“And this is the fountain on Thursday night…”
I nodded and tried to look genuinely interested in the photo on Mom’s phone, but she’d taken a picture of the fountain outside the Bellagio every night they’d been there.
“It sounds like you both had a wonderful time,” Neil observed from the stove. Though it had been a busy week for Mom and Tony, they insisted Sunday dinner go on as usual.
If Neil thought he would deter her from a chance to describe every one of her four hundred pictures in detail and tell us the same stories a hundred and twelve times, he would be sorely disappointed.
“It was fantastic,” Tony enthused. “Thanks, again, guys.”
“It was the least we could do,” I replied, mentally adding, to keep you out of our business for a week.
“Hey, so, what did you guys get up to while we were gone?” he asked. He’d perched his big frame atop one of the stools at the island and hunched over the countertop as though he were in a bar, even though the bottle in his hand was a sparkling water.
Neil cast me a sideways glance as he scraped radicchio off the cutting board and into a sauté pan. We’d decided to tell Mom about the kidney transplant, and that sooner would be better to do so, but this was our best opening, and neither of us were quite ready.
“Well, our friend, El-Mudad, visited, and…” I looked between the two of them. “I also saw my half-sister, Susan.”
Mom put down her phone, Vegas pictures forgotten. That made me feel bad. I would be sure to look at them properly after dinner. She looked shocked and surprisingly sad. “When did this happen?”
“She contacted Sophie while her husband was in town on business,” Neil explained for me. “We invited them to dinner.”
“How do you feel about that, Sophie?” Mom asked, reaching out to run her hand up and down my arm supportively.
I shrugged off her touch, trying too hard to seem totally okay. “Fine, really. We just had dinner and got to know each other. And we discussed my other sister. One of them.”
“Oh?” Mom’s expressions might as well have come with a vocal translation, because I could almost hear her lifted eyebrows asking, so you’re calling them that, now?
I pleaded with my eyes for Neil to take over.
“She’s… Was it sixteen, Sophie?” he asked then went on, “She has some kidney disease or other, and Sophie plans to see if she’s a suitable donor.”
There. He’d said it just as simply as it needed to be stated. No reason for hysterics. Just soap opera level drama at the Elwood house, like always. Nothing to see here.
“Your kidney?” Mom asked, and I braced myself for an explosion of outrage with anxiety shrapnel. I was sure she would tell me that I couldn’t put my life at risk for a stranger, or start detailing all kinds of issues donors had later in life. To my surprise, tears welled in her eyes, and she hugged me, almost violently. “I am so proud of you.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know how to proceed. I’d mentally rehearsed an entire speech about how it was my body and my choice, and how my conscience demanded I do it. I’d put in a lot of work on it just to see it go to waste. “I thought you were going to be mad at me.”
“Mad at you?” She thrust me out to arms’ length. “Why would I be mad?”
“Because kidney transplants are, like, big deal surgery. With risks and stuff?” Now, it was beginning to feel a little insulting that she wasn’t at least slightly worried.
She waved her hand like she was swatting a fly. “No, they do those all the time, now. It’s nothing. Especially for you. You’re young, you’re healthy, you’ll bounce right back.”
“Really?” She was only confirming what I’d read online already, but it was nice to have it confirmed by my mom. No matter how old I got, I trusted her word more than anyone else’s.
“Oh, yeah. Remember when I worked at the hospital?” she asked.
“Did they do kidney transplants in Calumet?” Neil asked, truly perplexed.
“No, but we raised money to send two nurses down to Ann Arbor to be part of a donation chain,” she explained. “Are you a match?”
“We don’t know, yet,” I admitted. “I haven’t had the test. And I haven’t told them I said yes.”
Mom frowned. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
“I needed time to think.” I still felt like I should apologize for that. “Because of all the stuff that goes along with this. It would almost be easier to donate to a total stranger. I’m not sure there’s ever going to be any family relationship between me and them.”
“That’s just stupid,” Mom pronounced. “If you’re related enough to have matching organs, you’re related enough to be a family. That’s how you were raised.”
“It’s not me that’s the problem.” Then, I felt the need to defend Susan a little. “My sisters”—still weird—“didn’t even know I existed until recently. And they never planned to meet me.”
“But they’re fine taking your kidney?” Mom’s support for the transplant vanished in a puff of maternal defensiveness. “You’re just not good enough to be part of the family?”
“I don’t think it’s that,” I said. Not rolling my eyes was a Herculean effort. “It’s complicated.”
“And probably not something any of us could understand,” Neil put in. He pulled the kitchen towel from his shoulder and wrapped it around his hand to take the handle of one of the pans and shift it from the heat. “Not without going through it ourselves.”
