by Lila Monroe
“Vivian took Howard,” she announces.
My eyes widen. “Vivian did what?” Ezra’s had that stuffed badger since he was barely two days old—there’s a picture of Mel sitting in the rocking chair in his nursery holding both of them, one in each arm. “Why?”
Lottie shrugs. “She said Ezra needed to be more connected with reality.”
“Ezra is seven,” I snap before I can stop myself. Then I force myself to take a deep breath. The last thing they need is me undermining Vivian at every turn—even if she does seem to be going out of her way to play the part of wicked stepmother. “Can I talk to him?”
Lottie shakes her head. “I don’t really think he wants to talk to anyone,” she says with a sigh. “I tried to make up a dumb story for him—how he likes, you know? But it didn’t work.”
The thought of Lottie trying unsuccessfully to comfort her little brother reaches into my chest and squeezes. Even after everything that happened with Rob and Mel, it feels like I never actually understood what heartbreak was until this week. I want them back—of course I want them back—but I also just want to make things easier on them. And I can’t for the life of me figure out how.
“Okay,” I say finally, trying to sound like a person with authority. I hate feeling this far away and out of control. “Where is he now?”
“In his room curled up into a little ball,” Lottie reports. “I thought maybe I could steal Howard back, but I can’t figure out what the heck she did with him.”
I hide a smile. Good God, I love this girl. “Well, don’t get yourself in trouble on top of everything else, okay? I’m really sorry this happened. I’ll call tonight and talk to her.”
“She’s got a new boyfriend,” Lottie reports, rolling her eyes. “This totally old French guy who wears cardigan sweaters all the time. I thought it would make her nicer, but it didn’t.”
“You’ve just got to hang in there for a little longer, okay? You and Ezra both.” I rake a hand through my hair. “I’m working on a solution, I promise.”
“Yeah.” Lottie sighs one more time, sounding way older than ten. “Hurry up, please.” She disconnects the call before I can answer.
I shove my phone back into my pocket. I was telling Lottie the truth, I’ve got Lydia working overtime to try and come up with a way to get those kids back. But the reality is there’s not a ton we can do. The court looked at me and found me wanting.
Jules looked at me and found me wanting, too.
I try to shove the thought to the bottom of the pile, the same way I’ve been trying to ignore it since she walked out of the courthouse and went back to New York. I always knew Jules thought I was slightly ridiculous, a spoiled, thrill-chasing rich kid who wasn’t quite as reformed as he claimed. And maybe she was partly right. But I thought she saw through that shit, and cared about me in spite of it, even. To hear that she honestly thought the kids would be better off with Vivian was like getting hit by an anvil.
And then backed up under a ten-ton tank.
Enough.
I pull myself back together and head back into the conference room, swallowing my own aching heart back down into my chest where it belongs.
“Sorry about that,” I say, looking around the table and trying—and probably failing, let’s be real—to look like I give half a shit about what’s going on in this meeting. “Where were we?”
The meeting lasts forever, but when we’re finally done, I get ready to head out to meet my buddy Max for drinks, cranking some Springsteen up on the stereo to distract myself from how fucking quiet it is at home. I keep meaning to get in touch with the realtor and schlep all my shit back to my apartment, but I haven’t been able to make myself do it. It feels ridiculous to be rattling around this empty house all the time, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood and a gallon of milk souring in the fridge, but the truth is there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give it up—the place itself, but also the idea that the kids will be back. Someday.
God, I need to pull it together.
The bar is trendy and bustling, red velvet curtains and a three-piece jazz band on the lower level. Max and I been coming here for years, but tonight the whole thing feels obnoxious and too loud. On the other hand, if I had my way I probably would have spent the evening alone with a bottle of whiskey, so I guess it’s for the best I let him pick.
“You look like hell,” Max says instead of hello.
“Thanks a lot,” I say with a scowl. Still, it’s not like he’s wrong. I’ve been skipping my trainer and surviving on a steady diet of break-room granola bars, letting things go at work. This afternoon, I blew off a meeting with one of our design teams, letting Jason handle it for me, and the truth is I probably I would have blown off drinks, too, but I was planning on getting good and drunk anyway, and I suppose it’s slightly less depressing to do it with a friend.
Max shrugs. “For what it’s worth,” he says, looking at me shrewdly, “Hallie says Jules is just as miserable as you are.”
I try not to care.
Try, and fail. “She is?” I ask before I can stop myself. I think of that morning in the hotel before the custody hearing, asking her if she wanted to make a real go of it. I think of the way she smiled as she said yes.
Max smirks. “Dude, why don’t you just call her?”
“Why don’t you just eat a dick?” I say pleasantly, though I know he has a point. Part of what’s stopping me is my own pride, I can admit that, but ego isn’t the only reason. I thought what was going on between Jules and me was the real deal—that for the first time in years I had a shot at a functional adult relationship, with a woman so smart and funny and beautiful the sight of her almost took me out at the knees. But now I just feel like one of those idiot guys who thinks strippers really like him. Not that Jules is a stripper, obviously, but the truth is she told me over and over that what we had was a business arrangement. And I’m the dumb schmuck who refused to hear what she was saying.
