“Good.”
Erma crouched down to hug Nicole. She picked the girl up and swung her. I wrapped my arms around both of them.
“Bradley!” his father yelled from the other room. “Let’s get a move on.” He came into the kitchen before he was finished with his sentence. “Like middle school all over again. Aw, sheesh, now what are the women doing? All this hugging. Where are we? California? Get in the car before you all turn us into hippies.”
I hugged him and despite his fear of hippie-dom, he hugged me back.
“Thank you,” he said into my ear. “You take good care of my family. Thank you.”
“I love them,” I said without thinking.
Brad was right behind me. He draped his arm over my shoulder when I pulled away from his dad.
“Hands off my girl.”
Milton put his palms up, all eight fingers spread in surrender.
“Out,” his mom shooed us. “The front door’s wide open. We’re gonna be overrun with bugs in here.”
We piled into the limo, which had been sent all the way from Fayetteville.
Erma stood at the porch steps, Susan next to her. The driver held the door open for Brad. He put his arm around his mother, and she broke out in tears. Real, honest tears.
“Why is Grandma crying?” Nicole asked suspiciously. “What’s Daddy doing to her?”
“She’s sad he’s leaving.”
“Grandma!” Nicole called out. Erma wiped her eyes and faced the open limo door. “Come to the airport with us!”
“Oh, I can’t have him drive all the way back.”
“Sure you can,” Brad said. “We have an hour in the lounge to kill. You can kill it with us.”
“Need a ticket to get in the lounge.”
“I’ll get you a ticket. Go get your ID and come on.”
“The expense!” Erma protested.
“I’ll get it,” Susan said, running into the house.
“Come on, Grandma!” Nicole patted the seat next to her.
Brad pushed her to the back of the car. “No one says no to my daughter.”
“He made three mill on his last movie,” Milton said. “He can buy another limo ride. Go with them. I gotta clean up the mess around here. It’s like an army ran through the house.”
Erma was not impressed. “You never cleaned a thing in your life, Milton Sinclair.”
“I will if you git!”
Seeing she had everyone’s approval, Erma Sinclair got into the back of the limo, next to me. Brad shook hands with his dad and Buddy, then slid in next to Nicole. Susan came back with Erma’s purse. The door closed and we were off to Thailand.
CHAPTER 67
BRAD
I played with Nicole on the limo ride to the airport. She kneeled on the floor and used the seat as a table, drawing herself and her new school, her impressions of a long airplane ride, the pony I was apparently getting her, and her name. The whole name. Nicole Garcia-Sinclair. All the letters, facing the right direction, in order, right side up. We hadn’t legally changed it, but she was telling me something.
I picked up the paper and held it up.
“Hey, Cara,” I said. “These letters are all in the right place? Right?”
She didn’t answer.
She was looking at her phone.
A plane screamed in the sky above. We were almost at the airport.
“Let me see,” Mom said, taking the page. “They’re perfect!”
Nicole smiled and put her head down to make more letters. And Cara slid her hand over the glass of her phone, eyes wide, chin jutting and tender at the same time, as if she wanted to weep but couldn’t.
“Teacup?”
She didn’t answer. She put two fingers on the glass and spread them to make an image bigger. I swallowed but nothing went down.
Mom and Nicole chattered about the drawings. I could barely hear them through the scream of Cara’s concentration.
She put her phone in her lap and looked out the window as Arkansas farmland whooshed by. Did she know? Was it the truth? A lie? Had Paula embellished? Made it sound worse?
How could it actually be worse?
I texted her.
—Teacup? What’s wrong?—
Her phone dinged. She looked at it, then at me. She put the phone back in her lap and looked out the window.
Okay. This wasn’t working. I wasn’t sitting there wondering what the fuck was wrong with her. I didn’t do that. I didn’t sit and wait for things to happen. If she was going to be mad, she was going to do it now.
I rapped on the driver’s window. It slid down.
“Pull over here, would you?”
“Sure thing.”
“What’s happening, Daddy?”
I looked at Cara when I spoke. “Miss Cara and I have to make a pit stop.”
Nicole went up like a shot, peering out the window. “Can we get a hot dog?”
“There’s not a rest stop in sight, Brad,” Mom said.
“Not that kind of pit stop.”
Gravel crunched under the tires, and the limo came to a stop. A car blew by so fast the limo jolted. I didn’t wait for the driver to open the door. I yanked the handle and went to the side of the heat-baked road. Cara didn’t follow. I leaned into the car. Her phone was still sandwiched between her hands, which were folded between her legs as if she wanted to protect her device or shield herself from the information on it.
“You coming?” I said. “Or do I have to carry you?”
In the sunlight her eyes were bluer. Less like the deep ocean and more like the color of running sea water.
“Maybe we should discuss this in front of Nicole?” I suggested.
I stepped out of the way and finally, she followed.
“Give us a minute,” I said to my mother, whose look of disapproval was cut off when I closed the door.
I decided, as I scanned for Cara and found her leaning on the back of the limo with her arms crossed, that I wasn’t going to pretend this could be about anything else. It couldn’t be, and if it was, I was just going to bring it up anyway.
I stood across from Cara and crossed my arms so we were a matched set.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She handed me her phone. I immediately recognized the documents I’d signed, refusing my parental rights, and Paula’s name at the top of the screen. I handed it back. “I don’t want to talk about it yet. I’m confused.”
Yeah. I wasn’t confused. I was real clear. I was going to man up, and she was going to deal with my apology.
“She was better off without me.”
Which wasn’t exactly what I was planning to say, but that was what came out. The truth.
“How convenient, golden boy.” She finally looked at me. The wind blew the hair off her face, and it trailed behind her like a black flag. The opposite of surrender. “Everything just goes your way.”