by C. D. Reiss
“On my honor, dude.”
I nearly laughed out loud.
Nicole’s voice came from the kitchen as she ran into the billiards room.
“Daddy!” She said the word like a demand, both feet planted. She had an open blue Sharpie in one hand as if she’d been in the middle of drawing.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Miss Blakely says we got invited to Sam and Bonnie’s?”
It took me a second to remember Sam and Bonnie were two of Mike and Laine’s kids.
“If she says so.”
“I want to wear the suit with the flower right here.” She pointed to her neck, getting a blue dot on her chin. Arnie laughed and bent over the table. I put the pool cue down.
“Can I have that?” I held my hand out for the marker. She twisted her whole body to keep it away from me. “Nicole. Sharpie doesn’t come out. Give it to me.”
She pursed her lips and held her chin out like a weapon. Did she get that stubborn pride from my side or Brenda’s? I’d never know.
“Do you need help?” Blakely asked from the doorway, reaching for the marker. “If you take it, the waa-mbulance is going to pull up.”
I held my hand out to stop her. “I got it.” Flipping my hand around, I put it out to my daughter. “The pen. If you want to wear the bathing suit with the flower right here.” I poked where she’d left the blue dot. She softened a little, but not much.
“Miss Cara and Miss Blakely hid it.”
Blakely cut in. “It’s a size eight. It looks like a shopping bag on her.”
“I grew!” she shot back at her nanny before turning to me and holding her hand up as far as it would go, the Sharpie wedged between thumb and forefinger. “I’m so big. So so big.”
Behind me, I heard clacking balls and the hollow sound of one of them sinking. I lost interest in nine-ball and Arnie. I just wanted to see how big that suit was.
“Okay, big girl. Give me the marker and let’s go take a look at the suit.”
“Pinkie promise I can wear it.”
I held my pinkie out and Nicole hooked hers over mine. How bad could it be?
She passed me the marker and I gave it to Blakely.
“Nice work negotiating the hostage, sir,” she said, snapping the cap on.
I winked at her and took Nicole to her room. I went to her dresser, but Cara and Blakely were lousy at hiding things, because Nicole knew exactly where the bathing suit was. She scrambled under her bed and pulled out a blue zip-up bag with a handle.
“It’s in here.” Pulling the zipper around the top, she opened the flap. I recognized all the things my parents had bought before they met her and figured out her size. Too big. Too small. Wrong color. Wrong cartoon.
Kneeling next to the bag, she stuck one hand deep into it, wiggled, and came up with a pink, white, and blue one-piece with a poufy three-dimensional flower at the neck.
“This one. See the flower? I want this one. It’s not too big.”
I held it up.
“It’s fu—” I caught myself. “It’s huge.”
“It is not.” She snapped it away and stood so she could put it up against herself. The leg holes were halfway down to her knees. I took a closer look at it. It hadn’t been in the stuff my parents bought. I’d remember.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“Mom bought it for me on sale. She said I could wear it.”
Nicole hadn’t come with much. A plastic bag with Pony Pie and some clothes. I’d never inventoried what was in the bag, but at that point, I would have let her wear a size-eleven men’s shoe if it came out of that bag. It had been all she had, and I wasn’t going to deny her a single item.
“Well, if your mom thinks it’s all right, I guess we’ll figure it out.”
She clapped and jumped up and down, then flung herself around me, squeezing for all it was worth.
“Mommy said I had a nice daddy! She said it and she knew it and I knew it!”
“Oh, she did?” I sat on the bed, ready to hear more.
“She did!” She put her hands on my cheeks and pressed in. “She said you were nice.”
The worst word in the English language. I didn’t remember if Brenda was subtle enough to know that nice could be a compliment or an insult. I didn’t remember anything about her besides her smile.
“What else did she say about Daddy?”
“You lived far away and you were the handsomest.”
Harmless little lies. Right? But inside them, I wondered if Brenda thought I was unfit to raise Nicole, and wanted nothing to do with me because I wasn’t stable enough. She would have been right. She’d been right about a lot and still, I didn’t know her.
I could have said a few dozen things Nicole wasn’t ready to hear. That a lot had changed since I’d been with her mother. That I might have come for her, eventually. That I was actually not nice. Not nice at all, but I could be if I tried.
“I’m glad I met you,” I said. I meant it. I was glad I could be there for her. I wouldn’t be half the parent her mother was, but at least I could buy her bathing suits that fit even if she didn’t wear them. That had to be worth something.
“You too, Daddy. Can we try it on? The suit! Let’s try it on!”
She ran to the bathroom to try on the huge bathing suit her mother promised she could wear.
CHAPTER 24
CARA
“We had a pool,” Nicole had said to the lifeguard. “In number thirty-four!” Thirty-four was apparently her old apartment number. She wore a pink, white, and blue one-piece halter with a flower applique at the neck. She and her father insisted it fit. It didn’t. Blakely and I jury-rigged an elastic belt from another suit, a few safety pins, and tight swim shorts into something weird but functional.
“My mom taught me. Watch!” She jumped in, wiggled underwater while I held my breath, and popped up, doggie-paddling her way to the edge. The lifeguard gave me the thumbs-up, but I stayed in the water to watch anyway.
