We stepped back and closed the door, and I gave her a little kiss on the forehead. “Come on. Let’s go see what Afi made for dinner.”
In the kitchen, Neil stood at the island, cutting chicken into cautiously tiny pieces while Mom and Tony set hot serving dishes on the table. Mom turned as we entered and came to claim Olivia, but I warded her off with a warning hand. “Teething.”
“Oh, never mind, then.” Mom let Olivia cling to me like a little barnacle and went to set up the high chair. I managed to coax Olivia into it and took the seat beside her.
Neil sat on the other side and pushed the small plastic plate he’d prepared in front of her. “Here, my darling. Don’t you look worn out?”
“She’s probably a little sleep drunk from the car, too,” I pointed out. She seemed to wait for the last ten minutes of a car ride to actually sleep then woke up cranky. Then, I glanced at my mom’s left hand. Still just an engagement ring. “Hey, you didn’t do anything stupid, like elope in Vegas, did you?”
“Of course not, Sophie Ann!” Mom reacted like I’d asked if she’d assassinated a president while she was in Vegas. “You know we’re getting married here.”
“Whatever would make you say something like that?” Neil asked with a laugh.
Since I couldn’t tell him about what Valerie had said, I just shrugged. “People do it.” As Olivia dove her fist into her risotto, I changed the subject. “I told Valerie about Christmas, by the way.”
“What about Christmas?” Mom asked.
“Sophie would like to have Christmas at Langhurst Court, this year.” Neil said, reaching for a helping of chicken. “It’s my house in Somerset.”
“Oh, Haunted Hogwarts?” Tony said, then looked immediately mortified.
“That’s what Sophie calls it,” Mom explained to Neil.
He nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I am familiar. I prefer Deadton Abbey.”
“We thought we could invite everyone. I mean, we can fly the family over if they want to come—” I began, and Mom’s eyes went wide.
“Are you kidding? Honey, do you think Grandma and Aunt Marie are going to want to haul themselves all the way to England at the busiest time of the year?” Mom asked, as though I’d put everyone out just by asking. “And what about the family who won’t want to come, or can’t come?”
“It was just an idea.” I looked down at my plate and cleared my throat. “I just wanted to do something nice.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t nice,” she said quickly. “Tony, I bet your ma would love a free trip to England.”
She slightly stressed the “free”. I knew Mom thought Tony’s mother was a penny-pincher of the most obnoxious sort. I’d heard all about her giant coupon folder and the numerous arguments with department store clerks.
Tony just nodded mildly. “If she’s invited. And her docs clear her.”
“Of course she’s invited,” Neil said easily. “You’re family, now, Tony.”
Olivia’s crankiness required speed on Neil’s and my part. We hurried through eating and excused ourselves.
“Sorry, I don’t want to be rude, Mom, but she’s on the cusp of a meltdown.” I pushed my chair back and grabbed up some dishes.
“Leave those. I’ll take care of them,” she said. “Get that little one to bed.”
Neil took Olivia, and we headed out of the kitchen, toward the nursery. I stopped him. “Wait a second. Mariposa isn’t back, yet, and Olivia is going to be up and down all night. Why don’t we just bring her to bed with us?”
“You said sleeping with her in our bed was like sleeping with a bulldozer made out of lava,” he reminded me.
He wasn’t wrong. Olivia pushed us around the bed like a tank and put off more heat than the sun. But she was miserable, and she’d been gone for a long time. “She needs the cuddles.”
Neil pretended to consider. “I could stand some cuddling.”
“We can bring the playpen in, if she gets too impossible to sleep with,” I suggested. “Why don’t I grab that, and you can carry her Pull-Ups and PJs.”
“Potty,” Olivia reminded us somberly. She wasn’t fully toilet trained, yet, but she did like to use the potty before bed, just to get in the habit. When we reached the nursery, Neil took her to the bathroom and patiently helped her get situated on the little green frog potty. I got the playpen from the closet and a thin summer nightgown from her dresser, plus a couple of Pull-Ups.
