“We waited for you to make the big announcement,” Cord said happily, ushering her into the parlor, where Sasha sat, looking stiff and cranky. He gently clinked a spoon against his glass even though everyone was already waiting for him to speak. “So . . .” He paused dramatically, his eyes twinkling. “We’re having a baby!”
“Congratulations!” they cheered and Georgiana realized her parents were far and away the worst actors she had ever seen in her life.
“Did you guys already know?” Cord asked, crestfallen.
“Well, Berta told me,” Tilda acknowledged.
“How did Berta know?”
“She said she just had a premonition. Women can sense these things,” Tilda said wisely.
“Oh, I think she also saw me throwing up,” Sasha said.
“Have you been throwing up a lot?” Darley asked.
“Yeah, every day.”
“Oh, no. Do you know what I did? I put little packs of oyster crackers in my bedside table and ate them whenever I woke up in the night so that my stomach wasn’t so empty in the mornings. That’s the thing—you don’t want your stomach to get empty.”
“There were so many crumbs in the bed,” Malcolm said, “it was like my body got exfoliated every night with all these little shards of cracker and salt in the sheets.”
“I also found the best sour pregnancy candies to help with nausea.” Darley started scrolling on her phone and texted Sasha the link. Sasha barely seemed to register Darley’s enthusiasm. She looked bored by the entire thing, and Georgiana felt herself grow annoyed. Here they all were celebrating Sasha and she looked like she could barely be bothered to hang out with them.
“Oh! We have the bassinet from when you all were babies!” Tilda jumped up and strode out of the parlor. She came back three minutes later carrying a wicker Moses basket. The canework looked sharp and it smelled slightly weird. “All three of you slept in this,” she said fondly.
“That’s amazing,” Cord said, his eyes glistening.
“Do you think that’s mold?” Sasha asked, inspecting a slightly green crust on the bottom. Everyone ignored her.
* * *
—
Berta had made roast chicken and squash and then plain pasta for the children. She poked her head into the parlor to let them know dinner was on the table, and Georgiana grabbed the bottle of champagne and tipped the rest in her glass before following them out. They had wine with dinner, except for Sasha, who drank a LaCroix out of the can, which earned her a horrified look from Tilda. （“A can is fine on the beach, but bubbles deserve stemware!”） The more they discussed the baby the more Georgiana felt a tightness in her throat. When she and Brady had talked about having a baby they had only been joking, but some tiny bit of hope had lodged within her. There had to be a reason he hadn’t had a baby with Amina but had talked about it with her. She knew he loved them both, but part of her wondered if over time his love for Amina would have faded, and his love for her would have eclipsed it. Seeing Cord and Sasha’s joy made her ache freshly for the baby she wouldn’t ever have with Brady.
After they finished eating, Malcolm led the children to the family room to watch a movie, and Sasha stood to help Berta clear the table. Georgiana pretended she had to use the bathroom and made her way up to her bedroom. She felt groggy and tired from the wine and couldn’t keep making normal faces as they discussed the pros and cons of a live-in baby nurse. Darley had used the same baby nurse that all her friends had used, and while the woman was wildly eccentric—she wore a starched, white nurse’s uniform every single day in the house despite Darley’s urgings to wear jeans, she exclusively read celebrity gossip magazines, she had gotten married in Las Vegas in a Celine Dion–themed wedding, and she talked to the baby nonstop in a ceaseless stream of animal voices—she and Mrs. Kim saved Darley’s life for the first few weeks after Poppy and Hatcher were born.
Georgiana closed her door. She felt slightly dizzy and closed one eye so that she could focus better. On the bookshelf she spied her high school yearbook. On a whim she grabbed it and flopped down on her bed, leafing through it looking for a specific page. Halfway, in the M section, she found it: Curtis McCoy. She hated that he occupied so much of her brain, but she was having an impossible time reconciling the guy she saw in the Style section with the brooding and slightly frightening teenager she remembered. But, as though it were proof, there he was at seventeen: hair in his eyes, wearing a button-down shirt and sweater, looking vaguely annoyed at the camera. Next to it, a blurry photo of him with three friends standing by a bonfire on the beach, an action shot of him on the soccer field, and then a quote: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
“Asshole,” Georgiana whispered to herself. She must have passed out, because the next thing she knew Darley was shaking her awake from a dream. She had been following Curtis down a grassy path. Gross. Bleary and annoyed, she sat up in bed, knocking the yearbook to the floor.
“Why are you asleep in here?” Darley hissed. “How much did you drink?”
“Not that much, I’m just tired,” Georgiana said defensively.
“Even Mom noticed you were wasted, and that says a lot.”
“Shit, she did?”
“She also said you look thin, but I think that was a compliment. What’s going on with you?”
For a moment she contemplated telling her sister. Or telling her part of the story. She could tell her that she’d broken it off with Brady when she found out that he was still married, but that he’d died. But the half-truth would kill her. Having Darley think she understood the loss when it was so much greater. She couldn’t. “It’s nothing, Dar. I’m just anxious about work and I took a pill and it messed me up with the wine.”
“Don’t mix pills and alcohol!” Darley scolded. “What are you, a teenager? Do I need to explain to you the dangers of drinking and drugs?”
“No, I was just so happy for Cord I got carried away. It’s fine.”
“Okay. Don’t be an idiot. Now go tell Mom you took a water pill for bloating and say good night. We have to take the kids home for bed anyway. Hatcher got gum in his hair and Poppy tried to pick it out and pulled out a clump and now Hatcher is crying about having a little bald spot.”
“Christ.” Georgiana tucked her yearbook under her arm, and they headed off into the night.
* * *
Georgiana had never spoken to the founder of her company. He was her boss’s boss, and she always figured she would have to mess something up in a pretty epic fashion to find herself in conversation with him, so it surprised her when he poked his head into the maid’s room on a Wednesday morning. She was crouched on the floor of her office sorting through the boxes of newsletters fresh from the printer when he knocked on the doorframe and startled her.
“Peter! Hi!” She quickly wondered if it was okay she had called him Peter. Should she have called him Mr. Perthman? No. That was weird. He was her boss, not her headmaster.
“Georgiana. How are you doing?”
“I’m great!” She rose to her feet with a surfeit of nervous enthusiasm.