I took many liberties with this plotline soo... don't hate me for it :O


SARA VAN DE KAMP

She checked the cake on the counter with the image in the cookbook: perfection. She'd followed the recipe like a devout, and here was enough cream frosting and green piping to make this day a day to remember.

Sara turned a quick 180 and grinned at the baby in the highchair. "What do you think?" she asked of the infant, who gurgled and raised a hand in response. "I'll take that as 'well done mommy, it's wonderful." She giggled at Marlo, who raised the other hand and bounced, demanding to be lifted free of the strappings of the chair. Sara obeyed, scooping her daughter up and waltzing across the grande kitchen, throwing the cake one last admiring look as she went. "Think Billy will like it?"

Marlo chuckled. Sara kissed her head. She and Jack had often joked that their life had done an about turn when Billy entered their life, but for Sara it went beyond the laughing. She'd been running Bill to the clinic late one night for a fever, to find the clinic in uproar about an abandoned newborn baby. Days later she'd contacted the local police, and the local adoption agency, and one thing had led to another, as they often did, and that was all the information she had to tell Marlo, if Marlo ever asked for the story of her birth. One thing often led to another where Billy was concerned. He'd cried on his first day of preschool, and the next day the place had become infested with rats and closed for two months. He often cried at the attention Marlo received, so Jack had brought him a little freshwater aquarium, and a small goldfish he named Emily. Things tended to happen when Billy was around.

Sara reached the pantry, grabbed a pack of candles from the highest shelf, and padded back to the kitchen. "Three candles for your big brother," she informed Marlo as she aligned them in the frosting. She worked slowly; dutifully making it perfect, weeping a little inside that next year there would be four candles on his cake, then five, then double digits, then the teenage years where she would not be permitted to bake him a cake… She couldn't help but cast a throwaway thought to his other mother, the one who came before. It wasn't a habit she enjoyed, thinking about the women who brought her children into the world, but on birthdays it was nigh impossible. At the mommy and baby group, Sara's friends spoke about their experiences of labour, and of agony, and the heart-stopping joy of it all, and Sara could only gaze at Marlo blankly. Sara's friends – bitter, hated friends, purveyors of birth stories and ultrasound pictures and cradling their babies who had matching hair and eyes and DNA. Billy had red hair, Marlo had blond; Sara and Jack were dark.

Three years to this day… What could Sara say? On this day three years ago, she was perfectly childless, running about and cleaning the house and not fit to burst with a bundle of joy. Three years to the day, somewhere in the world, a woman with no name had bent with labour, to push and nurture a red-headed baby into the world. As she twiddled the candles through her fingers, breathing in the scent of Marlo's fresh washed hair, her mind was lost in the questions that surrounded Billy's first eight months of life, before Sara had ever known him, held him, loved him.

He'd arrived like clockwork, not a few minutes later than the social worker had said on the phone. They'd handed him over, and that was the first time that Sara had faith in the love at first sight principle. His birth mother, that woman so nameless and yet so deserving of Sara's acknowledgements, had packed him a small travel bag of things: a hat with bunny ears, which was now nestled on Marlo's head; a pillow with his name embroidered, which the boy still treasured now; a Moby Dick picture book, which Billy could not sleep without; and a soft toy, a little grey plush alien, which had come with a note attached, bearing a small inked 'X'. Sara had framed this note above Billy's bed, and told him it was a kiss that he could see whenever he liked.

Marlo launched forward, eyes on the cake, and Sara swept her out of reach. No such bag had Marlo's birth mother left her with. Not even a date of birth; on the certificate that Sara and Jack had registered, they'd given the day that she had been found in the clinic, the day that Billy topped his fever, as Marlo's birthday. No one had loved Marlo to miss her, to call for her, to want her back, to write a note to be opened on her eighteenth birthday. Marlo was all Sara and Jack, while Billy and his plush alien came with unanswered questions.

Sara jumped: Jack stood at the doorway, leaning in gracelessly, a goofy grin spread like butter all over his face, lighting him up. "How about that cake?"