Blakely and I were at the Greydons on a playdate.
“Her mother was really on top of it,” Blakely said.
“Yeah. Like Superwoman. Did you know she took her to work?”
“At Coffee Chain?”
“She’d stay in the cabinets if her mom couldn’t get her a sitter. Honestly, her mother must have thought Brad was the worst of the worst. Which is totally unfair, if you ask me. He’s all right.”
Blakely peeled her socks off and put her feet in the pool. Behind her, Michael and Laine Greydon sat at the patio table with another couple.
“Not for nothing.” Blakely stretched her legs. “You’re falling in love.”
“She’s a nice kid is all.” I backed away from the kids to let them have fun. “She asks the most wonderful questions and—”
“I’m not talking about the kid,” Blakely said softly. “That was expected. You’re powerless against children. It’s Brad Sinclair.”
Being in the same house with that man was getting difficult. He constantly did an end run around Paula to sit with Nicole and me. He had a way of moving that made me think of sex. His good-old-boy routine hinted at a set of core values I could relate to, even if he didn’t live those values, I could almost, sometimes, in slivers of moments . . . kind of . . . see it.
Unless I was making it up in my head.
“He’s attractive.” I didn’t look at her. She’d know I was lying. “Any woman in America will tell you that.”
My denials felt hollow. If I couldn’t convince myself I wasn’t attracted to my boss, I wasn’t going to convince Blakely. Once she heard about the shower (Oh my God, that is so tacky) or undressing him while he asked me how I liked to fuck (Oh my God, that is so hot), I went for broke and told her about the dreams and morning fantasies (Oh my God, you’ve got it bad), and she decided something was going to happen between us no matter how much I denied it.
“Just don’t end up on the cover of a tabloid.” She kicked a little spray of water. “No
t for screwing your boss. It’s awful. Really awful.”
“I’m a professional,” I said, catching myself too late. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you aren’t.”
“No, you are. I’m not. I sat in the limo last night thinking. I want to be an actress. I got sucked into this world because the money’s good. But I can’t do this anymore.”
I got up on the step.
“What do you mean?”
“I think I have to quit.”
I don’t know why I was surprised. Maybe it was the time and place, or the fact that she was telling me and not Paula. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t reacting to getting a part, or a callback, or even a meeting.
“Are you sure?”
“No-yes-no?” She cringed as if she thought I’d be mad. “I know you went out of your way to get me this gig and I appreciate it. But I saved up enough to get some stuff done. Just enough so I look different. Now I have to go do it.”
“This plan you have? It’s nuts. Totally crazy.”
“I’m in a crazy situation.”
“You’re disfiguring yourself.”
“Cara. Don’t be that way. Haven’t you ever wanted anything so bad you’d do anything to get it? Ever?”
“You should leave your lips alone. You have great lips. I’d kill for them.”
“Fine. No lips.”
I had the sneaking feeling of being left behind. I was about to become what my friend Blakely “used to be” before she “realized she wanted more out of life.”
Was it wrong that this was all I wanted? Taking care of children was fun. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Nicole and her father, even if he was the most slippery slope I’d ever tried to climb.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I need change. A lot of it.”
“Don’t be.” I sat on the ledge next to her. “I’m a big girl.”
I couldn’t be angry. Not outwardly. I couldn’t blame her or demand more than she could give.
“When are you going to tell Paula?” I asked.
“When I’m sure. Who even knows what she’ll do.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“If she calls Nicole a bombshell one more time, I’m going to break her face.”
“Blakely, now . . .” I cautioned her but kind of agreed.
“In a nice way.”
“Miss Cara! Miss Blakely! Watch!”
Nicole was perched on the side of the pool. She bent her knees and dove in hands first. I clapped loudly for her.
That little girl made it all worthwhile. I didn’t know if I could leave her. Not if Blakely was going. And I didn’t know if I could stay.
CHAPTER 25
CARA
We pulled up Brad’s private street in the hills. The cars blocking the way irritated me more than they should have, and the music coming from the back may have seemed louder and more abrasive than it would have if Blakely hadn’t just told me she was leaving.
“Paula said party,” I said. “But this is nuts.”
“It’s nothing. Come on. You’ve seen this before.”
I had. A million times. What surprised me was my own disappointment. I’d thought, based on small gestures and efforts, that he was trying. Obviously, I was wrong.
A security guy approached my open window.
“Can I see your ID?” he asked. I was ready to be annoyed, and his demand just did it.
“How do you work for Brad Sinclair and not know who we are?”
Blakely leaned over me. “Ignore her. Here’s my license. And this is Nicole Sinclair in the back.” She turned to the backseat. “Say ‘hi,’ Nicole.”
Nicole held up Pony Pie and waved her. “Hi!”
A Maserati pulled up close behind me, but the guard wasn’t moving. He looked at Blakely’s license, then her. He flipped through his clipboard while she tried to hold back a smirk.
“Hang on.” He went to the booth.
“It’s the hair,” she said.
“Maybe you don’t need plastic surgery.”
“Or it’ll just make it so much easier.”
