"I will. And I'll let you know." Molly hugged Neil, then me, then offered El-Mudad a stiff, formal handshake like a nerdy teen in a prom night farce movie. When she retook Amal’s hand, Neil guided both El-Mudad and me back to the car to give them privacy.
"They'll only be apart for three months," El-Mudad muttered as he closed the car door.
"That's a long time when you're in the throes of first love," I reminded him. "Or even second or third or whatever love. Remember all the times we had to be apart?"
I glanced out the windshield at Neil, who'd paused to speak to the groundskeeper who'd driven Molly's luggage out on the electric golf cart. Neil and I had done the helipad goodbye with El-Mudad before, the hotel room goodbye, the private tarmac goodbye...it had never gotten any easier. But I'd never had to do it alone. He'd been on his own each time.
He rubbed his index finger along his bottom lip, staring out the window thoughtfully, then made a noise of grudging defeat. "It will be three weeks before Amal is living with her. Three weeks."
I scoffed. "Okay, clearly you need more lesbian friends because it is for sure not going to be three weeks."
The back door opening clipped the end of my sentence. "What's not going to be three weeks?" Neil asked, briefly detouring to complain about the seating arrangements. “The back?"
"You didn't call shotgun," El-Mudad stated. He'd become acclimated to my strict rules for boarding priority much faster than Neil had, another perk to being the late arrival to our relationship.
"We were discussing how long it would take for Molly and Amal to end up living in that house together," I said, flashing him a grin over the back of my seat. "He said three weeks."
"Oh, you need to get some more lesbian friends," Neil unintentionally repeated my phrase.
"And by the way," El-Mudad said, a hint of annoyance in his voice, "You might have mentioned to either of us that you planned to give a gift.”
"Especially since that gift might come with some fallout for me, from the Tangens." Ugh, that didn't feel right coming out of my mouth. I'd referred to my half-sisters and my late father's wife that way in my head a lot, but any time I said it was a slap in the face that reminded me I'd never been a part of Joey Tangen's life.
"It was a spur of the moment thing," Neil said, his voice raised in defensive disbelief as if it were unconscionable for us to suggest he'd done anything wrong. "Your sister is coming to live in New York, and we have a house in New York—"
"And El-Mudad has a daughter who's very much going to have sex with my sister in that house." I ignored their groans of disgust. "You two are ridiculous. Neither of you wants to think of your precious little girls having sex, but both of you perform depraved acts of sexual indecency on me all the time, and I'm someone's precious little girl."
Not my father's, of course, but someone's.
"Men are incredibly good at compartmentalizing," Neil argued.
"Is that what we're calling hypocrisy now?" I caught my fingernail between my teeth and leaned forward to look toward the helipad. "Are they ever going to take off?"
"Not if your sister can't disengage her mouth from my daughter's face," El-Mudad muttered.
Wow, tell me how you feel about her love life, Neil 2.0.
"Amal will come back on the cart," Neil said. It must have been what he'd talked to the groundskeeper about. "I thought it would be better to give her some time alone to compose herself. So that we remain unaware that she harbors any tender feelings."
"You know her so well," El-Mudad said with a fond shake of his head. He put the car in gear and drove us back to the house.
We went in through the kitchen, where El-Mudad grabbed a bottle of kombucha from the refrigerator. When I made a face at him, he frowned right back. "I told you, you'll like it when you're forty."
"Take it back!" I gasped.
"She's on my side." Neil folded his arms triumphantly. "She'll never drink your moldy tea."
"No, I meant the part about me being forty." But he wasn't wrong about the tea thing. I'd been super panicked about it being in the house—even a very, very low alcohol content could be dangerous for someone in recovery—until I'd tasted the stuff myself. El-Mudad's supply was in no danger. I leaned my elbows on the island's granite countertop. "What if Molly does want to move into Emma and Michael's house? Are you still going to be okay with it after a few days to think? Because that's a hell of a big spur-of-the-moment thing happening, and if you disappoint my sister, I will make you give her the penthouse."