When I heard Neil exclaim, “Well done!” in the bathroom, I went to the door.
“Did you do potty?” I asked with a big smile for her.
“Ta-da!” she announced, clapping her hands.
Over her head, Neil mouthed, “Now what?”
I picked up some baby wipes from the counter and tossed them to him. “Now, you clean her up, Afi.”
Before he could argue, I grabbed the supplies and stranded him.
I dropped Olivia’s things off in our bedroom then returned to the kitchen, where Mom and Tony were still eating.
“Did you get her down already?” Mom asked, surprised. She’d heard many epic tales about the battles fought at bedtime.
I shook my head. “No. We’re going to sleep with her in our bed. I didn’t want you to think we abandoned you.”
“No way,” Tony assured me. “You do what you need to for that little girl. Maybe it’s not my place to say so, Sophie, but I’m real proud of you.”
Getting a compliment from my future stepfather was too weird to deal with, so I deflected. “Don’t forget, I have a full-time nanny.”
“Yeah, you do,” he conceded. “To make sure she’s cared for and don’t want for nothing. That’s good parenting.”
“Well, I’m not a parent.” I couldn’t remind people of that enough. It felt too much like I was pretending to be Olivia’s mother. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“I’ll just clean up here, and we’ll head out,” Mom said.
“Okay. Just call security and tell them to set the night alarms.”
When I got to the bedroom, Olivia lay in the middle of our bed, rolling back and forth in nothing but her diaper, her feet in her hands as she chanted, “No, no, no,” at varying volumes.
Neil sat beside her, the nightgown held helplessly in his hands. “How does Mariposa get her dressed?”
“Brute force, I assume.” I took the nightgown from him and tossed it aside. “She’ll be warm enough without it.”
He pulled the covers back, and Olivia rolled to her stomach to crawl toward the pillows, squealing with delight when he playfully flipped the corner of the sheet over her head.
“Don’t rile her up!” I warned him. “I’m not going to be responsible.”
Neil went to the bathroom and took out his contacts, but I wasn’t ready for bed at eight at night. He probably wasn’t, either, but he would lay with Olivia, anyway. I wondered how often he’d done this with Emma when she was sick or sad or otherwise needed him.
The hardest part about caring for Olivia wasn’t the day-to-day. Changing diapers sucked, tantrums in public were the worst, and I don’t know how or why she’d thought putting one of my earrings up her nose was a good idea, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was watching Neil compare every stage and quirk and behavior to his memories of Emma. I never knew if I should want him to see them there or not.
“Afi?” Olivia called, scooting as though she would try to reach the end of the bed.
“Nope.” I picked her up and put her right back into the middle. “Just wait here for Afi. Tell me about what you did at Grandma Valerie’s house.”
“Varee’s house?” Olivia pointed toward the door. “Over there.”
“Yeah, it’s not in here, is it?” I lightly petted her back, and her little eyelids drooped. She wriggled onto her stomach.
“Critch a back,” she ordered sleepily, toddler speak for “scratch my back”.
“You went away for seven sleeps,” I informed her, drawing circles with my fingertips on her imposs
ibly soft skin.
“I tired. I gotta go night-night.”
“Yup,” I agreed, and yawned. “Maybe I should go night-night.”
“No…” Olivia’s voice faded and gave way to a small snore.
The bathroom door opened, and I held up a finger to preemptively silence Neil when he came out.
“Is she already asleep?” he whispered, approaching the bed.
I tested by slightly shifting on the mattress. She snorted, and one hand flew up. I held my breath. Then, her body eased, again.
“Yup,” I whispered back with a sigh of relief. Slowly, like a grenade might go off, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “So, we’re off the hook, if we want to be.”
“No.” Neil pulled his shirt over his head as he went toward the closet. “I don’t want to leave her here alone.”
