Tis the Damn Season | ✓

eight: annie

"Goodness me. I didn't know. I suppose I only ever see her in her bookstore, and so far I must've missed bring your baby to work day. How come you have her?" She looks around, as though Laurel's about to appear out of the fog. "Where's her mom?"

I fill her in. She bends down to peer through the plastic rain cover. "Oh, isn't she adorable? How old? What's her name?"

"Ava. She's..." I pause to do the math. Laurel didn't mention her daughter's age, but I know exactly when she was conceived. "Fifteen months."

"So sweet," Mom coos. "God, I'm getting all broody, seeing you with a baby."

"Mom."

"You know, with all the time you used to spend babysitting for Laurel, I figured the two of you were ... what is it, hooking up?"

"Mom!" She has no idea how right she is. Lying doesn't come naturally to me so I don't outright deny it. "You didn't even know that I'm a lesbian until, like, two years ago."

"Nuh-uh." Mom shakes a finger at me. "You came out two years ago, hon. Those are two different things."

I don't know what to say to that. I guess my queerness wasn't as subtle as I thought it was.

"Now you get that baby home before the poor thing freezes. Will you be home for dinner?"

"Yup."

"Okay. See you later, hon. Look after that little sweetheart."

I head off to Laurel's. I'll be back for my car later.

*

The house hasn't changed. It smells the same, the kind of scent I can recognize instantly but I can't place a single element of it. The shoes that fill the hallway are bigger and there are more of them, same with the coats that hang on hooks by the door, but everything else feels so familiar.

I park the stroller in the hallway and lift off the rain cover, taking the blanket off Ava now we're inside, and she twitches but doesn't wake. It's only three twenty. If Laurel's right, she'll be asleep for another forty minutes, so I leave her where she is and I slip off my boots, joining them with the pile of sneakers and sandals and slippers that are in a surprisingly un-Laurel jumble.

What's the protocol here? When I babysat in the past, Otto was always around and seven-year-olds don't nap, so I was never alone with no-one to talk to. This is unprecedented. I double check the front door is locked behind me and that Ava can't wriggle out of the stroller if she wakes up, and I go to the kitchen. Make sure I know where the snacks are. Check out the magnets on the fridge. Glance at the schedule on the wall. Most of it is written out in Laurel's slant, with the occasional addition from her children. Otto's writing is sharp and messy. Hannah uses fat printed letters. I fight the urge to make my mark on the calendar.

The layout is similar to my house, the spacious kitchen and the open plan downstairs and the cozy living room. I don't venture upstairs. I already know it, and it feels wrong to leave Ava, so I park her stroller in the doorway to the playroom and I take my book out of my bag. The queer romance I bought from Jacob's Ladder, which Laurel described as funny, heart-warming, and deliciously sexy.

I started it on Saturday night, but I've only managed a couple chapters since then. Speed-reading isn't my thing the way it is Laurel's. I don't seem to take anything in if I don't spend at least a minute on each page, if not more, and it's hard to get stuck in when I keep looking up to see if Ava has woken up.

I needn't check. She lets me know the second she's awake when she lets out a whine and throws one of her toys across the floor. I leave the book upside down on the sofa, open to page forty-one, and I grin at Ava as I crouch down to let her out.