Page 59 of Clever Little Thing

I sank back onto the pillows. “You have to watch her, Pete, when I’m not with you. Will you promise me? Don’t leave her in the bath alone. Don’t let her near anything sharp, any medicines.”

Pete frowned. “She’s not going to hurt herself.”

“She’s capable of anything. She’s very angry.”

“She just ate three scones. She can’t be that angry.”

“Don’t joke about it! Iknowshe’s angry because she showed me her diary. It was right before I had the baby—Luna—at Irina’s. Stella knew where you’d hidden it. She gave me permission to read it. And all it says is ‘I hate that person I hate that person I hate that person I hate—’ ”

“I get the message. So she uses her diary as a way to vent. That actually sounds pretty healthy.”

“How can you say that?”

“I know you think she’s a genius, but she’s eight years old. I don’t think we need to freak out because her diary isn’t great literature.”

“Just look at it.” I reached for my phone. Pete shook his head, but I shoved the photo under his nose. “Look at it. It’s in Armenian. It is not normal for an eight-year-old to write in Armenian. She would have had to learn an entirely new alphabet.”

“She can use Google Translate same as you. I expect she was just messing around.”

“Armenian was Blanka’s first language,” I hissed. “That’s not all. This is Blanka’s handwriting too. I compared it with an old shopping list Blanka wrote—”

“An old shopping list? Sweetheart, you’re frightening me. Let’s talk about this again after you’ve had a rest. I’m going to get them to check your temperature. Meanwhile, I promise you Stella’s safe with me.” He kissed me goodbye and had Stella do so too. Outside, I heard him murmuring to the nurse.

•••

I thought I’d be alone on Christmas Day, but Pete’s colleague Kia showed up in the morning. I was touched. Emmy had sent me a text with a flurry of emojis, and Cherie had messaged aCongratulations!with no emojis. Kia was the only one to visit; she’d brought a huge hamper and a pink orchid too. I was surprised: I liked herwell enough, but she didn’t seem the type to visit a colleague’s wife in hospital, especially not postpartum. She’d once laughingly told me she hated baby showers. At one, a friend had handed her a fancy journal and asked her to write a special note to welcome the baby. Other guests had jotted life lessons or gushed about the expectant mama, but Kia stood there paralyzed. “In the end, all I could do was write, ‘Welcome, Baby!’ in really big letters and get the hell out of there.”

“I know babies aren’t your thing,” I said now, touched. “Thank you for coming. Don’t you have Christmas plans?”

Kia smiled. “Well, I couldn’t make it home to the States, so I’ll have dinner with friends later. I thought I’d stop by and congratulate you first. Pete said the pregnancy was rough and you felt sick the whole way through. He feels bad he has to work so hard.”

“It’s so thoughtful of you to visit.” It was. But I felt uneasy. It wasn’t that Pete had confided in a work colleague about my pregnancy woes. I understood he needed a shoulder to lean on. It was the way she seemed to be defending Pete: working so hard, feeling so guilty.

But maybe I was reading too much into it. Something about Kia made me think she was lonely too. We both needed a friend. So I smiled, even though the gift hamper contained something called a jade roller for tired eyes and aromatherapy bath oils. Kia was childless, so it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know my future as a mother of a newborn and a young child did not include long soaks while treating my unsightly under-eye bags.

Kia flopped into the chair next to my bed, cheeks flushed from the cold. She had a nose stud and the right sort of perky nose for it.“God, the birth sounded so dramatic. I mean, traumatic. Well, both, I guess.” She took my hand. “Charlotte, you are so fucking brave.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Though I didn’t really have any choice.”

“Can I see her?” Kia asked.

“You don’t have to, honestly.” I smiled. “I’ll tell her, ‘Welcome, Baby!’ from you.”

Kia grinned. “I’ll never live that down. Seriously, I’d love to see her.”

I put on my dressing gown and shuffled to the NICU, where I pointed out Luna through the viewing window. “So cute!” breathed Kia. “I wish I could hold her. I love the smell of babies.”

“She smells like the birth canal,” I said. I felt tired and ancient. “Like my vagina,” I clarified.

Kia laughed. She pointed at a nurse, gently joggling a baby, its head against her chest. “Oh look, the snuggle hold.”

“I didn’t know that position had a name,” I said.

“There are five ways to hold a newborn,” Kia said. “I studied up on YouTube before I came.”

And she’d made the trip here on Christmas Day. “Listen, really and truly, thank you for the gift hamper and the visit.”

“No problem.” Kia smiled at me, and I smiled back, although early on in “Charlotte Says,” I’d written, “When you say, ‘No problem,’ in response to being thanked, you suggest that there could well have been a problem and it’s lucky there wasn’t. For a more positive vibe, just say, ‘You’re welcome.’ ”

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