I can't give you anything but love, baby, that's the only thing I've plenty of

[intheruins]

Like everything else in Darrow, it seems that raising a baby is completely different to what it had been in North Carolina.

Sent home with few disposable diapers, bottles and something that they call formula, Serena isn't at all sure where she ought to start when it comes to setting up a nursery for George. There's only one bedroom in her apartment which means their space will be shared, but Serena still wants a corner of his own, a bassinet and a mobile and a changing table to begin with.

Just getting around with a newborn proves difficult, especially after surgery. A woman in a supply store mentions something about babywearing when Serena arrives simply holding George against her chest, swaddled against the cool. Then she goes on and on about the difference between strollers and prams and Serena finds herself longing for a time when things were much less complicated.

More than anything, she finds herself longing for the antique bassinet that Pemberton had imported to the camp and Pemberton with it.

It takes far longer than it should but eventually Serena decides on a bassinet to keep by her bed and changing table - both in white. She asks for them to be delivered but leaves with a dozen smaller things in a bag. She still hasn't settled on a pram, though, and the struggle to balance a baby in one arm and her purchases in the other means she drops her shopping bag, burp cloths and clothes and pacifiers falling onto the sidewalk.

Comments

[intheruins]

"Home, technically," Serena says. It's too far to walk the whole way – to think the timber camp had once felt so big – but she doesn't want to call a cab just yet. She only has limited means and so the further they go on foot, the cheaper it will be. "But I was going to try and get a cab in a couple blocks or so. If you have the time," she says, then pauses to look between them. She'd never imagined she'd accept as much charity as she has in this city. "Well, we wouldn't mind the company."

[ghostsarereal]

"I have plenty of time," Edith assures her warmly, glad, at least, that the offer hasn't come across too strangely. It's true, anyway. Here, her time is her own, spent intermittently taking care of her apartment and visiting the library or friends and working on her writing. That isn't entirely new, but it still seems to come with a level of freedom that she's never had before, no father looking over her shoulder, no being stranded in the middle of the English countryside. "And I wouldn't mind the company myself. I'm Edith, by the way."

[intheruins]

"The pleasure's mine," Serena says, bouncing George a little in her arms. She's still getting used to motherhood, of course, but there's something new and wonderful about carrying him. The weight of him, the warmth of him. She'd wanted him for so long, longer than she'd known Pemberton. But she'd never imagined she'd have him. She never thought she'd have family again. "And I'm Serena. This is George."

[ghostsarereal]

"It's very nice to meet you both," Edith says, finding that she means it. The baby is a darling little thing, even if she still can't help the vague thoughts that cross her mind about the life she once would have had. Most conventions, she's never been particularly interested in trying to follow, but some things simply seemed to speak for themselves, too. She can't say she's sorry that her life here is so different from what she expected, but that doesn't make it any less strange to consider sometimes. "Are you from here, or somewhere else?"

[intheruins]

"I'm from North Carolina," Serena answers. Technically, she's from Colorado but she's come to learn that here most people want to know the last place a person lived or simply was. That and the time. It's strange how few people flinch when she says 1929, but no stranger than the fact she's here at all. "George was born here, though. What about you?"

[ghostsarereal]

"I was born in New York," Edith answers, pleased that Serena's response is somewhere she knows of, though she's never been herself. When there are those who come from different worlds, places the likes of which she could barely imagine, anything the least bit familiar, some sort of common ground, is welcome. "Buffalo. I'd moved to England very shortly before I found myself here, though."

[intheruins]

"I've been to New York once or twice," Serena says. She's more familiar with Boston but it's still comforting to meet someone from a place that she knows the name of. Here, it hasn't happened very often. She might not know every dot on every map but she certainly hasn't ever heard of any Darrow and it still sounds strange in her mouth. "Never Buffalo. And never England. I didn't get to travel beyond the United States but now that we're here, well. I'll have to stop wishing myself away."

[ghostsarereal]

"It was the first time I'd ever been," Edith offers, not adding that she'd been so trapped there, that she almost died there. Something about that had made it all the more difficult, knowing that it would be happening so far from what she still considered home. Home is still Buffalo, the golden light filtering into her family's house, her father in his study grumbling away about something or other. She doesn't think anything could change that, no matter how long gone and out of reach that life is now. A marriage certainly couldn't. "And I'd never left Buffalo before then. It was.... quite a change. Almost as much as showing up here was."