The Baby (The Boss #5)

by Abigail Barnette

  There was a sick kind of closeness in it, and that’s what drove me, I guess. We didn’t find much, but every time we came across a little coke or booze, I felt like I was discovering a bit of Neil that had previously been hidden from me. I thought I knew what his life was like, but this was Neil’s life. A double life I couldn’t begin to understand.

  It was nearly ten by the time we’d searched every room. We’d flushed some unlabeled pills, a few packets of cocaine, and poured seven hidden bottles of various liquors down the drains. All that was left was the kitchen.

  “We won’t find anything there.” It sounded stupidly optimistic, considering how well I clearly didn’t know my husband, but I knew it in my heart. “He wouldn’t want to accidentally poison Olivia. Or me.”

  “You’re right,” Valerie agreed. “I guess we can call it a night?”

  “Yeah.” I looked at the dark windows. “If you want to stay here—”

  “No. That’s very generous of you, but I have to get back.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked on her heels. “You two really need a smaller house.”

  Poor Valerie. She had a life of her own, and yet again, Neil and I had dragged her into ours, where she decidedly did not want to be.

  The house intercom crackled. “Ms. Scaife? I need you in the nursery. It’s important.”

  My eyes widened, and I met Valerie’s own frozen panic. We didn’t run to the nursery, but we certainly walked faster than we should have had the energy to.

  Mariposa met us at the door. She wasn’t covered in blood or screaming, which I had kind of expected in my worst-case-scenario default. In fact, she was smiling.

  “I was having a little trouble getting Olivia to sleep, so I decided to let her burn off some energy. And…”

  She pushed the door open farther. Olivia stood—stood!—in the center of the floor. She beamed up at us, clearly proud of herself, her two bottom teeth displayed as she jutted her jaw out.

  “Oh…my…gosh!” I squealed, and Olivia shrieked in delight.

  Because she knew I was proud of her. Because she wanted me to be proud of her.

  My heart was going to explode.

  Valerie covered her face with one hand. “I can’t believe it! I thought you said she regressed in all her milestones!”

  “She had!” I gestured helplessly to Mariposa. “Right?”

  Mariposa nodded. “She had. She only just now started to crawl.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Valerie cooed excitedly. She stooped down and held out her hands. “Can you walk to Grandma?”

  Olivia wavered on her feet, then fell on her butt. She looked at us, surprised, as though it had never occurred to her that she might fall down.

  “She hasn’t taken any steps,” Mariposa said.

  “Well, she’s only eleven months old, after all,” Valerie admitted, but she sounded disappointed. We all wanted Olivia to get back on schedule physically, because it would be our only indication of how she was doing emotionally.

  “I won’t tell you when she does, I’ll let you think you were the first to see it,” Mariposa went on.

  “That’s…brilliant, actually,” Valerie said with a look of admiration. “I assume we’re waiting until Neil gets back to tell him about the standing up, then?”

  My heart squeezed at the mention of him. He wasn’t here to see this. He was still in a hospital somewhere.

  My sadness must have showed on my face, because Valerie’s smile faded slowly. She scooped Olivia up. “You know, I think I’ll reconsider that offer of overnight accommodations. I’d love to stay here with Olivia. If the offer still stands.”

  The thing about Valerie is, she could be the biggest, nastiest b-word some of the time. Well, where I was concerned, most of the time. But she could also be supportive and caring, because even if she didn’t like me, she had a good heart. I hoped she could tell from my small nod how much I appreciated this, because if I said it out loud, she would make it really weird.

  “You’re always welcome, Valerie.”

  It surprised me how much I meant that.

  * * * *

  The first night was hard. But it wasn’t the hardest. The hardest was the second night, when I called the rehab center to speak to Neil, and he declined my call. That’s when I knew we were in real, deep shit.

  Two weeks into our substance abuse-driven separation, I was a mess. I contacted Dr. Harris’s office every single day, even when I knew the message wouldn’t change. That Neil said he was doing well, that he missed me, but that they couldn’t share any more information.

