Baby Me's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The next time new sounds came, they brought her somewhere else. Car sounds, then voices that weren't her father's or the woman's from the cottage. Different hands picked her up, moved her from place to place. They carried her into a room with bright lights that made her squint. Cold air touched her skin. Many voices bounced off hard walls. She was passed to new hands — smooth hands, not warm like her father's, but not cold either. The woman holding her smelled like flowers and something sharp underneath. More women stood nearby wearing the same smell, all dressed in dark colors with shiny things at their throats. One held a large piece of paper with numbers on it, bigger than any paper she'd seen before. Flash bulbs popped. She flinched and made her wanting sound, reaching for anyone who might have warm hands. But the flower-smell woman just shifted her weight and smiled at something across the room. An old man in a dark suit moved closer. His face had deep lines around the eyes. He reached toward her and the flower-smell woman turned her body so the old man could touch her head. His hand came down gentle but distant, the way someone touches something they're supposed to touch, not something they want to hold. She looked up at his face. He was smiling but his eyes were looking past her, toward the flash bulbs. She reached for him anyway, testing. His hand pulled back. The woman holding her laughed a light laugh that had no warmth in it and turned her toward more cameras. The wanting sound built in her throat but she swallowed it down. These hands weren't here for her. She was here for them. When they finally put her down in her father's arms again, she pressed her face against his shirt and went quiet. The old man and the flower-smell women moved away toward tables with food on them. She had learned something she couldn't unlearn: some holding was just for show. Some smiles were just faces people made while looking at something else. Her father's hands were warm and real, and now she knew the difference wasn't just in temperature. It was in whether the hands forgot about you while they were still touching you. She tucked her head under his chin and felt his heartbeat. This was the kind of holding that remembered she was there.