Billionaire Neighbor

by Lulu Pratt

  “We’ll get through it,” I tell her. It’s the same thing I used to tell my wife, and I know it doesn’t help. How could it? But it’s the only thing I can say.

  “We have to, you’re right about that,” Lara says. We finish up the call and then it’s time for me to get Riley up to have lunch, and I know that I’m committed. No matter how much of a shit show Thanksgiving turns out to be, I’ve backed the horse I’ve backed and for Riley’s sake I have to keep my mind on the goal.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  LARA

  I check on the turkey in the oven yet again and try not to let the pounding of my heart send me into a blind panic. In a matter of less than an hour, Ethan, Riley and his parents will be at my father’s house, and we’ll have our first Thanksgiving dinner together as a whole family.

  When Ethan and I had planned this little scheme together I’d known that it was going to be tense. I’d known there was a risk that I would have to really and truly follow through on my threat to cut my father out of my life, and Riley’s, if I couldn’t persuade him to give up the suit. We can’t talk about the situation over dinner itself, so I know I need to take advantage of the last little bit of time before everyone arrives to sit down with my father and make one last plea to him.

  Since I’d missed one big family Thanksgiving, I’d already gotten kind of a handle on doing Thanksgiving dinners on my own. For this year, with everything at stake, I’d taken a few short cuts, ordering pies and a few side dishes from a catering company I know makes them well, while focusing on the turkey and stuffing and cranberries and a couple of odds and ends of my own. I’d spent the last couple of days prepping things at my apartment, while watching Riley, and now all I have to do is make sure the turkey comes out the right way, and the stuffing gets cooked through.

  I make sure the turkey is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and then find my father, seated in the living room. He’s been looking sulky and discontented ever since I arrived the night before, but he manages to give me a smile.

  “If you want I can cut into one of those pumpkin pies for you,” I say, sitting down on the other end of the couch from him.

  “I think I’ll hold off a bit,” Dad says, shifting in his seat and taking a sip of his coffee. The Parade is on, and he’s watching it, but I’ve never seen him looking quite as lonely as he does right now. I have a moment where it hits me again just how desolate my father’s life has gotten since my mother died and then my sister. Apart from me and Riley, who does he really have? A couple of friends he talks to, and my mother’s sister, who’s busy with my cousins’ lives.

  “It’s going to be good to have everyone together, and do this for Riley,” I say, keeping my voice as light as possible. If I can keep a fight from happening before Ethan, his parents and Riley get here, I want to make sure to do just that.

  “I don’t want to see Ethan or his parents,” Dad says sullenly.

  “But you want to see me and Riley, right?” I raise an eyebrow and Dad nods.

  “If that’s the only way I get to have my family around me for Thanksgiving, I’ll do it,” he says.

  “Dad, I want to talk to you, before anyone gets here,” I say. I take a deep breath, my heart’s started pounding in my chest again. I don’t know, for about two seconds, if I can really go through with this.

  “I figured you would,” Dad says. He gives me a slightly chilly smile and sets down his coffee.

  “I need you to withdraw the case against Ethan,” I say firmly. I keep my face as neutral as possible, and hold my dad’s gaze as I tell him.

  “I’m not going to do that, sweetie. He doesn’t deserve to be a father to Riley after everything he’s done. If it weren’t for him, Riley wouldn’t be getting shuffled between the two of you and Alexis would still be alive,” he says.

  I count to three in my mind, controlling my initial reaction as best as I can.

  “If it weren’t for him, Riley wouldn’t even exist,” I counter.

  “He did one good thing in a slew of terrible ones. That doesn’t give him a pass,” Dad says sullenly.

  “He’s Riley’s father, and he loves her. Would you have just sat by while someone tried to take me or Alexis away from you when we were kids?” I raise my eyebrows, giving my father a long, significant look.

  “Of course not, but I didn’t rip apart a family to start my own,” Dad insists.

  “Ethan’s goal wasn’t to rip a family apart, and if you’re going to blame him for that you need to blame Alexis just as much,” I point out.

  “What?” Dad stares at me in shock.

  “Alexis wasn’t some puppet. She made a choice. Just as much as Ethan made a choice,” I say. I don’t dare mention the one-night stand. Perhaps my dad knows or guessed, perhaps he doesn’t, but it is certainly not my place to say anything about the parents of his granddaughter.

  “Choices that destroyed lives,” Dad says.

  “The point stands that she could have told him no, and pushed him out of her life out of loyalty to me, and she chose not to. She ripped this family apart just as much as Ethan did. And she’s dead now, so what does that even matter at this point? The person who’s pulling what remains of this family to shreds is you.”

  “I’m trying to re-consolidate my own family,” Dad says to me. I shake my head.

  “I need to make something really, completely clear to you, Dad,” I tell him. I am suddenly aware that I have become the parent and he is the one behaving like a child. I take another quick, deep breath. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I’m pretty sure that it’s Ethan letting me know he’s on his way from his parents’ house.

  “What’s that, Lara?” I hold my father’s gaze for a long moment, gathering my courage. No matter what I told Ethan the other day when we finally and firmly committed to this course of action, I’ve been having my own doubts too. My own cold feet. But we have to do this, and I know it.