"I want her to live in the house," Neil insisted. "It's a house. Emma and Michael aren't there. All of their things have been sold or boxed up for Olivia to have in the future. It's sitting empty because I don't want to let it go."
I blinked in surprise. "Oh. So, you have been thinking about this."
"Not specifically about your sister, but yes," Neil admitted. "It's been on my mind—and the subject of several chats with Doctor Harris—and I'm ready to let the house go. A little. I'd considered asking you if you'd like me to hold onto it for Amal, El-Mudad. But this felt more sensible."
"Especially considering how freaked you were by Amal wanting to move into the guest house right down the driveway." I snorted a laugh, and it was a real ugly way to begin a super tense silence.
El-Mudad's stricken expression made me regret my reaction. "Perhaps one day, you'll understand the difference between protective and over-protective, Sophie."
"Hey, trust me, you're not the most overprotective father I've ever met." I gestured to Neil. "For example, you're not calling my sister 'Horrible Molly.'"
"In hindsight, I do feel terrible for all that I put him through." Neil chuckled fondly. I was so grateful he could.
"I don't think you're silly for wanting to protect your daughter." I worried that I'd hurt El-Mudad's feelings. "But Amal is mature and smart and so much more sophisticated than I was at her age. And I survived."
"You had sex with a strange man twenty-four years your senior while running away from home," Neil reminded me.
"And look at me now." I opened my arms wide and turned in a circle. "Girls who make perfect choices don't end up with ocean views."
"El-Mudad has reason to be concerned," Neil began reasonably. "Remember what I've said about the risk of kidnapping for ransom."
"Ah. So, Amal has greater monetary value and therefore should be treated as a precious object." I crossed my arms. "Whereas I, an innocent eighteen-year-old—"
"You said you were twenty-five," Neil interrupted.
While Neil and I bickered, El-Mudad had turned toward the window. Quietly, he said, "I'm not ready to lose her."
The night of Emma's wedding—more accurately, the very early morning of the day after her wedding—Neil had stood in the doorway of Emma's bedroom in the penthouse, nursing a scotch and closing a chapter of his life. It had been a private moment, like so many I'd seen over the years, an inward retreat to heal the wounds sustained by his ego in a brawl with reality.
Now, I saw that defeat, realizing that he couldn't control the passage of time, in El-Mudad. His shoulders slumped as he turned to us. "I haven't been open about these feelings, Neil, because of what you've gone through—"
"You can share anything with me," Neil broke in.
El-Mudad held up his hand. "Let me say this. I know that you understand what I'm going through, having a daughter who is suddenly adult enough to be in love. But understanding it and having to go through it... I am trying to walk a very thin wire here. I need support from you, but that support will come with pain for you."
"Let me worry about that," Neil said firmly. "Talking with you about your girls, being in their lives, it does bring back memories. But not painful ones. I'm getting a chance to relive memories of Emma's life, rather than focusing on the complications of her death."
The complications of her death. From anyone else, I might have thought those words were cold. It so accurately described what our life had become since Emma and Michael had die
d.
Everything we did with Olivia or the girls had an echo of sadness to it, even when we were happy. All of our joy came at an unthinkable cost.
"You know who might be a good person to talk to about this?" I winced as I watched the answer occur to them before I said it. "My mother."
Neil scoffed—way more dramatic than necessary.
"What? She's a mom," I began. “And she’s got a lot of experience reacting to impulsive decisions made by young daughters.”
El-Mudad took Neil’s hand in his. “You know, you have a point. I should come to you. Only you.”
Like the mature adult I am, I blew a raspberry at them both.
Chapter Thirteen
The closer we got to Manhattan, the more the skeletal fingers of dread around my throat tightened. Beside me in the back of the Maybach, Neil’s knee bounced erratically.
“My love,” El-Mudad said from his seat across from us. Though he couldn’t reach Neil to reassure him physically, El-Mudad’s voice could work miracles.
