Freya and the baby came home from the hospital after six days. The baby was healthy—happy and thriving—but the same could not be said for her mother. Freya had been kept in for a few extra days due to a minor infection. When she returned home, she was exhausted and glum. She was struggling to breastfeed and resented the enthusiastic lecture about its benefits that the nurses had given her prior to release.

“Fucking nosy do-gooders,” she snarled, as I bounced the hungry baby and Max prepared a bottle of formula.

“My mom breastfed all her kids for way too long,” I quipped. “She used to meet Leonard at recess for a quick top up.”

“I bet her tits are down to her knees,” Freya muttered.

Max or I did most of the feedings. Even though she wouldn’t breastfeed, the nurses had wanted Freya to bottle-feed her child, said it was important for bonding. But she wasn’t interested. Besides, she was usually asleep. She had been through physical turmoil, was recovering from surgery. But when her napping continued into the second week, it seemed a sign of avoidance and apathy. Freya had once mentioned her own mother’s postpartum depression, and I wondered if she was following in her maternal footsteps.

“Can you move in?” Max asked me, the weariness of caregiving showing on his face, “As soon as possible.”

He needed me. Desperately. I won’t pretend I didn’t like it. “I’m already here all day, I said, enjoying my power.

“I need you here at night. I’m exhausted.”

“My parents won’t like it.”

“I’ll pay you,” he said quickly. “How does thirty bucks an hour sound?”

It sounded like more than double the money I made at Jamie’s shop. And while being Maggie’s nanny was far more onerous than selling knickknacks to tourists, I could handle it short-term. And it would let me live here, with Freya and Max. To entrench myself into their lives and their home. And when Maggie was gone . . . ? Well, by then Freya and I would have reached a new level of intimacy. She would realize she couldn’t live without me, and she wouldn’t let me leave.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Lucky for me, my parents were embroiled in a new drama that had shifted their focus from my role in the Light-Beausoleil household. Vik had met a woman at a silent meditation retreat and invited her to move into his trailer.

“He’s disrespecting the basic tenets of our relationship,” my mom said. She was sitting in the living room with my dad and a cross-legged Gwen. “Honesty and openness.”

“How well can he even know her?” Gwen sniped. “They were silent for most of their relationship.”

I heard my dad’s voice. “It’s new-relationship energy. He’s experiencing a desire for monogamy, but he’ll soon see that it’s not worth sacrificing what we have.”