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believe how alert it seemed for a baby less than a week old. It stared at her with a fixed glare, its eyes catching the illumination from the overhead light in such a way that it was as if it absorbed and fed on the brightness. Its face was flushed, so that even its lips looked pale in comparison to the rest of its complexion.
    Colleen stepped back from the doorway and looked to her right, hoping that Harlan would awaken.
    "That isn't very nice, Colleen. You don't peek into rooms and listen to other people's conversations."
    "That's not what I'm doing, Dana. I heard you and I didn't know what was wrong."
    "Nothing's wrong. Nikos is awake, so I am attending to him. You can go to sleep."
    "What's that odor? It's terrible," she added, putting her hand over her mouth and nose.
    "Probably just a skunk next to the house. I opened the window to air it out. It's dissipating."
    "Ugh," Colleen said. "Is there anything I can do?"
    "Absolutely not. There's nothing to do. Go back to sleep."
    "Okay. 'Night," Colleen said. She paused a moment, then retreated to her bedroom. She closed the door softly, grateful that the horrible aroma hadn't penetrated her room. She returned to her bed, but after she crawled under the covers and lowered her head to the pillow, she vividly relived the way the baby had been glaring at her. It looked like it was really thinking, and she knew there was no way a baby really could be thinking.
    She shuddered and tried to think of other things. She heard Dana go downstairs with Nikos, and then all was quiet once more. Sometime before dawn, she woke again to the sound of Dana returning Nikos to his room.
    She listened for a few moments, and then she fell asleep and had to be woken by her alarm, something that rarely happened. Usually she woke up just before it went off, but this morning she felt exhausted, not only from being woken a couple of times but also from the nightmares that followed. She was happy she couldn't remember them.
    Thankfully the odor was gone from the hallway. Harlan joined her in the kitchen for breakfast. He was up early because he had to go to the airport to pick up Dana's mother, but he was so bright and rested, Colleen had to ask him if he had heard Dana get up to go to the baby late at night.
    "You know, I didn't," he said as if just realizing it. "I never even heard the baby cry. Dana slipped out of that bed so softly, I never knew she went to feed him. And I never heard her come back. I guess I didn't realize how tired I was. Dead to the world. But there's nothing unusual about that," he added. "What was it Sir Philip Sidney wrote? 'Come sleep! Oh sleep, the certain knot of peace, the baiting place of wit, the—' "
    "She was up all night," Colleen said, interrupting. He stopped his recitation and looked at her. "I heard her in the guest room and spoke with her. There was this terrible odor she said must be a skunk near the house. She was airing out the room. We spoke for a while and then I went back to sleep. She went downstairs. I heard her come back upstairs just before dawn."
    "Really? Couldn't get the baby back to sleep, I guess. Well," Harlan said. "That explains why she and the baby are dead to the world. It's exhausting. I'll be glad when Jillian arrives today."
    Colleen wondered if she should mention what she had overheard Dana say about Jillian to the baby the night before, but since Dana had accused her of eavesdropping, she thought she would just forget it, even though it was hard to understand why Dana would suddenly resent her. Jillian was never interfering, and Dana was always after her mother to visit and always looked forward to visiting her.
    Were these postdelivery blues supposed to have such a dramatic effect on a woman's relationships? When would it end? Colleen could see that it was going to be a great deal harder to get along with Dana while this condition existed. She thought it was probably better for her to find ways to avoid her sister-in-law for a