“That was loud!” I said. “That’s the Porter in him for sure.”
“My grandmother always said that a hearty belch was the sign of strong character in a baby,” Cilla said. “My point was, this is very predictable of Daphne. How does Freddie feel?”
I shrugged. “He talks to me less and less about that stuff.”
“Probably for the best,” Cilla said. “Right, I’ll deliver the wine on my way to the loo, if you’ll take Danny. I can’t give him back to Nick. Who knew he was such a baby hog? I’ll have to lock him in the basement to hold yours.” She paused. “Are you okay to take him?” she asked kindly.
I put the bottles on the table and nodded. “I think so,” I said. “Gotta get used to it, right?”
Cilla looked at me with sympathy, and handed over Danny, warm and smelling like slightly sour milk. She grabbed the wine with a flourish. “I’ll pour you a glass,” she said. “Give him a tap and make sure he’s finished.”
“Hello there,” I said to my nephew. We stayed stock-still for a bit as I registered how it felt to hold someone that was at least a little piece of you. It both stung and felt wonderful, so I walked with him, back and forth, then around the kitchen until we ended up over at the kitchen window, which overlooked our back garden. Daffodils were pushing up, eager for a turn in the sun.
“So now you’ve met everyone,” I said. “They’re all mad as pants, as Cilla would say, but I love them.”
In the other room, someone had turned on some music, and I heard uproarious laughter. I rubbed his furry head with my finger and he gurgled. The sun was going down, and I could see the makings of my reflection in the glass. Danny fit right into the nape of my neck, all cuddled up and milk-drunk, and my heart twisted with yearning. I closed my eyes, and for a second, it was my baby I was rocking. I felt hope and hollowness all at once.
“I hope you don’t take this personally, but I have to give you back now. This is harder than I thought it was going to be,” I whispered to Danny, who was squinting at me as if to say, Wait, who are you again? “Your parents are great, but I wish we could keep you. Please don’t tell your mom. It makes me sound like an asshole. I shouldn’t be jealous.”
Danny grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled. “The problem is, you’re very cute, and I’m still sad and a little scared that what happened before will happen again and that we’ll never have any luck,” I said, lowering him and wresting my hair from him. “But now that I’m not mad at your uncle anymore, we’re trying for real, and…it’ll be fine, right?”
Danny blew a raspberry in my direction. “That’s excellent feedback,” I said. “Danny, you’re a great listener. And the best part is, you won’t remember any of this in ten minutes, much less when you’re old enough to tell anyone what I said. I’ll get back to you when I have something to report. Deal?”
I kissed his nose, and we rejoined the party.
CHAPTER SIX
I didn’t have anything to report.
Still.
“All in good time,” the doctor said when, in May, I went in for my checkup.
“Patience is a virtue,” he said when, in July, I went back because my home kit—and my body—indicated I hadn’t ovulated.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he said two irregular months later, when I asked about Clomid to help shoot a few more eggs along. “If there’s no bun in the oven by Christmas, we’ll pop the bonnet and take a closer look at the engine. Perhaps your uterus is hostile! After all, you are American.” He’d made himself chuckle with that one. “Try to relax.”
The doctor was the Queen’s trusted gynecologist, and the father of our old college friend Joss, who’d reportedly vanished to Morocco to find herself. He’d been very kind during my miscarriage, but in my ensuing appointments, I got the impression that he thought my concerns were an overreaction, and I didn’t appreciate it. In my heart, I knew we had time, but my system was struggling to reset. Everything was irregular, including my doctor’s dismissiveness of my questions as hysteria, and with every negative pregnancy test I’d started fantasizing harder about shoving one up his bulbous British nose.
“There is nothing less relaxing than a man with his hand inside your vagina telling you to relax,” I griped when I met up with Nick after the last appointment.
“I’ll try to bear that in mind,” he replied, kissing me hello.
We were at the Imperial War Museum London for a cocktail reception Richard was throwing celebrating sixty entrepreneurs under sixty, in honor of his own milestone birthday. I quickly pasted on a smile for the benefit of a nearby klatch of middle-aged white guys who seemed interested in me in a manner I’d become accustomed to from the unbearably posh set: assessing whether I was a hot enough piece to have caused Nick so much trouble.
The Imperial War Museum lives in a hodgepodge of an early nineteenth-century building that looks like someone merged a courthouse and a church, but that actually used to be a psychiatric hospital (and is, therefore, like so much of the rest of London, almost certainly haunted). The party was in the huge central atrium, modernized and brightened, with fighter planes from different eras suspended above our heads as if still in flight. Richard had a lot of faults, but bad taste wasn’t one of them.
“Is it rude to ditch the party and just look at the planes?” I asked Nick, staring up at a 1940 Spitfire that had flown in the Battle of Britain.
“It’s grand, isn’t it?” Freddie said, striding over to us while