  “If you keep this suit up, then I’m going to testify in a way that will guarantee that you can’t have custody of Riley,” I tell him.

  “Why would you do that?”

  I press my lips together and swallow against the tight feeling in my throat before I speak.

  “I can’t let you use Riley as a pawn to get back at Ethan. If you insist on making this a battle, you and Ethan’s parents are going to both be fighting against Ethan and me. I will tell the court the truth. That you’re emotionally unstable, that you’re only doing this for revenge, and that Riley would be better off in a foster care placement than she would be with you,” I say, slowly and quietly.

  “You’d put her in foster care?”

  I shake my head.

  “I have no intention of her ever going to foster care, but I am not going to let you take her away from her father just because you’re lonely and grief-stricken and guilty and bitter,” I tell my father. “If I have to, I’ll make sure that you can’t get any access to her at all, on pain of going to jail, rather than let you harm her like that.” I stand up and go back into the kitchen.

  Sure enough, Ethan is on his way.

  We should be there in about fifteen. Batten down the hatches.

  I smile to myself weakly, the worst part, I hope, of the day should be behind me. The rest of the day the court cases are off the table as conversation topics. Hopefully both my dad and Ethan’s parents take that seriously.

  We’ll be ready for you!

  I check on the turkey again and remind myself to breathe.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ETHAN

  Before I leave my parents’ house with Riley in tow to go to Nathan’s for Thanksgiving dinner, I know I have to talk to my mom and dad and make sure everyone’s on the same page. I have to wonder if Lara’s doing the same thing with Nathan, right now, as I’m doing it. Riley’s in another room, getting the last few minutes of play in before we have to leave.

  “Mom, Dad, I want to talk to you for a few minutes before we leave for Nathan’s house,” I say.

>   “What’s on your mind?” Dad asks. I sit down across from my parents at the kitchen table, and try to think of how to phrase what I know I need to say without making things overly dramatic right before we need to leave.

  “I want to talk about the court stuff going on before we go over there, because once we’re there Lara and I both agreed there’s going to be no discussion of it at all, especially in front of Riley,” I tell them.

  “That seems fair,” Mom says.

  I take a quick, deep breath. “Both Lara and I want you to drop your case against Nathan and Lara,” I tell them.

  “I can see why Lara would want that, but are you sure that it’s the best thing for you?” Dad says, looking at Mom. Dad crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me, and I get that same feeling I used to have when he would ask me about what I thought my future was going to look like when I was in high school.

  “Ethan, we’re looking out for you, that’s all. And for Riley too,” Mom adds.

  “Lara and I both want to do what Alexis asked of us. We’re working together on this, and we’re going to raise Riley together,” I say firmly.

  “It just seems suspicious to us that the girl who cut her own sister out of her life now apparently wants to co-parent with you,” Mom points out.

  “Lara’s got every reason to still be pissed at you,” my dad says looking at me and then my mom. “How do you know she’s not just keeping you thinking you’re on the same side while waiting for her father to get custody for her?”

  Dad raises an eyebrow as he asks me the question and I have to wonder just how long it’s going to take for all of us to learn to trust again, and how much of this whole mess is my fault, at least as an origin point. I can’t take the blame for everything, but if I had never taken up with Alexis, none of us would be here right now, including Riley.

  “She and I have worked things out about the situation with Alexis, and we’ve agreed on what we’re going to do and how we want to do it,” I say.

  “Oh, you have?” Mom looks at me doubtfully.

  “We have. And we’ve both agreed that if you two and Nathan won’t drop your cases, we’re going to make it as hard as possible for you to get what you want from the courts,” I tell them.

  “How on earth are you going to do that?” Dad looks at me with a little bit of surprise on his face.

  “The courts are obviously going to have us testify during the process, and Lara and I both agreed that we’re going to use that opportunity to block you, if we absolutely have to, you two and Nathan, all of you.” I sit there in silence for a moment, letting them absorb what I’ve said.

  “You’d really do that? How do you know Lara’s going to follow through on her end?” Dad looks more shaken by what I’ve said than Mom does, but she’s definitely getting to the point faster.

  “I know because I trust her, and because we’ve worked this out between the two of us,” I say. There are other details that Lara and I have talked about since Riley’s birthday and since we got the news about her dad’s suit and my parents’ counter-action, but I’m not about to reveal our joint hand to my parents. It’s important though, like Lara said a few days ago, to give them the chance to back down on their own.

  “We just want to look out for you, and for Riley,” Dad says.

  I shrug off his comment. “I get that, I really do. But you’re not actually doing that. What you’re doing is taking Nathan’s bait and excluding me, and Riley, from what you’re trying to do for our sake. And before you bring it up again, Mom, Lara had no part in what Nathan is doing. She’s made her peace with me, and she’s here for Riley. She wants what’s best for Riley, and so do I. If the two of you won’t drop the case against Lara and Nathan, then you’re not interested in what’s best for my daughter, and I have to come out against you. It’s that simple.”