I waited to respond until he returned, clad in some white-and-blue pinstriped cotton sleep-pants. Ugh, he looked so good, no matter what he wore. And he looked absolutely adorable slipping under the covers to snuggle up beside Olivia’s worn out little form in the center of the bed.
“It’s, like, eight. Are you really going to bed, right now?” I teased.
“She isn’t going to be this small forever. The days of cuddling a baby are fast escaping us,” he mused.
I held my tongue and did not remind him that, while those days might be escaping him, I was escaping them. “Well, you enjoy. I’m going to go see if Mom needs help with the dishes. And then, I’ll probably do some of the normal human things people do when they don’t go to bed at nine.”
I gave them one last glance and dimmed the lights on the way out. Parent or not, that little girl owned my entire heart. The thought of any hardship or disappointment befalling her made weird panicky feelings assault my brain. Someday, something would happen that I couldn’t control or prevent. I was completely helpless.
It was terrifying.
And Neil had known that helpless feeling in the worst way.
I thought about my sister, the other daughter of Joey Tangen. He’d probably put her in bed beside him when she hadn’t felt good. He’d probably felt helpless when they’d learned of her diagnosis.
I ached for myself that I’d never had that. I ached for him that he’d had to endure it.
I went to the kitchen, knowing I would find Mom there. Our conversation on the subject of my kidney had been far from over when we’d gotten interrupted.
True to form, Mom was slowly washing the last of the dishes. “Tony went down to the house. I’m just finishing up.”
“And waiting to see if I’m okay,” I tacked on for her.
She sighed. “I just don’t understand them. You’re successful. You run a magazine, you’re a published author, you’ve got billions of dollars. Why not be proud of that? Why wouldn’t they want to know you?”
“Maybe because I have billions of dollars?” I waited for Mom to come to the same conclusion I had; that money had changed me, that my heart wasn’t as good as other peoples’, that something about me was defective.
And of course, that’s not a conclusion my mom made about me. “Do you think they don’t want to seem like they’re after your money?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” I took a paper towel and went to work wiping up the counter. “Maybe I shouldn’t have offered them money in the first place.”
“They might be embarrassed,” Mom said, tilting her head. Then, she tilted it the other way. “Or they’re upset that you offered before they could take you for more?”
“No, I don’t think that’s the case.” And I didn’t want to believe that, either.
“Sophie Ann,” Mom began softly, “you’re not doing this because you think it will make them like you?”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “Susan and I have been shockingly honest with each other about how weird this is. Neither of us really knows how to navigate it.”
“It’s a very strange situation.” Mom braced her hands on the edge of the sink, the sponge still in her hand. “I am so sorry. I had no idea how hard this was going to be for you.”
“What, when you were banging a strange teenager at a party twenty-eight years ago?” I made a mock-stern face at her. “Where was your good judgment?”
“Where was your good judgment when you went to a hotel room with a grown man?” she countered.
I just held up my hands and gestured around the vast expanse of the huge kitchen. “Duh.”
“You know you’re not in it for the money. You never were.” Mom went back to scrubbing a pan. “What does Neil think about this? I know he’s very supportive, but what does he really think?”
“I don’t know.” I took the pan from her and rinsed it. “He kind of blew up when I first told him. But I think the fact that this is someone’s child, and they might lose her…”
“Gotcha.” She looked up guiltily, as she almost always did when we discussed Emma, even in the abstract. It was like a weird brand of survivor’s guilt or something. She didn’t want to remind him that he’d lost a child when she hadn’t.
“That’s a big part of why I’m doing this,” I admitted. “I saw what Neil went through. I don’t want that to happen to whoever Joey Tangen ended up with. I know I don’t owe them anything. And I know they won’t owe me anything in return. But it’s the right thing to do.”
“As long as you don’t get hurt, honey.”
If that was as good as my mom could do, I would take it.
