in.

The door at the end of the hall was open a hand's width.

Willa sat in an armchair by the window in a gray robe with her hair tied back.

She had no makeup on.

I had not seen my sister's bare face in front of me since we were nine.

She looked thin, and plain, and a good deal like our mother.

"Cass," she said.

Her voice did not shake and did not warm.

"You came."

"You asked."

"I thought you'd say no."

"So did I."

The bassinet stood between us, white wicker, with a yellow blanket folded over the rail.

I looked inside.

The baby was asleep with one fist against her cheek.

She was dark-haired and red and furious even in her sleep, with a tiny crease between her eyebrows.

It was my crease.

It was the one I had seen in the mirror every morning of my life.

Willa watched me notice it.

"Pick her up," she said. "She's been awake since four. She'll go to anyone who's quiet."

I lifted her.

She weighed almost nothing, and she smelled of milk and warm cotton.

She stirred, and opened one dark blue eye, and wrapped her whole hand around my finger.

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