  “I feel like a widow,” I blubbered to Holli. She’d taken a night off rehearsals to come to Sagaponack and comfort me, and now, we sat on the couch in the den, in a two-person leopard-print Snuggie she’d bought just for us, talking over A Royal Affair and not reading the subtitles. We didn’t really need them we’d watched the film so much. “What if he’s like this forever? What if he never talks to me again?”

  I wanted her to say, “He’s going to talk to you again,” but she didn’t. She squeezed my arm. “If that’s what happens, that’s what happens, and you’ll deal with it. But are you really ready to give up? It’s only been two weeks.”

  “Two weeks. And he stopped speaking to me.” I blew my nose. “This is like…the worst fade-away breakup in history.”

  “It’s not a fade-away breakup.” Holli rolled her eyes. “It’s not a breakup. I know you’re feeling sorry for yourself right now, and I’m here for that a thousand percent. But I can’t be here for you making Neil a villain in this.”

  “I’m not trying to make him a villain.” I leaned my forehead on my hand. “I just feel so deserted. And I know he had to go. Jesus, I was the one who signed the psychiatric hold paperwork. Yeah, this is all for his own good, but my good is seriously imperiled here.” I sniffed. “I just want my husband back.”

  “I know you do.” Holli put her arm around my shoulder, and I leaned on her.

  Of all the friendships in my life, Holli was my most important. She understood me in a way most people couldn’t—she knew things about me that even Neil didn’t—and while she never sugarcoated things when she thought I was making stupid choices or fucking up royally, she didn’t judge me.

  Oh, she gave me hell about it and mocked me mercilessly—once, when I was nervously awaiting the results of an STD test, she taunted me with previews of the jokes she would make for each of my possible diseases should I have one—but somehow, that kind of helped.

  Since I knew she wouldn’t judge me, I added, “And I’m lonely. Like, in the pants department. I know that’s really super selfish of me, but there it is. I like physical intimacy. And I’ve gotten so used to it that I need it. It’s like an addiction.”

  “So, what’s up with your whole open marriage thing?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Because Deja might excuse a little sympathy—” Holli made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and plunged her index finger into it.

  “First of all, ew,” I said giving her a push. “You’re my best friend. I am not DTF my best friends.”

  “You’re DTF Neil, and he’s your best friend,” she teased.

  “And, second,” I went on, rolling my eyes at her, “it wouldn’t be like this—” I repeated her hand motion. “It would be like this—” I made scissors out of my index and middle fingers and jammed them together.

  “No, it wouldn’t. Grow up, Sophie, everybody who’s, like, over the age of five knows that scissoring isn’t really a thing.” She shook her head at my ignorance.

  “Five, huh?” I whistled. “Public school has changed since our days.”

  She shrugged.

  “Neil and I don’t have an open marriage,” I corrected her. “An open marriage implies that we could seek out other sexual partners individually. Maybe go on dates with them or whatever. We don’t do that. Right now, we’ve just got one guy.”

  “Ah yes. Emir.” Holli fluttered her hand against her chest
and pretended to swoon. “Seriously, you two better lock him down. He won’t stay single for long.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”

  “What? You don’t know if you could handle having another dude worshipping at your feet? If Neil will share your feet,” she amended.

  Sometimes, maybe I didn’t need to tell her everything.

  “It’s not that. It’s more like…” I hated to admit this to cool, sexually adventurous Holli. “I don’t know if I could handle sharing Neil. There’s already something kind of between them that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m not threatened by it, but if we made it official? I don’t know.”

  “I get that.” Holli shrugged. “I couldn’t share Deja. We’re doing the sexually monogamous thing, because that’s what she’s into and I love her more than I love getting freaky in bathrooms at clubs. But, even if she was down to have sex with other people, I wouldn’t be cool with bringing someone into the relationship full time.”

  “Is it weird that hearing about your monogamy made me feel a lot better about my non-monogamy?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. You’re probably just happy to be the sexually adventurous one, now.”