  My parents don’t have much to say to that, and anyway it’s nearly time to leave for Nathan’s house. I know things are going to be tense, and I want Lara to have at least a little bit of time to get herself composed and under control before we get there. I send her a text letting her know we should be there soon.

  She messages back that she’s as ready as she’ll ever be, and once again, even if it’s not quite in the same way, she reminds me a bit of Alexis. I’m not really sure how to feel about the way that I’m getting over losing the mother of my child. I feel like I should be destroyed for years to come. I feel like if I were a good person, I wouldn’t even be able to notice another woman, much less my sister-in-law, for at least a good year or two.

  But I know I can’t help what I’m feeling. And even if it’s just that Lara is familiar, and comforting, and that I know her and know I can trust her, that’s why I feel that way. I know I feel better working with her, talking to her about Riley, even having dinner with the three of us at the table, than in any other situation my life puts me in. It’s not the same as having Alexis in my life still, it’s something different.

  But it’s something that I know I need, that I know is good for me, my daughter and for Lara, and I’m not going to let Riley’s grandparents, any of them, take that away from us. We just have to make sure that if we do end up having to go to court, we go in to win.

  Before I know it, I’m in the car headed to Nathan’s house, and Riley is chattering to my mom, and Dad is sitting next to me in the passenger seat looking annoyed but keeping his temper. I sure as hell hope that Lara is ready for what Thanksgiving is going to be like, because I’m not sure any of us really can be. I know we just have to get through it. The court dates are ahead of us all if we don’t manage to bring everyone together, and the first one is just a little bit before Christmas. We have to pull this off, one way or another.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  LARA

  I answer the door when Ethan and his parents knock, and I say a little half-conscious prayer to myself that everything will manage in the end to come out all right. It’s not even addressed to anyone, apart from maybe my dead sister. Please just let us all get through this without someone losing a limb or an eye.

  Right away the tension in the living room is so much higher than I would have even imagined possible. Ethan’s parents take their seats and Ethan and I are on the couch between them, while Riley runs around, wanting to get moving after sitting in the car for about fifteen minutes. But in a matter of minutes, as my dad and Ethan’s dad exchange bland small talk, Riley starts to notice, already, that something is wrong.

  At first, she’s just going from person to person, asking them to pick her up, and then squirming and wriggling in discomfort once she’s on someone’s lap. This happens one after the other to all of us, even Ethan, as Riley tries to figure out, in her smartest two-year-old thoughts, what the hell is happening. I can see her trying to piece it together but there’s nothing I can do, at least for now.

  I get up and get the turkey out of the oven, and keep an ear open for the conversation in the living room. Ethan’s parents brought some corn casserole and some sweet potatoes to add to the big feast, already way bigger than all of us can even think to consume, spread on the table. Once the turkey joins everything else, I try to imagine what it’s going to be like divvying up leftovers. It’s going to be ridiculous. But I can’t stay too long in the kitchen or dining room. I know that with tension like what’s going on between my dad and Ethan’s parents, if I’m gone long enough something is bound to come up. Besides, I can hear Riley beginning to whine in the way she does when she’s tired and confused.

  “We just have to wait for dinner to cool off and then we can all eat,” I say, coming into the room. I scoop up Riley and suggest that she might want to play with some of my old dolls. I hate to leave Ethan alone to make sure that my dad and his parents don’t start arguing, but the need to keep moving is too strong.

  We go into my room and I find one of the few remaining boxes of my old toys. Most of them were given away when I’d grown out of them, and I find a couple of dolls for Riley to play w
ith while she’s waiting for the rest of us to get dinner served. I come back into the living room as quickly as I can, and I can feel the tension has ratcheted up. For the moment, at least, both my dad and Ethan’s are still talking about the game, or the dog show on later, or things like that. We may be able to get through this whole ordeal without things getting too serious.

  “Josie, would you help me out with the last few details on the table?” I cock my head to the side to give Ethan’s mom a little look. I know she’s not all that fond of me since the situation with my dad has been developing, but when Ethan and I dated, she liked me well enough. I can only hope that eventually she remembers what kind of woman I actually am.

  “Sure thing, Lara,” she says, and I know she’s probably less than thrilled to help me, but it at least gets her out of the room. I’m pretty sure that Ethan can handle just his dad and mine for a few minutes while I finish setting things up with his mom.

  “I appreciate that you were willing to come to Dad’s house for Thanksgiving, for Riley’s sake,” I say as I get the last of the place settings down on the table and start pouring water into glasses. Riley’s in her high chair, playing with the dolls I got for her, almost oblivious to what’s going on, but I can almost see the tension in her shoulders, in her jaw, like she’s waiting for something to change.

  “We wanted to be with our granddaughter on the holiday, and this seemed like the easiest way,” Josie says.

  “I’m glad that we can all be here, be around Riley, on a day like this,” I tell her. It’s stilted and awkward, but it’s what I can manage at a moment like this.

  Finally, I call the others into the dining room. I figured that any discussion over who would carve the turkey would just be an opening to a fight, so I have the meat fork and the carving knife in my hands before anyone can even make a claim.