“Great. Clock’s ticking for me, but he’ll still be around for sure.”
She’s so nonchalant about her pending death. She sounds almost excited. “Let me leave you my number in case—”
“Now, there’s no need for that. I’ve got nowhere to go, so I’ll be here if you show, and if you don’t that’s fine too.”
“All right then,” I agree. “See you—”
The phone disconnects.
I’m tempted to screw it, but that feels too much like the path I’ve always taken, the one that got me to a point where I need to panhandle for details about the woman who raised me. I need to see this through.
I duck out of my office and ask my new assistant, Darlene, to book a flight and hotel before I overthink it. I’ve been well behaved with Darlene. The one time I barked, she said, “I’m not a mind reader, Brady. Feedback is appreciated, but please don’t yell it at me.” So I don’t. There’s no power high losing your temper when someone calls you out on it in an even tone.
The challenge of this impromptu trip will be hiding it from Eve. It’s clear Marie isn’t going to fill a familial hole. There are too many unknowns, and Eve doesn’t need to meet someone with a death sentence right now. I’ll put her off until I’m back. She knows Bobby’s a flake; it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll need someone to stay overnight Sunday with her though. I’d call Paige, but she’d assume the right to ask a million questions. It’d be a work night for Meg, and an unreasonable commute. Rory, I think. Rory? I don’t know how someone I only recently met popped to mind, but it isn’t a bad idea. Eve respects her and I-I … well … I find her relaxing. Unique. Certainly trustworthy.
She answers on the first ring. There’s country music playing in the background. Maddy loved country. She said each song told a whole story, so it was like listening to a mini-audiobook. I hadn’t pictured Rory as a country-music lover. Until this moment, I didn’t realize I’d pictured her at all.
“This is Brady Starling,” I say too formally. “Eve’s father.”
“You mean the guy I had dinner with last week?” Rory asks.
“Yes.”
“And ran into at CVS?”
“Yes.”
“That was a joke, Brady. I was being facetious.” She accentuates facetious in a way that pokes fun at my seriousness and vocabulary and maybe even general approach to life.
“Right, right,” I let out a forced chuckle. “I was calling for a favor.”
“Sure.”
I smile. “You don’t know what the favor is yet.”
“I’m not one to turn down favors.” Is she flirting? I can’t tell. Do I want her to be? I don’t know.
“I’ve postponed most of my travel until Eve leaves in the fall, but a trip came up, only for a night, and I was hoping you’d stay at the house.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll pay you, of course.”
“When?” she asks, completely ignoring the compensation component.
“I’ll leave Sunday night and be back Monday in time for dinner.”
“Is cooking Monday’s dinner part of the deal?”
This woman is completely uninhibited. Her brain isn’t constrained by the same filter as mine. I wonder what it’s like to say whatever comes to mind without worrying about long-term implications, risk, legalities. At least the joke is obvious this time. “Yes,” I tease. “Everything from scratch, please.” She laughs. “No, of course not. You can even leave Monday morning. I just don’t want Eve alone overnight.”
“We have tutoring Monday afternoon either way, so I’ll be back then to make sure everything’s all right.”
“That’d be great. If you’re still there when I get home, maybe we can all grab a bite or something.”
Am I asking her on a date? With my daughter? I’ve officially lost it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Madeline
As the one influencing both ends of the call I know Rory and Brady weren’t purposely flirting, but Rory questioned Brady’s intentions with dinner Monday and Brady hung up wearing a boyish grin I haven’t seen in a long time. I take it as a good sign they’re exploring the possibility of each other’s interest, especially given Rory’s commitment to Eve. Rory craves the opportunity to mother someone as much as Eve needs to be mothered. It wasn’t my plan, but Rory fell in love with Eve first, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for that.
Eve doesn’t stay away from my journal, but I’m certain she’ll trust her instinct the next time I send a warning flare. And she’s shrewder now. She washes her hands before picking it up and takes great care flipping the pages, cautious to prevent further damage to the binding. No matter how certain she is Brady won’t come home, she no longer reads in common areas of the house. Instead, she goes to her bedroom, draws the shades, and locks the door. It’s such a furtive process that it’s a bit anticlimactic when everything is secure and she starts to read. Looking on, you’d expect her to shoot up heroin.
Unlike Brady, Eve doesn’t read the entries in order. She leafs through the pages until a word catches her eye. Once she picks, she reads about my day over and over, considering every line, imagining where I sat while I wrote it, picturing what I wore that day. A woman’s read. Then she writes in her journal, either directly about what I wrote or about what she thinks I secretly meant. She writes beautifully, searching for both my truth and hers. The journal is more potent to Eve than any drug.
I work to keep her away from the darker entries, though I’m not always watching at the right moment. I did my legacy a disservice leaving such a paper trail behind. I wrote honestly, but not all-inclusively, so Eve gathers insight into my anguish and imaginings, without any resolution or context. After a year of regurgitating the blah-blah details of my day, I tired of documenting the mundane. I challenged myself to dig deeper, to ask hard questions: Where am I weak? What do I regret? How can I atone? She’s convinced the answer to my death lies between the lines. She’s wrong, but I can’t conceive a way to let her know it.
I watch as she flips through the pages, circling around an entry written while I was angry with her. Mega-angry. Questioning-where-I’d-gone-wrong-as-a-mother angry. Eve and her friends had been caught toilet-papering the home of a less popular girl in their class, Jenny. The reason for the attack was as heartless as Jenny having no friends. The poor thing was an easy target, and my daughter was complicit in taking advantage of that. It was the most trouble Eve ever landed in, a night she learned I take a hard stance on anything intentionally cruel. As punishment, I volunteered her services to public works for highway trash pickup the following four Saturdays. Eve had the audacity to fight back.