“Sorry,” Neil said, his leg stilling.
We’d been in a heightened state of tension since the night after Molly left. We’d just been finishing up dinner when my cell had rung. I’d taken one look at the number and broke our dinner table rule.
“Miss Sophie.”
Rudy never said “hello” when he called.
I’d glanced to Neil and El-Mudad, ignoring the suspicious looks from the girls, and excused myself. In the hall, I’d double-checked to make sure no one had followed me. This was something that, hopefully, we would never have to tell the girls. “Is it Valerie?”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. When Rudy had called me, my first thought had been that he’d called to tell me Valerie was in the hospital, or worse. Luckily, Rudy had just planned to stage an intervention.
“Laurence is out of the country,” he’d said, and I’d held in a sigh of relief. “He’ll be back in two weeks. If we’re going to speak to her about this, the time is now.”
We’d agreed to meet at Rudy’s loft, where we could calmly, gently broach the subject of suspected abuse with Valerie. But once we’d made those plans, the worries had begun to stack up.
They ran through my head all the way to the Village; what if Valerie wouldn’t talk to us? What if we made everything worse? What if this would only make Laurence more eager to fuck with us?
What if this made him get worse.
Of course, I’d tried to imagine a scenario where Valerie would be horrified at our insinuations and have explanations for all her weird behavior. I found myself wishing that could be the outcome, no matter what the fallout on our end.
Rudy had recently moved from an East Side penthouse to a loft in the Village; he'd seen it in a design magazine and had to have it. Walking off the elevator and into the massive open-plan first floor gave me a pang of homesickness for a time when such a thing would have been possible for Neil and me. Before Emma and Michael, before Olivia, before El-Mudad and the girls. Our lives hadn't seemed empty and lonely then; we could have packed up and changed our lives at a moment's notice. But we never had, so I wasn't sure why I felt so much regret about that now.
Maybe it was just my brain trying to distract me from all my other thoughts and feelings, none of which were good.
"Welcome, welcome," Rudy said, going for his usual, theatrical charm. It fell flat under the weight of too much evident exhaustion.
"You haven't slept a wink," Neil accused, going in for a hug.
El-Mudad and I lingered awkwardly. We weren't on a casual hug basis with Rudy the way Neil was.
"Well, come on in, don't haunt my doorway. It’s bad luck." Rudy wore arguably the most dressed-down outfit I'd ever seen him in; black leggings and albino snake-skin slippers, with what appeared to be a Talking Heads t-shirt beneath a soft ivory pashmina shawl.
That's his sitting around the house clothing.
Not that I hadn't tried to turn my fashion choice down a notch. Rudy and I shared a love of clothing that sometimes led to situationally inappropriate sartorial decisions. But not today. My black turtleneck and dark jeans were the two plainest items in my closet.
"The place looks lovely," Neil said, clearing his throat nervously as he walked into the large square of natural light in the middle of the room. "Skylights?"
"No, I had a model made of the sun, and I stuck it to the ceiling," Rudy said with a roll of his eyes. "Of course, skylights. Right down the middle, straight from the fifth floor.”
"Bloody hell, you could fit my apartment in here four times," Neil said with a low whistle.
"And it probably cost a quarter of the price," I put in.
Rudy pointed a finger at me. "Exactly."
"When I bought mine, the address was the most important bit," Neil said defensively. "Besides, you and I have wildly different tastes."
For example, Rudy's Roman villa themed decor and architecture wouldn't fly with Neil. He'd mentioned with great chagrin that Rudy's new apartment would be "a theme park."
"Where should I wait?" El-Mudad asked, slicing through the thin membrane of tension that cloaked the atmosphere of the room. "I don't think Valerie would appreciate my presence."
To my surprise, it was Rudy who said, "No, she won't appreciate it. But you're going to be Olivia's daddy now. She needs to both accept that and respect it."
"Thank you," El-Mudad said, placing a hand over his heart. "For your support."
