Before He Envies. Блейк Пирс

in her entire life, but they came as she kissed the top of her son’s head.

      “I think we did good,” Ellington said. “I mean, my part was easy, but you know what I mean.”

      “I do,” she said. She looked into her son’s eyes for the first time and felt what she could only describe as an emotional click. It was the feeling of her life being forever changed. “And yes, we did do good.”

      Ellington sat down on the edge of the bed. The shifting hurt her abdomen, the surgery now barely more than two hours ago. But she said nothing.

      She sat there in the crook of her husband’s arm with their newborn son in her arms, and could not remember a single moment in her life when she had felt such absolute happiness.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Mackenzie had spent the last three months of her pregnancy reading just about every book on babies she could find. There seemed to be no unequivocal answer as to what to expect the first few weeks back home with a newborn. Some said that as long as you slept when the baby slept, you should be okay. Others had said to sleep when you could with the help of a spouse or other family members who were willing to help. All of it had made Mackenzie sure that sleep would only be a precious memory of the past once they got Kevin home.

      This proved correct for the first two weeks or so. After Kevin’s first checkup, it was discovered that he had severe acid reflux. This meant that anytime he ate, he had to be held upright for fifteen to thirty minutes at a time. This was easy enough, but became grinding during the later night hours.

      It was during this stretch of time that Mackenzie started to think about her mother. On the second night after being instructed to hold Kevin upright after feeding, Mackenzie wondered if her own mother had dealt with anything like this. Mackenzie wondered what sort of baby she had been.

      She’d probably like to see her granddaughter, Mackenzie thought.

      But that was a terrifying concept. The idea of calling her mother just to say hello was bad enough. But then throw in a surprise granddaughter, and that would be chaotic.

      She felt Kevin squirming against her, trying to get comfortable. Mackenzie checked the bedside clock and saw that she’d had him upright for a little over twenty minutes. He seemed to have dozed off on her shoulder, so she crept over to the bassinet and placed him inside of it. He was swaddled and looked quite comfortable and she took a final look at him before returning to bed.

      “Thanks,” Ellington said from beside her, half asleep. “You’re awesome.”

      “I don’t feel like it. But thanks.”

      She settled down, getting her head comfortable on the pillow. She had her eyes closed for about five seconds before Kevin started wailing again. She shot up in bed and let out a little moan. She bit it back, though, worried that it might turn into a bout of weeping. She was tired and, worst of all, she was experiencing her first toxic thoughts about her child.

      “Again?” Ellington said, snapping the word out like a curse. He got to his feet, nearly stumbling out of the bed, and marched to the bassinet.

      “I’ll get him,” Mackenzie said.

      “No…you’ve been up with him four times already. And I know…I woke up for each and every one of those times.”

      She did not know why (probably the lack of sleep, she thought idly), but this comment pissed her off. She practically lunged out of bed to beat him to the wailing baby. She rammed her shoulder into him a little harder than necessary to be considered playful. As she picked Kevin up, she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. Did he wake you?”

      “Mac, you know what I mean.”

      “I do. But Jesus, you could be helping more.”

      “I have to get up early tomorrow,” he said. “I can’t just sit…”

      “Oh God, please finish that sentence.”

      “No. I’m sorry. I just…”

      “Get back in bed,” Mackenzie snapped. “Kevin and I are fine.”

      “Mac…”

      “Shut up. Get back in bed and sleep.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Is the baby too noisy? Go to the couch, then!”

      “Mac, you—”

      “Go!”

      She was crying now, holding Kevin to her as she settled back into bed. He was still wailing, slightly in pain from the reflux. She knew she’d have to hold him upright again and it made her want to cry even harder. But she did her best to hold it back as Ellington stormed out of the room. He was muttering something under his breath and she was glad she couldn’t hear it. She was looking for an excuse to explode on him, to berate him and, honestly, just to get out some of her frustration.

      She sat back against the headboard holding little Kevin as still and upright as possible, wondering if her life would ever be the same.

***

      Somehow, despite the late-night arguments and lack of sleep, it took less than a week for their new family to slip into a groove. It took some trial and error for Mackenzie and Ellington to figure it out, but after that first week of the reflux issues, it all seemed to go well. When the meds knocked the worst of the reflux out, it was easier to manage it. Kevin would cry, Ellington would get him out of the crib and change his diaper, and then Mackenzie would nurse him. He was sleeping well for a baby, about three or four hours at a stretch for the first few weeks following the reflux, and wasn’t very fussy at all.

      It was Kevin, though, who started to open their eyes to just how broken the families they had come from were. Ellington’s mother came by two days after they got home and stayed for about two hours. Mackenzie had been polite enough, hanging around until she realized it would be an opportune time for a break. She went to the bedroom to sneak in a nap while Kevin was preoccupied with his father and grandmother, but Mackenzie was not able to sleep. She listed to the conversation between Ellington and his mother, surprised that there seemed to be some attempt at reconciliation. Mrs. Nancy Ellington left the apartment about two hours later, and even through the bedroom door, Mackenzie could feel some of the remaining tension between them.

      Still, she’d left a gift for Kevin in her wake and had even asked about Ellington’s father—a subject she almost always tried to avoid.

      Ellington’s father never even bothered to come by. Ellington made a FaceTime call to him and though they chatted for about an hour and a few tears even came to his father’s eyes, there were no immediate plans for him to come see his grandson. He’d started his own life long ago, a new life without any of his original family. And that, apparently, was how he wanted it to stay. Sure, he’d made a sweeping financial gesture last year in regards to trying to pay for their wedding (a gift they eventually denied), but that had been help from a distance. He was currently living in London with Wife Number Three and was apparently swamped with work.

      As for Mackenzie, while her thoughts did eventually turn to her mother and sister—her only surviving family—the idea of getting in touch with them was a horrifying one. She knew where her mother was living and, with a little help from the bureau, she supposed she could even get her number. Stephanie, her younger sister, would probably be a little harder to track down. As Stephanie was never one to stay in a place for very long, Mackenzie had no idea where her sister might be these days.

      Sadly, she found that she was okay with that. Yes, she thought her mother deserved to see her first grandchild, but that would mean opening up the scars that she had closed up a little over a year ago when she had finally closed the case of her father’s murder. In closing that case, she had also closed the door on that part of her past—including the terrible relationship she’d always had with her mother.

      It was odd just how much she thought about her mother now that she had a child of her own. Whenever she held Kevin, she’d remind herself of how distant her mother had been even before her father’s murder. She swore that Kevin would always know that his mother loved him, that she would