“So, from what I’m hearing, this transplant thing isn’t set in stone?” Tony asked, clearly laying the groundwork to calming my mother down when she went nuclear in private later.
“Right. It’s not official. I’ve just made my decision. At this point, we don’t even know for sure that I’m a match.” There. I hoped that would help him when he had to run interference for me.
“But Sophie did offer to pay for whatever their insurance won’t cover,” Neil told them.
“See,” Tony said, rising to come to Mom’s side and place a hand on her shoulder. “Your kid is doing the right thing.”
The doorbell rang. It would be Valerie and Laurence, with Olivia; only a few other people had gate privileges. Neil gestured frantically to the stove. “Rebecca, could you?”
“Sure thing. Go get that baby,” she ordered, and Neil smiled gratefully as he hurried off.
“I’m going with him,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the swinging door. It gave me an excuse to get away from any further discussion of my family and what I was apparently doing wrong about them. Besides, I’d really missed Olivia.
I caught up with Neil in the long windowed hallway to the foyer, but I had to jog a little, he was walking so fast.
“Hey, slow your roll. You’re going to be out of breath when you get there.” I beamed over at him. “She’s home!”
“And Mariposa doesn’t come back until Monday,” he reminded me. “So, be prepared.”
Oh, god. Bedtime. Bedtime was so much easier when it was the nanny’s doing.
We heard Olivia’s cranky whining before we even opened the door. Valerie stood outside, juggling a twisting, tantruming toddler on her hip while her driver stood behind her, laden down with baby luggage.
Valerie blew hair out of her face. “You need a butler, Neil.”
“We need as few people in our house and our business as possible,” I corrected her, reaching for Olivia. I hefted her into my arms and admonished, “Stop that.”
She lifted her tear-rimmed eyes and the heavy baggage beneath them to meet mine. Her white-blonde curls stuck flat to the back of her head with sweat. She tried valiantly to keep her fit going, but she was too happy to see me. A big smile displayed her tiny, unevenly spaced teeth, and she nuzzled her face against my neck.
“Too much Grandma, apparently,” Valerie said, and she sounded a bit sad.
“I’m sure that’s not it at all,” Neil said, sympathetic but probably a little triumphant, deep down. He wanted to be Olivia’s favorite.
“She hasn’t slept a full night…oh, since I picked her up on Saturday.” Valerie usually looked put-together and dressed-to-kill, but her hair was limp and unstyled, and she was actually wearing jeans. I think I’d only seen that once or twice the entire time I’d known her. Things had gone rough.
“Is she due for more teeth?” I asked Neil. He kept track of those things.
“I think perhaps so. Molars?” He took Olivia from me and lifted her up to kiss her red tear-stained cheek. “She does feel a bit hot.” Then, to Olivia, he cooed, “Did you miss Afi? Afi missed you.”
“I gave her the teething gel—” Valerie began.
I cut her off. “No. The teething gel doesn’t work. Nothing works. It’s just hell until the little sucker cuts through. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Thank you, Sophie, but I have done this before,” Valerie snapped.
We’d run into little bumps here and there over the fact that I had never raised a child and she had. This one, though, was just pure exhaustion, judging from the tired lines on her face.
“Valerie, you look awful,” I said, realizing too late that it wasn’t a great opener. I hurried to add, “I know how you feel. Why don’t you stay for dinner with us? And if you’re too tired to go back to the city, you can crash here.”
Because I’m sure she’d just love to stay overnight at the house of the ex-lover it had taken her twenty-plus years to get over.
Maybe I wasn’t as full of good ideas as I thought I was.
At the mention of dinner, Neil blanched. “God, I left your mother in charge of the kitchen.”
“Go on,” I told him, but stopped him before he ran off with the baby in his arms. She watched him go with trepidation but didn’t let out the howl I’d expected.
“I would be happier just going home and sleeping for fourteen hours,” Valerie said, rubbing her eyes. “Tell Neil goodbye for me.”
“Of course.” I repositioned Olivia on my hip and leaned her forward. “Say bye-bye to Grandma,” I told her.
Valerie took Olivia’s face between her hands and kissed her forehead, nose, and each cheek. “I’ll see you soon, my love.”
The thing about kids was that if you loved them, you were still happy to get rid of them, sometimes. But it was hard to be happy walking away. Valerie lingered with a hand on Olivia’s hair and longing look. I knew it killed her that she lived so far away; even her Manhattan residence was too far for her liking.
“You should come for a cookout, soon,” I offered. “You and Laurence.”
“We’ll have to schedule something,” she said noncommittally. They never really came out, unless it was Olivia related.