"I love Valerie," Rudy went on. "I love her, and I would do anything for her. But Olivia is a child. She comes first. She needs our help right now."
Neil had gone very quiet, examining one of the Romanesque columns surrounding the seating area. For the first time, I noticed the shallow, circular pond resting placidly where a coffee table should have been, and I giggled. The guys all looked at me with varying levels of annoyance and rebuke.
"I wasn't laughing at the situation." I pointed to the water feature. "I was laughing about how extra that tiny pool is."
"That's fine. You can call it extra. I'll be the one relaxing with my aching feet in it later." Rudy raised an eyebrow.
Neil stooped down and touched the water. "My god. It's heated."
"Don't pretend you've never noticed how I pamper my feet," Rudy shot back smugly.
El-Mudad and I exchanged a surprised look. Neil and Rudy had never been intimate, but a comment like that made their friendship more fascinating than it already had been.
"Come on. We're going upstairs to the salon. We don't need her walking into an ambush," Rudy said, leading us toward an open-backed staircase like black marble shelves set into the wall. As we ascended, I noted that the top of every step showed a scene from Roman mythology in bas relief.
Stylish, but a trip hazard.
Rudy's "salon"—I still couldn't figure out the artsy people aversion to "den"—was less ostentatious than the first floor, but that wasn't much of a bar to clear. The walls were painted deep red, with frescoes of what appeared to be elaborate stage productions.
"Are these operas you've designed costumes for?" I asked, knowing the answer before Rudy gave it.
"I don't care for the look of photographs and programs on the walls," he said with a wave of his hand. "It's tacky, and it smacks of ego."
Because frescoes of one's achievements certainly didn't scream ego.
We seated ourselves on the Roman-style chaises. El-Mudad sat beside me while Neil reclined on another, and Rudy paced the room.
"Make yourself at home, Neil," El-Mudad quipped.
"Would you prefer I remain tense and fidgety?” Neil asked.
The mellow chime of a crystal meditation bowl filled the room. I only realized it was a doorbell when Rudy said, "Right on time."
When Rudy left the room, Neil let out a long breath.
"It's going to be fine," El-Mudad insisted. It was a nice thought, but none of us could know for sure.
All that matters is that El-Mudad will adopt Olivia, I reassured myself.
There's nothing Valerie or Laurence could do to stop that.
At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
It took approximately thirty seconds before we heard Valerie's voice raised in anger coming from the levels below.
"I like the open concept thing and the whole multi-story skylight," I whispered, "but wow, not great for privacy, huh?"
Neil silenced me with a finger against his lips.
Luckily, the layout of the house wasn't conducive to amplification of consonants; we got the tone and the volume, but the words were unintelligible. We didn't need a preview of what was to come. I think we'd all played it out in our heads already.
It began as I had expected. Yelling, stomping footsteps getting closer, and finally, the door to the salon practically bouncing off the wall when Valerie stormed through it.
"I don't know who the hell you think you are—"
Neil stood. "Valerie, please sit down and have a discussion with us. Anger isn’t going to be productive."
"Oh, don't try that bullshit!" she shouted. "You've ambushed me here. You've turned Rudy against me—"
Rudy entered behind her. "I'm not against you, Vee. Nobody could do that."
Her rage faltered for a moment.
"This is important," Neil went on. "What's happened between us, what's happened to you...we're concerned."
"So, this is some kind of intervention?" She scoffed. "You've all assembled to gaslight me into believing I'm somehow in the wrong for wanting to protect my granddaughter? For having the audacity to want to be a part of her life?"
I hated the wobble in her voice. I hated that we'd kept her from seeing Olivia for so long.
"We want you to be a part of her life, too," I said softly, not sure if I should leap into the conversation or not, but it was too late to go back now.
"You've a very strange way of expressing that," she snapped at me. "Why are you even here? Or him?" She gestured angrily to El-Mudad. "This is none of your business!"
"It is their business," Rudy said calmly, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Please. Come sit down and talk with us."
Sophie (The Boss Book 8) Page 23
