After the cake, Ruth had asked if Natalie wanted to hold her. Natalie said yes. Ruth lifted Claire out of the high chair, frosting and all, and put her in Natalie's arms, and for perhaps four seconds Claire looked up at her with frank interest, the way she looked at the balloons and the neighbor's twins. Then she twisted around, searching the room, and found Ruth, and reached for her with both arms and began to wail.
"Ruth was so embarrassed," Natalie said. "She kept apologizing. She said Claire was tired, she'd skipped her nap, she was like that with everyone. And she was probably right. Babies do that. I know that now. Emma used to scream if anybody but you or me held her, Adam, remember? Your mother took it so personally." She almost smiled. "But I didn't know it then. I just knew that she was reaching for somebody else. And that she was right to. That was her mother. That was the woman who got up with her at three in the morning and knew which blanket she liked. I was a lady with a rabbit."
She had stayed another hour. She had smiled and eaten cake and talked to Ruth's sister about Colorado State. And at some point in the late afternoon, when the party had moved out into the small backyard and Ruth had gone inside to change Claire's diaper, Natalie had followed her in to use the bathroom and found the baby alone for a moment, on a blanket on the living room floor, playing with the paper from her presents, while Ruth ran upstairs for a clean onesie.
Natalie stopped talking.
"What happened?" Adam said.
"Nothing happened." She drew a breath. "I want you to understand that. Nothing happened. I knelt down on the rug, and she looked at me, and she didn't cry that time. She held out a piece of wrapping paper. Like she was giving it to me. And I took it. And I thought—" She pressed her lips together. "I thought, the front door is right there. I thought it as clearly as I've ever thought anything. The front door is right there and nobody is looking. I could pick her up and walk out and be at the bus stop in five minutes. I even knew which bus."
The studio was silent.