CHAPTER 7Laurel
They didn’t go on the picnic that afternoon. Laurel returned home at one-thirty to find Jessie at the kitchen table, eating the peanut butter sandwich Laurel had left, unfinished, on the counter that morning. Sarah sat beside her, giving Emma a bottle. Laurel felt a surge of irritation. Maybe Sarah was like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, never losing her patience or raising her voice. But nursing was Laurel’s job. It was the one thing she felt she couldn’t mess up, the one time she was free of the nagging sense that motherhood was a role she just wasn’t cut out for.
Sarah looked up apologetically. “She wouldn’t settle,” she said. “And I couldn’t stand to hear her cry. But she just started. Do you want to . . . ?”
Laurel shook her head with a sigh. “It’s
