Page 21 of Swim To Me

My brothers take up most of the area, spread out over the sofas and armchairs. Faith, my sister-in-law, sits perched beside the muted TV, while Blake, older than me by only a year, stands rocking baby Mollie from side to side, obviously striving to keep her from crying. I can see from my spot beside the door how rosy red her chubby cheeks are, painted with dried up tears and snot. From over Blake’s broad shoulder, Mum smooths the back of her finger down Mollie’s quivering chin, offering a sympathetic hum.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask, moving the empty baby playmat with the tip of my shoe covered foot, so I can at least cross the floor. Soft baby toys cover the carpet too, and something which looks oddly spikey for a seven-month-old to be playing with.

“Oh, nice to see you too!” Mum breaks out, narrowing her eyes at me. “Your father is probably upstairs somewhere trying to watch the football game.”

“In peace.” My youngest brother, twenty-five-year-old Hudson, whispers to me as I squeeze myself in between him and the arm of the sofa. “Can you blame him?”

I shake my head minutely, staring ahead at the same football match our dad is viewing upstairs. Except he’s getting to watch it with the actual sound. Lucky bastard.

“How was the train ride up, Grey?” Faith voices, giving me a glimpse of her dark under eyes. She’s still pretty, though, in a natural kind of way, with her long, straight auburn hair andmakeup-less face. Her eyes are brown, not as brown as Delilah’s, more like a honeysuckle kind of brown, whereas Delilah—

“Not bad.” I blink, Faith morphing into the woman on my mind, as if it’s really Delilah sitting in my childhood family home, listening to the incessant cry of a baby with lungs made of fucking steel.

I blink again and Delilah’s gone, this time replaced by Noah’s screwed up face.

“What’s up with your face?”

“Nothing, you fucking—”

“Language,” my mother scolds, scooping baby Mollie by her underarms and rocking her in her own arms, as if by grandmother’s magic touch, Mollie is going to stop making such a racket.

She doesn’t.

I steal a glug from Hudson’s bubbly beer. It’s only right seeing as how Noah stole mine. “How long do babies teeth for?”

“On and off until they’re about two, two and a half,” comes Mum’s quick response. I guess she would know after having four children herself.

“And how long does a crying episode last for?” I wonder out loud. It’s a simple question, one I mean without any malice. I work with small children on a regular basis – boosting their confidence, correcting their mistakes, fixing injuries, I’ve even had to clean up vomit from swallowing too much chlorinated pool water on a number of occasions. But that doesn’t mean I’m used to their screaming tantrums, or their screaming of blue murder in Mollie’s case.

“You try and get her to stop crying then.” A small, wriggly, extremely loud lump is deposited onto my lap. “I’ve got dinner to be dishing up. Faith?” My mother, a twinkle in her eye, and a twitch in her lips, holds out her now empty hands to her beloved daughter in law. “Would you like to help set the table?”

The two of them are gone before I can even have time to protest, leaving me and my three brothers in charge of the tiny human.

Tiny fists latch onto my shirt, with more force than I thought possible, until Mollie is sniffling into my neck, her whines winding down with every pass of my hand down her small back.

“Who knew you’d be the baby whisperer?” Hudson bumps his shoulder with mine. “If you’re not careful Mum will be onto you next about procreating.”

“Who the fuck says ‘procreating’?” Blake spits, at the same time as Noah mutters, “He needs a woman in his life first.”

“If I could stop opening my big mouth and embarrassing myself, maybe I could get one,” I mumble, my thumb skimming the miniscule shell of Mollie’s ear, her baby scent filling my nose.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Definitely wasn’t nothing,” prods Noah. “Share with the class, G.”

My family’s always been my weakness, and after everything, they’ve always been my safe space even more so than the pool, so I’m not surprised when the truth starts to fall smoothly off my tongue.

“You know when you do something embarrassing, and your mind won’t let you stop thinking about it?”

Beside me, Hudson nods, cutting his eyes to me and then back to the still muted football match. God only knows what he’s been getting up to recently.

“Yeah, that.”

“What did you do?” asks Blake.

“I think I made a fool of myself in front of a-a-somebody…”

---