Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
For as much as Neil loved his granddaughter, he was adamant that his diaper-changing days were over.
“Let me change her!” I eagerly volunteered. “I can show off my skills. I’ve been practicing.”
“Practicing?” Emma raised one brow. Her facial expressions were eerily like her father’s.
“Yes,” I deadpanned. “I’m paying someone to teach me how to change a diaper, and they let me practice on their baby.”
Emma’s jaw dropped. “Sophie, I want to believe that you are joking, but we both live in this city, and we both know—”
“Chill out, I’m fucking with you.” I shook my head as we started walking toward the restroom. “But think of the missed opportunity. You could be renting this beautiful baby butt out to strangers for diaper training.”
“I’m not sure if I should be disturbed by the fact that you’re advocating selling my daughter’s bum, or if I should applaud your ingenuity.”
“You get your unfettered capitalism from your father.”
The gender-neutral restroom had a separate facility for parents with small children. There was a built-in changing table with a molded plastic oval to prevent a baby from rolling off.
“Wow, they’ve really thought of everything,” Emma said, running her fingers over the smooth plastic.
I gently laid Olivia in the recessed groove but kept one hand on her as I rummaged in the diaper bag Emma set on the counter beside me.
“I don’t think she’s going to manage to flop out,” Emma said, though I could tell from her smile that she appreciated the care I took with her daughter.
“It only takes a second,” I repeated the words my grandmother always had said about potential infant disasters.
Emma watched me as I slid the new diaper beneath Olivia’s bottom before undoing the one she was already wearing. “You’re getting really good at that.”
“Thank you. That’s high praise, coming from an expert.” I wrinkled my nose and made a goofy face at Olivia as I cooed adoringly, “Oh, my goodness, it smells like a sewer in your pants!”
Emma laughed. “You’d be a great mom, you know?”
It was a well-intentioned comment. Though Emma was aware that her father and I had aborted a pregnancy early in our relationship, and I had, on occasion, mentioned to her that we weren’t planning on having children, I was sure that I’d never told her definitively that I didn’t want any and that the subject wasn’t up for public discussion.
“Well, in another life, maybe,” I said, intentionally glib.
“Or in this one.” Emma shrugged. “I see the way Dad is with Olivia. He’s always loved babies.”
“Your father can’t have children, anymore,” I reminded her. In fact, one of Neil’s biggest fears was that we would accidentally get pregnant, and the baby would be all messed up from the chemotherapy he’d gone through. Though the chances of conception post stem cell transplant were statistically rare, thoughts like that kept Neil awake at night.
“He can’t, but it’s not like there aren’t—” She stopped herself. “That’s not fair of me, is it? If you two wanted children, you would have had them, by now.”
“Yup,” I agreed. “And we had the chance. We didn’t take it.”
I rolled up the baby wipes into the dirty diaper and slipped it into one of the provided disposal bags before dropping it into the waste bin through the hole in the counter. Emma picked Olivia up while I went to wash my hands.
“Besides,” I went on as I waved my wet hands in front of the automatic paper towel dispenser, “if we had a baby of our own, we couldn’t enjoy your baby so much.”
Something about the conversation picked at my brain, and I didn’t like it. As I watched Emma button up the crotch of Olivia’s pink-striped onesie, I slammed into the realization like a snowmobile hitting a tree.
Neil had said something to her.
I never would have suspected him, if I hadn’t found what I’d found a few weeks ago. I’d gone into Neil’s desk for some blank checks to refill my checkbook, and while I pawed around in there, I’d found the small black and white print-out from the ultrasound I’d had when I’d first found out I was pregnant. It had actually been the way I’d broken the news to him, though in hindsight, I could have been gentler about it. After we’d had the abortion, we’d never really talked about it all that much, except in the immediate aftermath. Then, we’d gotten so buried under cancer-this and chemo-that, and time had just gone by. Maybe we’d had a few discussions in passing, but nothing earth-shattering, that I could recall. Finding that printout had been a surprise, but nothing I’d thought too deeply on. I’d figured it was just Neil wanting to hang onto it for sentimental reasons, and I’d put it back where it had been and gone on my way.