The security guard checked Nicole against a photo on a different clipboard, then me and Blakely before he let us in.
Deep breath.
I breathed deeply getting out of the car, getting my bag out, locking the door. It wasn’t helping. I didn’t know why I was so wound up.
“I’ll take Nicole in,” Blakely said, hoisting the girl’s swimming bag. “Then I have an audition. I’m staying out tonight.”
“All right. I’ll meet you.”
I went in the side entrance, all pretense of calm shattered completely by the sound of grunting behind the hedge separating the parking spaces from the service entrance.
“Bitch! Let go!”
I ran around the hedge.
Two people. One female in a silver matte skirt and burgundy hair. One male in skinny jeans and tight white T-shirt. Both involved in an epic battle to the death.
The woman, who I realized was a young girl as I ran down the service drive, had the guy’s hair in a death grip. She growled as if the only part of her brain that was functioning was way in the back of her head, where the lizards lived.
I got between them. She let go, but only after twisting her body around so hard he landed against the wall. He had four long scratches on his cheek.
“She’s fucking crazy!” he shouted.
I turned to the girl.
“Willow?”
She was underage. I knew that for a fact. Not to mention out of breath. Red-faced. Lipstick-smeared.
“Miss Cara?”
“Button your shirt.”
I spun on the guy. He pulled a clump of bloody hair out of his scalp.
“There is no way you mistook this person for eighteen.”
“I mistook her for female. Fuck. Look what she did!”
I took out my phone. “You’re right. We’ll let the cops sort it out.”
He ran like his ass was on fire. When I turned back, Willow had buttoned her shirt. I took her chin in my hand.
“Look at me.” She did, and through tears I saw bowling-ball pupils. “What did you take?”
“Just a little ex?”
“The fact that you think you can tell the difference between a little and a lot speaks volumes.” I let her chin go.
“Don’t tell Daddy,” she sobbed.
“It’s five o’clock. Who’s supposed to be watching you?”
“I’m in middle school. I don’t need anyone watching me.”
I’d spent most of my career watching much smaller children, but I knew all about teen faux-logic.
“I can’t even begin to answer that. Come with me.”
“I don’t have to.”
She was making a last-ditch effort to maintain her autonomy and stay out of trouble. Fortunately for her I wasn’t impressed with how she handled either. I picked up the silver clutch that had fallen against the wall. Opened it. Checked for the phone and snapped it closed. No self-respecting LA teen was going anywhere without their phone.
“Willow,” I said. “You’re a smart and funny girl with a bright future. That guy needs to be in jail. He was in the wrong. But this is a grown-up party, and you don’t belong here.”
I walked toward the front, knowing she’d follow. But she didn’t. Not right away. She called out from behind me.
“You left us!” she cried.
I didn’t turn around, but I stopped.
“One minute you were there and the next Dad had this old lady cooking and Kendall’s trying to buddy up to me and share fucking makeup tips.” She ran up to me and got in front where I could see the veins of mascara down her cheeks. “What about our Wednesday lunch? Have you thought about that once? Huh? Because I’ve thought about it for three Wednesdays and you didn’t even call me.”
“This is the drugs talking.”
“Oh, bullshit. You are such a bullshit liar.”
I had to take a deep breath. I was the adult, and I wouldn’t
be baited.
“It would be inappropriate for me to make plans with you. I’m sorry about that. But I miss you too, Willow. Ever since I was fired I’ve missed you guys.”
The muscles in her face went slack, and her jaw dropped enough to leave her lips parted.
“Fired?”
“You thought I quit?”
She looked away, staring into the middle distance, as if watching the movie of the past few weeks on the big screen in her head.
“They said you left.”
“It doesn’t matter. Come with me.”
She came, suddenly a kid again, docile, obedient, and overdressed.
I found a security guard. He hurried over to me. I plastered a smile on my face and gave him Willow’s bag. “Can you make sure this young lady gets home?”
Willow didn’t say a word to me as she was led away. Good chance her driver was waiting at the bottom of the hill. She’d get home fine. I was going to have to call Ray and tell him what happened. I dreaded it. I dreaded talking to him and getting Willow in trouble. But she was still a child. She didn’t have any rights yet, and thank God for that. She wasn’t ready for them.
Now to deal with the other adolescent in my life. This one had his own house and a new daughter, and he was my boss.
CHAPTER 26
BRAD
“I don’t want anyone in this part of the house. Off-limits. If I find anyone but my daughter or her nannies back here . . .” Paula and the security guard waited for me to finish. I’d gotten the biggest, scariest-looking one to stand at the hall to Nicole’s room.
“You got it,” he said. “No problem.”
People had started arriving. Music had started playing, and I had a feeling I was going to regret this.
“The bombshell and the nannies are on their way back,” Paula said when we got to the kitchen. It was bare. One drawing stuck to the fridge. Me, Nicole, and Cara. Blakely was a little to the side. Nicole had written all the names on the top. I was so happy she could write them I nearly had the thing framed.
“Who’s on tonight?” I knew Cara was on because I counted the days, but sometimes they switched.
“The dark-haired one. It’ll be fine. Don’t you worry your head about it. I have it all under control.”
