Page 7 of The Other Mother
What if it was just grief? Just projection from a woman who lost her own child and can't bear to see other mothers struggling?
And yet I can't shake the sound of Mara's voice. The certainty in her words.
"You feel it, don't you?"
I do feel it. I've felt it since the moment they placed Eva on my chest in that sterile delivery room. The wrongness. The disconnect. The sense that I'm caring for someone else's child.
At a red light, I whisper to Eva's reflection: "You're mine. Of course you're mine."
But the words come out like a question.
3
THE BLANKET
The afternoon sun streams through our living room windows with the kind of relentless intensity that only exists in the desert. Everything it touches turns golden and harsh. I should close the blinds, but I can't seem to make myself care.
Eva sleeps in her bassinet beside the couch, her chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm that used to comfort me. Now I watch it like I'm waiting for something to go wrong. Like I'm expecting her to stop breathing or disappear or reveal herself to be someone else entirely.
Mara's words loop through my head on repeat. "That baby isn't yours." The way she said it, so certain, so matter-of-fact. Like she was telling me the sky is blue or water is wet. An undeniable truth I've been too blind to see.
I need to move. Need to do something with my handsbefore I lose what's left of my mind. The laundry basket sits on the floor beside the couch, overflowing with tiny clothes that smell like sour milk and the lavender detergent I bought because it was supposed to be gentle on sensitive skin. Everything in our life now revolves around being gentle. Gentle soap, gentle music, gentle voices. As if the world might shatter Eva like glass if we're not careful enough.
I dump the contents onto the coffee table and start folding. Onesies covered in cartoon animals I don't remember buying. Burp cloths stained with mysterious yellows and whites. Swaddles that promise to help babies sleep through the night but never seem to work for us.
At the bottom of the pile, I find a blanket I don't recognize.
My hands freeze around the soft cotton. It's pale pink with brown trim that looks like it's been through hundreds of washes. This isn’t my mother’s embroidered rosebud blanket. The kind of delicate pattern you'd find in an old-fashioned baby shop, not the modern geometric prints that filled our registry. I turn it over slowly, my fingers tracing the worn edges.
In one corner, there's a brownish stain about the size of a quarter. It's faded but persistent, the kind of mark that's been through the wash multiple times but refuses to disappear completely. Formula maybe. Or blood.
My heart starts hammering against my ribs.
I grab my phone with shaking fingers and scroll backthrough my photos. The hospital ones are buried under weeks of blurry shots of Eva sleeping, Eva crying, Eva staring at nothing with those dark, unreadable eyes. But finally I find them. The first pictures Adam took right after she was born.
There I am in the hospital bed, looking like I've been hit by a truck but trying to smile for the camera. My hair is plastered to my head with sweat, my face is puffy and pale, but I'm holding Eva against my chest like she's the most precious thing in the world.
She's wrapped in a striped blanket. Blue and white stripes with a hospital logo in the corner. Not this one.
I scroll through more photos. The ones Adam took when the nurses cleaned her up. The ones from our first night home. Different blankets in every shot, but none of them this pale pink flowered one that's now sitting in my lap like evidence of something I can't name.
I dig desperately through the rest of the laundry, looking for anything else that doesn't belong. But it's all familiar. All the clothes we bought or received as gifts. All the burp cloths and bibs and tiny socks that disappear in the dryer.
Just this one blanket that doesn't fit.
I hold it up to the afternoon light streaming through the windows. The fabric is soft and worn, loved in a way that suggests it belonged to someone for a long time. Along the edge, barely visible unless you're looking for it, is a small sewn-in laundry tag.
Written in faded black marker, in handwriting that definitely isn't mine, "G. Matthews."
I stare at the letters until they blur. G. Matthews. My last name, but not my initial. Not Eva's either, obviously. Her full name is Eva Rose Matthews, chosen because I loved the way it sounded when I was eight months pregnant and still believed I knew what I was doing.
Gia? Gabriella?
"This isn't hers," I whisper to the empty room. "This isn't mine."
Eva stirs in her bassinet but doesn't wake. She's been sleeping more lately, long stretches that would have thrilled me a few days ago but now feel ominous. Like she's conserving energy. Like she's waiting for something.
I hear Adam's key in the front door, followed by his voice. He's on a work call, discussing permits and timelines and other details of his current project. A custom home for some tech executive who moved here from Silicon Valley and wants sustainable luxury in the middle of the desert. Adam loves these clients. They have money and taste and don't question his recommendations the way the younger couples do.
