Page 81 of Big & Lily

Lily is determined that the marriage is over. We’d talked it out on the flight home. I finally got the conversation I’d been chasing the entire week. I guess Lily was right; she neededflightbefore she was ready tofight. We agreed it was right not to tell Eric about the baby yet, but she knows that can only last so long.

“He’s not going to give a shit, I’m telling you, Big,” she’d said, munching on her stroopwafel and then stealing mine since she was now eating for two. “The store, on the other hand.” The store is going to take some wrangling to “access the equitable distribution of assets,” as the divorce lawyer she phoned from the airport called it. In the meantime, Lily and I have plans. Big plans.

“I meant it,” Lily had said as she’d climbed over me and myboot to pee for the fourth time since we took off. “Weshould work together.Weshould run the store. Screw Eric. There’s got to be a way to get him out.”

As she disappeared down the aisle, I looked at my hands, dirt from the ravine still under my nails. I twisted my fox ring around my finger and thought about going to Alaska for Lily and Lily alone. But coming home with something for me, and I knew what that something needed to be.

When my sister got back from the bathroom, after making an exaggeratedly high step to avoid my leg but using the top of my head as a balancing post and plopping herself into the middle seat with a groan, I said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Really? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“I just spent the whole time in the ladies’ thinking of a sales pitch. I was sure I was going to have to do a big dog and pony show.”

“Nope. I’m in.”

Lily squealed and wrapped her arm through mine and leaned into me, planting a big sloppy kiss on my cheek. I held up one finger. “On one condition,” I added.

“Here we go.”

“Look, if I’m going to come into the business, run it with you like you are asking, I need to know what I’m doing. I want to go back and take some classes first, business courses, definitely accounting, brush up on all that. It’s been years since I’ve done anything remotely like this. I could go to a community college. Or maybe online for now, with my leg and all, but I want to come in qualified.”

“You thought of all that while I was peeing?”

It was an idea that had been blooming in the back of my mind since Lily first mentioned me coming into the store with her. I let myself dare to dream it could become a reality. Something I wouldn’t have done before. I’d have flapped my hand, and laughedit off, and pulled out my to-do list on the back of an envelope as an example of how it wasn’t possible.

Going back to school made perfect sense. I’d been busying myself with classes at the Community Education Society: how to arrange a charcuterie board and how to deadhead your hydrangeas and yoga for weight loss. They were all space fillers. This, how to successfully run a business with my sister, is what I’ve been searching for.

“I need to do it, Lil. Take the courses, know my shit before I start. I don’t want people thinking I’m a bored housewife who got the job because I’m your sister.”

“You’re worried about everyone thinking you’re a nepo baby? That’s hysterical. But I love it. Shit, Big Sis, let’s do this thing.”

Chapter Forty

Denali naps on her belly, butt in the air, chubby fists and thighs tucked underneath her. Her rosy lips, pushed into a lopsided heart shape by the mattress, and impossibly long lashes make me want to swoop her up and push my nose into her soft neck, to smell all the babiness that none of us can get enough of. The fact that my niece can sleep with all the activity around her, the piped music, the bell ringing each time the door opens, the customers cooing over her crib, and Marigold, her nanny, snoring at her feet, still surprises me, although Ali’s been doing it all her short little life.

In fact, Denali has become the perfect spokesperson for our new line of bespoke cribs, cradles, and playpens—cooked up by me (my first major initiative since becoming a full partner in Sweet Dreams) and crafted by Tim, who has found that his post-retirement passion is still building things. The store’s original concept, that people will pay anything for a good night’s sleep, clearly extends to their children. Our new line, Like a Baby, has been a hit. My husband can hardly keep up with the demand.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then our shop has become a whole metropolis. Lily might be a single mom, but she and Denali never feel alone. Sweet Dreams is always filled with eager customers, Lily fans—of whom there are many—and family members who turned the back storage room into a nursery where they can cuddle and snuggle and otherwise adore our newest addition.

And although my sister refused the offer to move in with us after the baby was born, she and Denali are with us most days we aren’t working. Our family room is now a playroom, filled with blocks and art supplies and stuffed animals (her favorites are the moose and the polar bear from the airport gift shop) and play mats and educational toys, and two grown cousins vying for Ali’s attention. It’s a lot for a three-month-old, but so is this family. Talking of a lot, the biggest surprise in a world full of surprises since we were in the emergency room in Palmer has been my mother, who, after delegating her parenting duties to me for those many years, is making up for lost time. Almost to a fault.

“Mom.” I hear Lily from across the store. She’s holding two candles, our bestsellers, Lullaby and Dreamland, for a woman with dark circles under her eyes to smell. “Leave her be, please.”

Right on cue, my mother is hovering over the crib, her fingers open wide like a claw machine, ready to snatch Ali out of a much-needed nap. She can’t help herself. We all want to do it—the child is irresistible—but we know the saying, let sleeping dogs and babies lie. Unsurprisingly, Ruth has no impulse control. My mother picks up the baby, who opens her eyes and stretches her little arms out to her sides. In unison, we all—and probably half the customers watching her—coo, “Big stretch,” as is the law in these parts.

“Oh, I could just bite you,” says my mother.

“No, Mom. No biting,” demands Lily from her spot near the aromatherapy candles.

“Come on, just a nibble,” Grandma says to Denali. “I nibbled your cousins Annie and Cam when they were babies, and look how wonderful they turned out.”

I don’t remember Ruth nibbling anyone, but now is not the time. She’s been so happy since Denali arrived. And that makes me happy.

“Ah.” I laugh. “This is why I had to pay for all those years of therapy.”

“Very funny, Bridget. I’m a Jewish grandmother. Jewish grandmothers nibble. You’ll see.” She punctuates her warning with a wet raspberry on the baby’s tummy.