Emma buried her face in the cardigan and wailed.
“He was crying and crying and I squeezed him so he would stop and I didn’t mean to!”
No one moved.
Megan covered her mouth. Daniel leaned back against the wall as if the strength had gone out of his knees. Dr. Patel crouched slowly, carefully, until he was level with the child.
“Emma,” he said in that same maddeningly calm voice. “Did you mean to hurt the baby?”
Emma shook her head violently.
“No! I love babies!”
She sounded outraged by the possibility.
And that was somehow the most awful part of all.
This wasn’t malice.
It wasn’t rage.
It was ignorance wearing love’s clothes.
Laura covered her own mouth with both hands and made a small broken sound behind them.
“Oh my God.”
She turned toward Daniel and Megan with tears spilling freely now.
“I had no idea,” she said. “I stepped into the kitchen for one minute. She was watching cartoons. I thought the baby was asleep in the bassinet. I didn’t know she went near him. I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
Daniel’s face had gone a kind of pale I had only ever seen once before, when he was sixteen and the police called after a highway pileup to say my husband’s truck had been involved. Not grief yet. Just the color of the body realizing it may soon have to carry grief.
