My Grandson…

Daniel gave me that familiar half-grin he used when he wanted me to smooth things over for him, the one he had been using since he was eight and forgot to feed the dog.

“Mom, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re good with him. He’ll settle down with you.”

I glanced between them. Brooke would not meet my eyes. Daniel would not stop checking his phone.

Then Brooke leaned down, touching the blanket near Noah’s chest.

“Don’t take off his sleeper unless you really have to,” she said too quickly. “He finally got comfortable in this.”

The knot in my stomach tightened.

“It’s almost seventy-five degrees out,” I said. “He’s layered like it’s December.”

“He gets cold,” Brooke snapped.

Daniel sighed. “Mom, really?”

I almost said it then. Something is wrong. I can feel it.

But I didn’t. I let years of motherhood and peacekeeping push the words back down.

“All right,” I said quietly. “Go.”

Brooke exhaled, relieved. Daniel kissed Noah’s forehead. Then they were back in the car and out of my driveway in less than fifteen seconds.

I stood there on my front walk, my grandson screaming in my arms while the smell of cinnamon drifted from the kitchen and their taillights disappeared at the end of the street.

That was the last ordinary moment of my life.

I carried Noah inside and took him straight to the rocker by the window.

“Okay, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Let’s figure this out.”

For the next twenty minutes, I tried everything I knew.

I loosened the blanket. I rocked him upright against my chest. I checked the bottle Brooke had packed and warmed it by a few degrees. I touched it to his lips, but he turned away crying. I rubbed slow circles on his back. I held him in the football position the pediatric nurse had shown Brooke at the baby shower brunch when everyone still believed motherhood would make her softer. I gave him the pacifier from the diaper bag. He spat it out and shrieked.

His whole little face had gone crimson. Tiny beads of sweat gathered at his hairline.

“Gas drops,” I muttered, digging through the bag. “Where are the gas drops?”

I found them in a side pocket and read the instructions twice even though I had used plenty of baby medicine in my life. My hands were steady then. By the time I tried to give him a dose, they were not.

Because when I lifted his legs slightly to slide the medicine dropper past his lips, he screamed in a way that made me stop cold.

Not just crying.

Pain.

The sound went through me like a blade.

I lowered his legs immediately and stared at him.

“Okay,” I said aloud, though I was the one who needed calming. “No. No, this isn’t colic.”

I carried him to the downstairs bathroom where I had laid out a changing pad.

My heart had begun to beat too fast, the way it used to when the school nurse called me at work and said one of the kids had split his chin on the playground. But this was worse. Much worse. Because I already knew, before I opened a single snap on his sleeper, that whatever I found was going to be bad.

I laid him down as gently as I could. His little fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles looked white.

“Grandma’s here,” I said. “Grandma’s here.”

I unsnapped the sleeper.