  There was definitely some truth there.

  As fun as my sleep over and heart-to-heart with Holli had been, life continued as normal, with no sign of any forthcoming communication with Neil. I went back to work at the Brooklyn office, but only three days a week. Deja acted like my return had saved her life, when, in reality, I felt like I was just taking up space. The magazine ran fine without me. Deja knew exactly what she was doing. So, it was yet another place in my life where I didn’t feel needed.

  The only place I did feel needed was at home, with Olivia. And that turned out to be a good thing, because Mariposa’s grandmother died the first week of May, and she had to return to Trinidad for the funeral.

  “You’re sure it’s not going to be a problem?” she asked me for what had to be the four hundredth time. We stood in the foyer, waiting for Tony to take her to the airport.

  “It’ll be fine,” I reassured her, though my stomach did clench a little at the thought of being truly alone in caring for Olivia. I’d always had either Neil or Mariposa to help. “You just worry about you, right now.”

  Yeah, the “I’ll be fine” careened wildly off the tracks somewhere around the third morning. Mom had offered to come up and help, but I had this weird feeling that accepting her help would be akin to admitting defeat. Emma and Michael had put me in charge of caring for Olivia, and I was going to do just that.

  Our housekeeper didn’t usually work on weekends, and I refused to ask her to when I was trying to prove my self-reliance. So, I had Olivia on one hip while I stirred a pot of mac and cheese when the house phone rang.

  We so rarely received calls on the landline that it actually startled me. I grabbed the cordless handset from the wall. “Yeah?”

  It was the security guard at the end of the main driveway. I couldn’t remember his name, because my brain was like mush. “Ms. Scaife, there’s someone at the gate for you?”

  I frowned and moved the pan off the burner, then reached for my iPad to turn down the music. We didn’t tend to get a whole lot of drop ins, considering most of our friends lived in the city. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “It’s a Mr. Ati.” The guy paused. “How would you like us to proceed?”

  “Let him come up. Always, by the way.” I thought Neil would have told them that, by now, considering all the time he’d spent here. Then again, El-Mudad rarely came by the front entrance. He usually flew in.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I hung up the phone and looked wildly around the kitchen. I hadn’t exactly been keeping up appearances. Olivia was wearing the same onesie she’d slept in, complete with milk dribbles on it, and my hair was up in a looped ponytail on the top of my head. My yoga pants had a hole on the front of the thigh.

  Of course, he would pick today to show up.

  “Okay, okay. Don’t panic, but a hot guy is here, and we look awful,” I told Olivia. One of her toys lay on the island, a dopey looking doll with big buttons and crinkly texture parts, but most importantly, a flower-shaped mirror sewed into one hand. I picked it up and tried to be positive, but I didn’t have any makeup on, and my under-eye bags were tragic.

  A car engine echoed as it pulled beneath the porte cochere. There wasn’t time to fix anything.

  He knocked on the kitchen door, and I went to open it. I was going to be confident and in control of everything, and I would totally not focus on the fact that Neil wasn’t here to be with us.

  All of that flew out the window the second I saw El-Mudad standing on the welcome mat. His dark hair was flopped to the side, careless but cool, at the same time. He wore sunglasses and a leather jacket despite the fact that it was frickin’ May, and his full lips parted in a wide smile. “Sophie.”

  I burst into tears.

  He closed the door behind him and came to my side, lifting Olivia from my arms. “Go. Shower.”

  “Well, hello to you, too,” I snapped, but I laughed through my tears, because this was all funny in a tragic comedy kind of way. Usually, when we saw each other, we were Emir and Chloe. Chloe never looked like this. She was always beautiful and wore sexy underwear.

  I didn’t even have a bra on.

  “Go on. You look exhausted,” he ordered. “I know how to care for a baby. Have a bath, and we’ll still be here when you’re finished.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, wiping away my tears. “But, if I’m not back in an hour, come check on me. Make sure I didn’t fall asleep and drown.”