I’m saved from trying to explain any of that by the bartender. Kelsey started here a couple of years ago and knows us by now, and she sets two Manhattans down in front of us without asking. “You gents planning on ordering any food?” she inquires, raising her elegant eyebrows. “Or are you pursuing more of a liquid-dinner route this evening?”
“Oh, we’re getting hammered,” Max reports with a grin. “Cal here is having some personal difficulties.”
“Uh-oh,” Kelsey says, dark braid swinging as she shakes her head. She’s young and cute, and probably makes a killing in tips wearing a shirt cut that low. “Well, I am sorry to hear that, Cal.” She disappears into the kitchen, coming back a few minutes later with a heaping order of chili fries. “On me,” she says, flashing a wide white smile. “Something to soak up all the alcohol.” Then she winks. “And, you know, the despair.”
I smile back, I can’t help it. “Thanks, Kelsey.”
For all his we’re getting hammered bravado, Max takes off after two drinks—he’s got a real-life fiancée to get back to, after all—but I stick around for a while, getting industriously drunk and watching people come and go. The tables clear out one by one, the bar slowly emptying, but I can’t bring myself to go back home. Finally, it’s just me and Kelsey left. I watch as she caps the liquor bottles and loads up the cooler for tomorrow’s day shift, her movements graceful. “One more for the road?” she asks.
I sigh. “Why not?”
“I mean, I can think of a couple of reasons.” She grins at me then. “Look,” she says, leaning on her elbows across the bartop. “My place is around the corner, and my roommate’s visiting her girlfriend in Providence. You want to come by for a bit, forget whatever it is you’re trying to forget?”
I hesitate. There was a time I wouldn’t even skip a beat. A gorgeous, fun woman giving an invitation like that? Hell, I’d have to be crazy to turn her down.
But I am. Crazy about Jules, still. Even through the alcohol haze—and it is quite the alcohol haze, at this point—I know the
re’s only one person I truly want to roll around in bed with—or wake up next to.
And I told her I never want to see her again.
Now I look back at Kelsey with sigh. “In another life,” I tell her. “But I have to get home.”
Kelsey shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says, unconcerned. “Can’t blame a girl for trying, right?”
“It’s honestly not you,” I promise. “It’s just—” I break off. “You know. Personal difficulties.”
In another second I’m going to spill my guts all over this unsuspecting person, so I down the whiskey and settle my tab before leaving her a giant tip and heading out. Outside it’s still warm out, that summer heat that lingers even after the sun goes down. Soon it’ll be Independence Day, and school vacation around the corner after that. I think of spending summer without the kids at the Vineyard. I think of Ez and Lottie, the first year without their mom and dad. I think of Jules, somewhere back in New York, moving on like I told her she ought to. Then I pour myself into a cab and head for home.
I wake up past nine the following morning with a hammering headache, my mouth like it’s been stuffed full of gym socks. Fuck. Every muscle in my body aches. I guess I’m not twenty-two anymore.
I feel around on the nightstand for my phone, but one look at the screen and I’m wide awake. I’ve got eighteen missed calls from Vivian.
I gulp some water from the bottle on the nightstand and call her back. She picks up on the very first ring. “There you are,” she says shrilly. “Are they safe? Just tell me they’re safe, and maybe I’ll put a good word in for you with the police so you don’t spend the rest of your life in jail for kidnapping.”
I sit up. The sun is streaming in through the wide bedroom windows. I was too drunk to bother closing the blinds when I got home last night. Fuck, I realize dumbly, looking down at myself. I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes. “What?”
“I swear to Christ, Cal, if you lie to me right now I will have the cops at your house so fast your head will spin. I don’t care who you are or how much money you have.”
“Wait, what?” I say again, shaking my head. “I’m not—what are you talking about?”
“The kids, Cal!” Vivian huffs loudly. “I don’t know if you thought this would be a cute way to get one over on me or what—what did you do, come pick them up at the crack of dawn?”
“Why would you think I— I don’t have them, Vivian,” I say confusedly. “I just woke up. You can come over here and look yourself.”
“I— What? Really?” For the first time, she sounds more worried than pissed. “But—if you don’t have them, then where the hell are they?”
“Hold the fucking phone,” I say, panic and fury abruptly clearing my hangover-addled brain as I realize for the first time what exactly she’s getting at. “You’re telling me you lost the kids?”
“I didn’t lose them,” Vivian says peevishly. “I just don’t know where they are at this particular moment. They must have run away,” she says finally. “There’s no way anybody broke into this house without my security system going off. They must have left on their own.”
“And gone where, exactly?” I demand, heart pounding. “They’re seven and ten, Vivian! They’re not supposed to even play in the goddamn street without supervision!”
“I know that, Caleb!”
I exhale, already on my feet. “Did you call the cops?”
“I thought they were with you!” Vivian explodes.
I bite back another angry retort. There’s no time to argue with her right now. There’s no time to do anything but find them. “I’ll be at your place as soon as I can.”
I don’t stop to change clothes, I just bolt for the door. Fuck. Fuck. I’ve run a Fortune 100 company since I was twenty-five years old—I can charm politicians or negotiate a hostile takeover or talk physics with the world’s best engineers—and I have no fucking clue what to do right now. I’ve got to make a plan, but I don’t know where to start.
