about that second tab, the one she hadn’t been looking at when he came in but which had been looked at some time and still lurked there on her screen, a click away—an airline ticketing service.
Chapter 8
Summer looked at the baby swing doubtfully. It would be nice to have someone to debate this with. Not Luc, obviously. He was too busy working. His only day off, Sunday, the stores here were closed, so baby shopping was clearly going to be a solo deal.
Maybe her phone? She could imagine the conversation without even pulling it out.
So this one has the Consumer Report rating, but some reviewers on Amazon said its motor quit after two weeks.
Phone: I’m not sure I understand.
And this other one looks really cute, and it has that side to side swing motion that some reviewers said was good, but it’s all pastels, and I thought I read babies could only really see black and red.
Phone: I found fifteen places matching swing dance clubs. Thirteen are fairly close to you.
Look, money is no freaking object, can I just have a swing that is perfect for my baby?
Phone: Here’s what I found on the web: “How to Perform the Perfect Golf Swing”.
You are a terrible substitute for human companionship.
Phone: OK, I found this on the web: Human beings are innately social and are shaped by their experiences with others (en.wikipedia.org).
Damn phone. She shoved it into her back pocket where it had a high chance of ending up in the washing machine.
Maybe she could fund some start-up that could design baby things that were genuinely perfect.
Hey. Wait a minute. That might actually be a good idea. She could find a couple of MIT grad students who were eager to make their mark on the world and had enough self-confidence to not feel threatened by Summer just because her father had so much money he could buy off God. They might even like her because she was the source of their funding, and she would be able to talk to them and bend over tables with designs and lay out plans.
What if it was something like working with Cade and Jaime Corey on Jaime’s project to bring young people up from cacao-growing regions to learn the other end of chocolate production? That had been fun. Cade and Jaime had brains , and they acted as if it was okay for Summer to use hers, too. If she opened her mouth, they didn’t give her that lookwomen usually did, as if they wanted to claw her skin off, starting with her face.
Maybe she’d been moving in the wrong social circles, before her island. Maybe she could find some more brilliant, go-getting women who didn’t have time to bother with jealousy. Or knew her as someone other than an infamous, attention-hungry socialite.
And she might have some people she could talk to, that way.
Not be here trying to figure out how to get raising her baby right entirely alone.
She tried the mobile on the red and black one and winced. Surely a mobile should play actual music instead of electric sounds?
Darn it. How could a simple swing be so complicated? She wandered away from them, through the frightening array of things she probably needed to correctly select for her baby. What did that do ? The blue thing to help them sit up—was that really necessary? Was that even good for them? And these sling things—they didn’t suffocate the baby? How did you wear them?
She was damn sure no one had ever worn her close and warmin a sling as if she was too precious to be left alone.
(Even Luc, these days, didn’t seem to have any trouble leaving her alone.)
(Shut up. He’s just working. Find something worthwhile to do yourself and quit whining.)
She put three different slings in her basket. Surely one of them would work. And whether her baby was loved—that was one problem she could solve . She would do all the loving that baby could possibly need.
She stopped at a table of carefully folded onesies. Potion du bonheur , the little pale purple one said. Happiness Potion. She touched it, cautiously. So soft
Robert & Lustbader Ludlum