Chapter 4: The Woman Holding The Baby
I found her still standing at the dressing suite entrance, not quite inside and not quite in the hallway either.
The white paneled door was pulled to that same half-open angle, the brass backplate catching the warm light from inside. She'd shifted the infant to her other shoulder and was bouncing him in that automatic, tired way people do when they've been holding a baby for hours. Her dark suit jacket was pulled snug across her shoulders. Up close I could see the white trim of her collar was actually a blouse underneath, and there was a faint milk stain on the left side she hadn't noticed.
I hadn't touched my jacket since I'd walked away to find David. My boutonniere was still straight. My hands didn't know what to do with themselves.
"Hey," I said. It came out too quiet.
She looked at me and didn't flinch. If anything she seemed relieved I was back. "You talked to David."
"Yeah."
The baby made a small noise against her shoulder, not a cry, just that restless four-month-old grunt. She patted his back without looking down.
"I should tell you who I am," she said. "Before you ask me anything else. I'm Maya. I'm her sister."
That stopped me for a second. I knew she had a sister. Lauren had mentioned her maybe twice, always quickly, always with a change of subject right after. I had assumed she lived out of state.
"You're the one who moved in with her," I said.
"I moved in eight weeks ago. I'm not just her sister, though. I'm his nanny. Live-in, technically." She tipped her head toward the infant. "This is Leo. He's four months. He's our nephew. Lauren has guardianship."
I stared at the pale yellow onesie. In the hallway light it was almost cream. I could see the tiny snaps at the shoulder.
"Your nephew," I repeated.
"Our older sister's son. My sister, Rachel, she signed the papers in February. Lauren took him. I quit my job in Akron and came to help because she couldn't do nights and work and the custody hearings alone. We didn't want you to think — " She stopped and reset. "Lauren didn't want anyone downstairs asking about a baby at her wedding. That's why I'm up here and not in the ballroom."
I leaned against the doorframe opposite her. The brass knob was cool against my elbow. Down the hall I could hear the faint thump of the string quartet starting their sound check. Someone laughed, far away.
"She asked you to keep him up here," I said.
Maya nodded and finally made eye contact for longer than a second. Her eyes were the same color as Lauren's, but tired in a different way.
"She said people would ask questions. She said your mom had already asked twice why she seemed distracted at the rehearsal dinner, and she didn't want to try to explain Leo and the apartment inspection next week and everything else while she was trying to walk down an aisle. She told me to stay in the suite, feed him, keep the door mostly closed so he wouldn't cry over the music." She swallowed. "I wasn't supposed to be in the hallway at all. I was coming to get his blanket and I heard you coming and I just — I didn't know what to do."
I realized I had been holding my breath. I let it out.
"What's the apartment inspection have to do with it?" I asked.
Maya shifted Leo again. He was awake now, looking at me with that unfocused baby stare.
"The county worker comes Tuesday. We have to show we have stable housing. Lauren's lease is in review because she added two occupants. If the landlord decides we're over occupancy, we lose the two-bedroom. If we lose the two-bedroom, the custody caseworker writes it up as unstable." She said it like she'd rehearsed it for a hearing. "Your family's foundation paid for this venue. Your dad's assistant booked the catering and the flowers. Lauren kept saying she didn't want to be ungrateful. She kept saying if she called it off now, after the invitations and the deposits, it would look like she used you and then left you at the altar over money she should have told you about from the start."
It clicked then, not all at once but in a slow, heavy way. The white paneled doors, the warm light spilling through, my tuxedo that someone else had pressed and hung in that suite for me that morning. None of it was ours. It was theirs. My family's. And Lauren had been trying to keep a baby sleeping in the next room while she figured out how to marry a man she didn't love so she wouldn't lose the roof over that baby's head.
"You think she's lying about not loving him?" I asked. I meant me.
Maya looked down at Leo and smoothed the back of his pale yellow onesie with her palm.
"No," she said quietly. "I think she loves that you are kind. I think she's been trying to convince herself that was enough. She asked me last night if that made her a bad person. I told her it made her scared."
I believed her. That was the thing. She wasn't trying to sell me a story. She was holding a baby who wasn't hers either, standing in a hallway where she wasn't supposed to be, telling a groom the truth because no one else would.
"Mr. Vance, what are you going to do?" she asked, and it wasn't the same as when she'd said it before through the door crack. Now it was smaller. Sister to stranger.
I didn't have an answer yet. I put my hand flat against the white paneling next to the brass backplate just to feel something solid.
May you like
"Stay up here with him," I said. "Don't go downstairs until I come get you. However this goes, you shouldn't have to explain him to a ballroom."
She nodded, her eyes filling finally. Leo made that small noise again, and she pulled him closer, and I understood at least this much — she wasn't lying to me, even if she loved her sister enough to have stayed quiet as long as she could.