Sara gestured, "It's done. All done. Marlo was just telling me how she admires the little touch of almonds around the edges."

"I bet she was," Jack ticked his daughter's bare feet and hoisted the cake into his arms, pausing to allow Sara to light the candles with the matches they kept in a drawer.

They walked in single file, like a procession to meet a stranger, the cake and Marlo held like precious gifts, as they crossed through to the living room, where Puck the dog was keeping all of Billy's friends laughing.

"Happy birthday to you," sang Jack as they entered the room, and the parents from the mommy and baby class picked up the verse, clapping and cheering as Billy went an uncomfortable shade of red and hid behind Puck's massive bulk. Sara deposited Marlo with Blonde-haired-blue-eyed-perfect-housewife-Jenny and moved to cover her son's face with kisses. He sat amidst a layer of popped blue balloons and one of those spiteful hated friends from the mommy and baby class had tied ribbons in his red hair. Sara smoothed down his cowlick, and stared about at them, sizing up the potential threats. Jenny, who cradled Marlo as if she were a delicate vase, was quick to please, but too new to the group to partake in the teasing like the others. But the others… Sara didn't doubt they'd filled Billy's head with doubting questions about the origin of his fiery hair. As she scanned the group, she was only certain of one that she could rule out: Monica who, though reserved and cool, was the closest thing to a friend that the mommy and baby class had ever given Sara.

"Deep thoughts my love?" Jack chided from across the room, where he and Billy's friends were piling the gifts high. She laughed him down and gently pushed Bill towards the presents, and Puck baled like a moorhound when the little boy treaded his tail into the carpet.

"Monica," Sara regained her trail of thought, half watching her son and half turning to her friend. "How is the little one?"

"Oh," Monica slipped from her chair to sit beside Sara on the carpet. "He's fine. Still got the fever, but the rash has gone down. Doctor says he should be out and about in no time."

"That's good. I mean, it's strange having you here with no little one. It'll be nice to meet him."

"I'll admit," Monica smiled, "it's been awkward coming to these meetings every week without a baby. Makes me feel a bit like a fraud."

"Nonsense," Sara slapped Monica's arm gently, "it's nice having you here." In truth, Sara sought Monica's company because her story of motherhood was stranger than her own. Monica's son had been born with meningitis, he'd spent his first three months on earth in a glass incubator, like a test subject in one of Jack's horror novels. And now, when he was almost Marlo's age and Monica had dared to join mommy and baby classes, the poor pet had been struck with a fever and a rash once again. Poor thing… Sara stared over to Marlo, dreading to see her baby in the same way Monica saw her son.

"He'll be fighting fit in no time," Sara grinned, "if he's anything like you." This was mostly guesswork on Sara's part; for all Monica's reservations and quietness, she carried a collected sense of toughness with her, an inimitable impression of hardiness and intelligence that Sara couldn't quite place. What had Monica said she did? Crime writing?

"He sure will. He'd get on fantastic with William."

"Oh." Hardly anyone used Billy's full name these days. It had been tradition when he was younger, and quieter, but as he aged Sara and Jack had felt it necessary to press their own label of identification on him, their own marker of parenthood, and he had been Billy or Bill ever since. "He would. Billy's a rough playmate though."

Jack called for silence as Billy leaned in over the cake, his red side locks sweeping over his eyes as usual, and closed his eyes tight in a wish. He exhaled, and the candlelight danced before disappearing.

"What did you wish for baby?"

Billy looked up at her, smiling strangely. "It's a secret mom."

Monica laughed. "Duh, mom."

On that note, Jack turned on the stereo player and the party games began, with the entire troupe of mommy and baby goers getting involved, aside from Monica, who sat on the sidelines in silence, cradling Marlo as if it were a sad occasion. Poor dear, Sara sighed inside, the pain she must be feeling, to be almost losing her little boy.


If people like the beginning, I will post the rest. It does get better; my head was all over the place with this part :S

(Who am I kidding, I'm probably going to post the second part in about 10 minutes :P)

COOKIES FOR YOOU.

xx