After she left for the night, I headed back to the bedroom. I stood in the doorway, watching Neil and Olivia. He slept on his side, his arm above his head, practically falling off the edge of the bed. She sprawled spread-eagle in the center, taking up way more real estate than I would have assumed a toddler could manage in a California king.
I’d made up my mind. There was no sense in putting it off further.
I’d claimed the loft over the den for my home office. There were plenty of rooms in the house, but being there, tucked away beside the chimney of the giant fieldstone fireplace, I felt a little like I was in the loft of a cabin back home. Granted, cabins back home would have had a hundred percent more antlers, and the wood beams crisscrossing the ceiling would have been a lot more rustic than the sleek ones I looked down on from my little nook. But it felt homey and secure.
While my computer booted up, I tried to figure out what I was going to say. “Yeah, I’ll give you my kidney” seemed anticlimactic, but what else could she possibly want to hear from me? All the reasons for doing it that were so important to me, so critical to my decision, would mean nothing to them. The only part that would matter to them was the part where I gave their sister my kidney.
I stared at an open email window for at least fifteen minutes before I even attempted to type. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t doing this to prove myself to them. That I didn’t expect anything in return, but that I wouldn’t reject them, either. I wanted to solve everything and see it settled tonight. If I could have added the damn kidney as an attachment, I would have.
Instead, I typed in her email address with the subject line, “Decision”. Then, in the body of the email, I told her, “Okay. I’m in,” and hit send.
****
The next day, Deja caught me by the elevators as I left for lunch.
“Off to see my lov-ah?” she said, making the word sound as gross as possible.
“Ew.” I snorted. “Yes, I am. Are you coming with?”
“No, I’ve got the Bills.” She made a pained face and ran her hand over her growing-in hair. “The Bills” were our accountants. Their names weren’t actually Bill, but the firm was Williams & Williams. We had to make our own fun.
“Do you want me to stay behind?” Accounting was almost certainly something I should have been involved in, right?
She waved a hand. “No. Don’t bail on her. She’s been looking forward to seeing you after being incommunicado for an entire week.”
Deja knew why I’
d been “incommunicado”, and we both knew that it was the dirty details Holli was looking forward to.
“Well, take notes or something?” I sounded weirdly hopeful, and that didn’t sit right with me. I shouldn’t have to ask to be included in the business of the business that I co-owned. But if Deja thought it was more important for me to see Holli, maybe she was just trying to be a nice wife by handling it all herself.
Tony had the car waiting in front of the building, and I gave him a wave as I stepped out of the door. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“That’s my line,” he said, then added, “Well, minus the ‘sir’.” He opened the rear passenger door for me, and I got in, immediately reaching for my phone.
The partition was down, which was strange. He usually left it up. And he hardly ever talked to us through it; he used the Maybach’s intercom system. So, it shocked the hell out of me when he got in and said, “Can we have a chat on the way to… It was Public Kitchen right?”
I blinked. “Yeah. No problem. And, um, yes. Public Kitchen.”
He punched something into the GPS and pulled away from the curb before he spoke. “I’ve been thinking about talking to Neil. About leaving the job.”
“Oh?” That would make it easier on Neil, who’d been stressing out about how to fire his future father-in-law.
“Yeah. You know, I’ve been his driver for a long time. Way back. His ex-wife hired me. That’s how long I’ve been working for him.” Tony cleared his throat, as though it had occurred to him that I wouldn’t want to hear about the previous Mrs. Elwood. “You guys are good employers. The pay is good, the benefits are fine, I’m not mad at you or anything—”
“It’s just weird to be a part of the family, working for family,” I finished for him. “We get it. We’ve actually talked about how to approach you over this.”
“Not thrilled with the idea of having your stepdad drive you and your honey around on dates?” he joked.
“Something like that,” I said uncomfortably. Because that was one of my big concerns: places he’d taken us in the past, things we’d done just a partition away from him…
Like the time before Neil and I were even officially dating, when he’d made Tony circle the block so Neil could finish making me come.
The Sister (The Boss Book 6) Page 22
