“Jesus, Tina,” he said, not entirely sure what was going on here. “How can you stand to hear her cry like this and not want to help? Please, just hold her.”
“I can’t,” she said on a gasp. “I can’t hold her.”
“It won’t be for long,” he said, using his most reasonable tone of voice. “I just have to cool the milk down. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
“Is she sick?” Tina asked, her eyes riveted on Clara’s face. “You should call a doctor. Please, call a doctor. Ask Libby to come back.”
“She’s not sick, she’s hungry. That’s all.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked frantically. “How can you know that? Babies get sick. They die. Call the doctor.”
“She’s fine. She’s not even running a fever,” he reassured her. He was fast losing patience with her. “You committed to watch her tonight—what the hell did you think that entailed?”
She was starting to hyperventilate. Fuck! What the hell?
“Tina? Shit. Calm down.” He stepped away from the sink, bottle forgotten, as his concern for Tina took precedence over even Clara’s angry cries. He placed a tentative hand on her back. “Come on, sweetheart, follow my lead: in . . . slowly . . .” She attempted to follow his breathing, clearly familiar with the technique. “Good girl. Now out. Through the mouth. That’s right.”
His soothing tone was starting to calm Clara down as well, and the baby’s shrieks were dwindling to sad, hiccupping snuffles.
“I’m sorry,” Tina was saying, repeating the words over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to help. I want to. But I can’t. I can’t, please don’t ask me to. I can’t.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he reassured her, confused and alarmed and so damned terrified to ask her why she couldn’t help. “I won’t ask you to. I promise. She’s better now, see? I’ll give her a bottle. I think she’s exhausted herself.”
Tina let out a heartbroken sob as her tear-drenched eyes took in the no-longer-crying, but still fussing, infant.
“She’s not sick?” she asked again, still rocking back and forth.
“No. She’s fine,” he repeated, keeping his voice gentle even though he was screaming inside. Helpless to do anything to make this better for her, when he had no idea where it was coming from.
Tina knew how she must look, how she must sound. And she knew she owed him an explanation.
“Better now?” he asked quietly, and she nodded, sucking in a deep, cleansing breath as she attempted to return to normalcy. He gave her an intense, probing stare before striding to Clara’s baby seat and checking on the fretful infant. Tina watched him enviously; he was so adept at that, so good with the baby. She owed him more than an explanation: she owed him the truth.
He returned to the kitchen sink, picking the bottle up again and darting the occasional wary glance to where Tina still stood, her feet seemingly glued to the living room floor.
“I had a baby.” The words came tumbling out, louder than she’d anticipated, and Clara, who had been blessedly quiet, started crying again. Tina cringed at the sound, but she continued. Determinedly avoiding Harris’s eyes. “I had a baby, and he died. He died . . . and I can’t stand the thought . . . I can’t hold . . . I can’t. I can’t. Please. I can’t. I want to. I wish . . .” She shook her head, knowing she was making no sense, hating how crazy and illogical she must sound. But she couldn’t find her words, couldn’t control her emotions, and—when she found the courage to sneak a glance at him—she hated the look of complete shock on Harris’s pale face as he stared at her in horror and dismay.
Clara’s cries were building, and Tina clapped her hands over her ears in an attempt to block the sound out. She couldn’t stop shaking—her teeth felt like they were rattling around in her skull, and she could do little to disguise violent trembling. Harris seemed to snap out of his reverie and walked to the baby seat to lift Clara and soothingly rock her. He passed Tina again on his way back to the kitchen and removed the baby’s bottle from the counter where he had left it. He tested the temperature on the back of his hand, the one cradling Clara, before transferring the rubber nipple to her eager mouth.
Tina wiped her wet face with the backs of her hands and turned away from him. She was desperate to escape and retreated to her bedroom, excruciatingly aware of his eyes on her back as she fled.
The knock on the door—when it came half an hour later—was quiet. She had been expecting it, but it still made her flinch. She hadn’t locked the door, knowing that to do so would only delay the inevitable, and—even though she didn’t call for him to enter—the sound of the handle turning didn’t surprise her.