Until the moment I do.
I pick up the phone again and scroll through my favorites, praying she’ll take my call and exhaling when I finally hear her cautious hello.
“Jules?” I say, dropping my head into my free hand and closing my eyes. “I need your help.”
21
Jules
I make the drive up to Boston in record time, my foot on the pedal of my rental car and my heart in my throat, calling everyone I can think of who might possibly be able to help find Ezra and Lottie. As I reach downtown, I put the phone on speaker and check in with Cal.
“I spoke with their school about setting up a phone tree and circled back with the police department,” I tell him quickly. “They’re issuing an Amber alert. Also, there’s an investigator I know from work who owed me a favor, so he’s checking in with some contacts at the transport department about getting extra eyes on train and bus stations. There’s no way the kids are getting out of the city without us knowing about it.”
“Okay,” Cal says shakily. “Yeah. Unless they’re already gone.”
I can’t think about it: Lottie and Ezra out God knows where, on their own. Sure, these kids are smart and resourceful, but this is the real world. Bad things can happen to kids like that every day, and—
Nope. Can’t think about it. Not when Cal needs me for support.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I promise, glancing over my shoulder and changing lanes more abruptly than I mean to; a horn blares behind me. “Hang in there, okay? We’ll find them.”
“Thanks.” He pauses. “I owe you an apology,” he says quietly. “For that day outside the courtroom. I was worked up. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”
I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, ignoring the jump of my heart in my chest. “We’ll talk it all out later, okay? The most important thing right now is the kids.”
“You’re right.” Cal clears his throat. “I’ll, uh. See you soon.”
“Yup,” I promise, trying to sound more confident than I feel. “I’m on my way.”
Cal opens the door before I even get a chance to knock on it. He’s wearing jeans and a rumpled McAdams hoodie, dressed down in a way that would be charming on any other day. The truth is he looks terrible, with bloodshot eyes, his dark hair askew like he’s been pulling at it.
Just for a moment, I wonder if possibly he’s been wallowing like I have, before pushing the thought firmly to the back of my mind. First of all, he made it clear how he feels about me that day at the courthouse. Second of all, there’s no time for stuff like that now. Like I told him on the phone—the only thing that matters is the kids.
“You just missed the cops,” he reports, stepping back to let me in. I feel the tight squeeze of homesickness as I step into the bright, cheery foyer, like it’s been a lot more than just a week since I was here. “They told me to stay at the house in case Lottie and Ez show up, but I’m crawling out of my fucking skin.”
“I’m sure they’re together, wherever they are,” I assure him, wanting to comfort him any way I can, but the words ring hollow even to my own ears—sure, Boston’s a pretty safe city, but they’re just a couple of little kids. There’s no limit to the number of terrifying ways this could possibly go.
“I made a list of their favorite places,” Cal says, holding up a pad of paper. “I was thinking we could start there.”
I muster a hopeful smile. “That’s a great idea.”
We leave a note taped to the front door in case the kids come back—I swallow hard as Cal scrawls I love you at the bottom of the page, underlining it twice—before hopping into the SUV and heading out into the summer afternoon. We comb every inch of the science museum and the arcade where Lottie and I played the gator game, doing a lap around the Frog Pond on Boston Common and swinging by the train station diner. We even drive out to the zoo on the off chance they took Howard on a conciliatory field trip to see some real badgers, but there’s no sign of th
em anywhere. It’s like they’ve disappeared into thin air.
“Where are they?” Cal asks, pushing a hand through his hair and turning a 360-degree circle, like they’re going to materialize from inside the monkey house or parade by on the back of an elephant. It’s late now, and pretty soon it’ll be getting dark, and I don’t want to think about what happens after that.
I shake my head, trying to clear it. “Do you want to try Lottie’s phone one more time?”
“I’ve been trying it all day, she must have it switched off. I’m really regretting the speech I gave her about not becoming addicted to social media,” he adds with a rueful grin.
I smile faintly. “They’re kids,” I remind him as we head back out into the parking lot. “There’s no way you could have known they were going to pull this.”
“I should have put Bluetooth trackers on them, then.”
“Leashes, maybe.”
“Exactly.” Cal sags for a moment, despairing. “I can’t believe I let this happen. I promised I’d take care of them.”
“Cal,” I say, putting a hand on his arm before I can stop myself, “this isn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head, stubborn. “It is, though.”
“How?” I ask. “You weren’t even with them when—”
“Exactly!” he interrupts. “I wasn’t there. If I’d been able to win custody, then none of this would have happened. They wouldn’t have been shipped off to Vivian and so miserable, they couldn’t even stay.”
My heart sinks. “I know I’ve said it before,” I tell him. “But I am so, so sorry for what happened at the hearing . . .”
Cal lets out a long sigh. “I don’t blame you,” he tells me finally. “I mean, I did right after it happened. But you were right—I was an idiot at the beginning. I had no idea what I was doing, or that I couldn’t just throw cash at every problem to make it go away. And I just dumped you in the middle of it without—”
