Free No Time to Wave Goodbye by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page B

was only another mouth to feed, not a cause for pretty presents.
    Beth settled Eliza and the exquisitely chuckling four-month-old Stella. Buckling himself into the front seat, Ben promptly fell asleep. Stella had slept like an angel for six weeks then decided that the nighttime world was beguiling. Because Eliza wanted to start taking a few classes beginning next week, they’d begun to supplement the breast with the bottle, so Ben could feed her, which he did—every hour. When he came home from work at one or two a.m., Stella was all smiles.
    Tonight, Beth thought greedily, she would do that—the cuddling, the changing, the feeding, carrying Stella in to Eliza only once. Ostensibly, it was to let the young couple have a night to rest. But Beth had not wakened to a baby in so long…. Did mothers who’d had the full complement of years with their children yearn in this way? she wondered. Was it even more poignant? From nowhere, at the wedding, Candy had said that she felt like she had only just gotten Eliza and was already losing her. Beth said nothing then but felt this same thing exactly. The years of her motherhood had been cored by the loss of Ben.
    “Sam can’t wait to see Vincent,” Eliza whispered as, next to her, Stella’s lashes brushed her cheeks. “They’ve talked on the phone three times today already. Whenever Miss Eats Every Minute isn’t awake, he keeps saying, ‘Do you know how well the picture is doing? Do you know it won the star at the Toronto Film Festival?’ Sam is so proud.” Beth smiled, realizing how it still jarred her to realize that Liza had never known her husband by his given name. Eliza went on, “Auntie? Have you heard … any more about the movie? Like today?”
    “Just that Vincent said last night they’re getting booked into real theaters all over the place. And I’ll have all three of my kids together tonight.” She paused and grinned into the rearview mirror. “I mean all
four
of my kids … and my grandchild. Under the same roof for two whole nights.”
    “You’re lucky my mom let me leave! When I take Stella outside, Mom wants to wrap her up like we’re going dog-sledding in Alaska….”
    “It’s probably colder here than in Alaska right now,” Beth said.
    “But Auntie, she’s so … overprotective…. She’s always saying, ‘Now, Eliza, I don’t know. She’s barely four months old. Taking her outof her environment …’ Actually, what my mom would have said is, I think it’s goddamn foolish taking a baby out in this goddamn …” Both women laughed, Beth feeling an interior crescent of gold unfurl as she always did when Eliza called her “auntie” in the Mediterranean way, the affectionate name for a godmother or any older woman relative.
    “You don’t get your mom, Liza,” Beth said. “You were her … um … this isn’t going to mean anything to you. But once there was a knight called Lancelot …”
    “The Holy Grail,” Eliza said.
“Duh.
I read the myths when I was little.”
    “Well, this is no myth. That was you for her.”
    Eliza shook her head. She pointed to Ben’s face on Beth’s keychain—Kerry’s gift of a heart-shaped gold picture frame that enclosed a photo of all three of them when they were small—the one that jangled beside the one Eliza had given her and Candy, with Stella’s photo.
“My husband
was that for her.”
    “Just because she didn’t have you yet,” Beth said.
    Even before she could press the button on the automatic garage-door opener, Vincent threw open the door of the house. As if someone had hit him with an electrical prod, the sleeping Ben sat upright and was out of the car before Beth could put the vehicle into park. Her throat closed when Ben covered the lawn in two steps and practically picked Vincent up with a hug so eloquent she didn’t need to hear the words they said, although they evidently had a bunch of words to say. Vincent shouted something to Ben, who nodded and pumped his fist in the