  Olivia reached for me, and El-Mudad lifted her up, clucking his tongue and giving her a goofy smile before he zerberted her tummy through her stained onesie. That was all it took to win her over. She giggled with delight and slapped both her hands on either side of his face, and I used the distraction to slip away.

  I was totally cool leaving her to be traumatized by abandonment to a stranger. What kind of mother figure did that make me?

  One who hadn’t had a spare moment since the nanny had gone on family leave. The shower was waiting, promising me a quick, easy solution to my serious bodily hygiene problem, but my tub.

  My beautiful bathtub.

  Sometimes, when people talk about lifelong love, they sound like they’re me talking about my bathtub. It’s a gorgeous copper claw-foot with a white porcelain interior that curves over the rim. The bottom is a little scuffed, owing to the fact that it’s an antique, but it just makes me love it more. When I get in it, I feel like Cinderella in the pumpkin coach on the way to the ball.

  El-Mudad was a wonderful man, and he wouldn’t begrudge me a little bit of luxury.

  I turned on the taps, sinking down as the tub filled.

  How had El-Mudad shown up at exactly the perfect time? Guiltily, I realized that I hadn’t let him know what was going on with Neil. So, why had he just shown up?

  Maybe he’d come hoping to contact Neil. It would make sense; as far as I knew, Neil had mostly cut himself off from everyone after Emma’s death. El-Mudad had sent a lovely flower arrangement to the funeral, but he hadn’t attended. I’d sent him a thank you card, but apart from that, we hadn’t talked, at all.

  I loved my tub, and it pained me to do it, but I turned off the taps and popped the plug, opting for a shower instead. I washed up as fast as I could—which wasn’t very fast, considering the layers of filth that had accumulated on me—and dressed in some fresh clothes. I braided my hair, not bothering to blow dry it, and went back to the kitchen.

  A hot guy being cute with a baby was the most incredibly sexy thing to me, even though I’d never wanted kids. There was just something satisfying in seeing a guy who should, by societal standards, strive for hyper-masculinity in all things, doing something traditionally feminine.

  And there wasn’t much that said “traditionally feminine” more than feeding a sleepy baby. El-Mudad had taken o
ff his jacket, and he sat in one of the kitchen chairs, holding Olivia in the crook of his arm. His t-shirt must have been tailored or something, because it fit him the way Chris Evans’s t-shirts fit in the Marvel movies. I swore the sleeves were straining, while the faded burgundy cotton clung to his near-concave abs.

  Olivia gazed up at him, her fat little hands clasped around his as he fed her the bottle. When I fed her, she held her own bottle. She didn’t need his help, she was just flirting with him.

  When she was old enough to process abstract thought, we were going to have a serious conversation about pretending to be helpless to get a guy’s attention.

  “That was faster than I expected,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought you would be hiding in there for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Nah.” I went to the coffee pot, glancing at the stove. “You made the mac and cheese?”

  “Yes. Somehow, by the grace of God, I was able to complete this task, though the struggle was mighty.”

  “Okay, smart ass. I’m sorry, I’m just impressed that you and Neil know how to do anything.” I filled the coffee pot with water as I talked. “If I had that kind of money, I would never do anything.”

  “But you do have that kind of money. And there you are, making coffee.” he reminded me.

  “And mac and cheese,” I admitted guiltily. “I don’t know, I thought maybe because I grew up in a different lifestyle than the two of you…but, you know, it is a little weird having someone taking care of Olivia, instead of us, all the time. It’s nice, but it’s a little weird.”

  “Having live-in staff is intrusive,” El-Mudad agreed. “Is that why you don’t have a nanny?”

  “Oh, we do.” I paused to grind the coffee beans. As I dumped them into the filter, I added, “She’s just out of town for a family thing.”

  “And you’re somehow able to survive?” he teased. “Having money is just having money, but you know how inconvenient it can be. If you want a snack at two in the morning, do you call someone and wait for them to make it, or is it easier just to go to the kitchen yourself?”