It wasn’t that I was trying to make Valerie my best friend or something. She didn’t like me for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most obvious was that she’d been in love with Neil for decades and somehow viewed me as having swooped in to steal her man. Or something.
That wasn’t fair. She had a long-term boyfriend, now, and she’d never outright accused me of stealing Neil. There was just a lot of friction between us, and probably would be, again, in the future. But there had been nice things, too.
“Well, schedule Christmas at Langhurst Court,” I said. “Because Neil and I want to have everyone there. His family, my family. Our family.” I gestured between her and me. “We want you to be there.”
“I’m not sure if I can,” she said bluntly. I knew right away that it wasn’t because of any petty drama between the two of us. They had celebrated Christmas there a lot when Emma was a little girl. It might have been too painful for her to go back.
Then, she added, “I may be getting married.”
“Getting married?” I whooped with joy, and she motioned for me to keep my voice down.
“Sophie, we haven’t announced it. Don’t run off and tell everyone. But Laurence and I are trying to decide between a Christmas wedding or a Christmas elopement.”
“Can you elope on Christmas?” I wondered aloud. “Isn’t City Hall closed?”
“There are wedding chapels in Las Vegas,” she reminded me. “We might just go to one of those.”
“Well, according to my mom, the Bellagio is the best hotel on the Strip. And the fountain is the eighth wonder of the world.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Valerie said dryly. “Must run. But I’ll talk to Laurence about Christmas. I’m not blowing you off completely.”
“Please don’t,” I said, then nudged Olivia’s arm. “Wave bye-bye.”
Olivia mustered up enough tired enthusiasm for a quiet, “Bye-bye” and a perfunctory open-and-close of her hand.
We stepped back and closed the door, and I gave her a little kiss on the forehead. “Come on. Let’s go see what Afi made for dinner.”
In the kitchen, Neil stood at the island, cutting chicken into cautiously tiny pieces while Mom and Tony set hot serving dishes on the table. Mom turned as we entered and came to claim Olivia, but I warded her off with a warning hand. “Teething.”
“Oh, never mind, then.” Mom let Olivia cling to me like a little barnacle and went to set up the high chair. I managed to coax Olivia into it and took the seat beside her.
Neil sat on the other side and pushed the small plastic plate he’d prepared in front of her. “Here, my darling. Don’t you look worn out?”
“She’s probably a little sleep drunk from the car, too,” I pointed out. She seemed to wait for the last ten minutes of a car ride to actually sleep then woke up cranky. Then, I glanced at my mom’s left hand. Still just an engagement ring. “Hey, you didn’t do anything stupid, like elope in Vegas, did you?”
“Of course not, Sophie Ann!” Mom reacted like I’d asked if she’d assassinated a president while she was in Vegas. “You know we’re getting married here.”
“Whatever would make you say something like that?” Neil asked with a laugh.
Since I couldn’t tell him about what Valerie had said, I just shrugged. “People do it.” As Olivia dove her fist into her risotto, I changed the subject. “I told Valerie about Christmas, by the way.”
“What about Christmas?” Mom asked.
“Sophie would like to have Christmas at Langhurst Court, this year.” Neil said, reaching for a helping of chicken. “It’s my house in Somerset.”
“Oh, Haunted Hogwarts?” Tony said, then looked immediately mortified.
“That’s what Sophie calls it,” Mom explained to Neil.
He nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I am familiar. I prefer Deadton Abbey.”
“We thought we could invite everyone. I mean, we can fly the family over if they want to come—” I began, and Mom’s eyes went wide.
“Are you kidding? Honey, do you think Grandma and Aunt Marie are going to want to haul themselves all the way to England at the busiest time of the year?” Mom asked, as though I’d put everyone out just by asking. “And what about the family who won’t want to come, or can’t come?”
“It was just an idea.” I looked down at my plate and cleared my throat. “I just wanted to do something nice.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t nice,” she said quickly. “Tony, I bet your ma would love a free trip to England.”
She slightly stressed the “free”. I knew Mom thought Tony’s mother was a penny-pincher of the most obnoxious sort. I’d heard all about her giant coupon folder and the numerous arguments with department store clerks.
Tony just nodded mildly. “If she’s invited. And her docs clear her.”
“Of course she’s invited,” Neil said easily. “You’re family, now, Tony.”
Olivia’s crankiness required speed on Neil’s and my part. We hurried through eating and excused ourselves.
“Sorry, I don’t want to be rude, Mom, but she’s on the cusp of a meltdown.” I pushed my chair back and grabbed up some dishes.
“Leave those. I’ll take care of them,” she said. “Get that little one to bed.”
Neil took Olivia, and we headed out of the kitchen, toward the nursery. I stopped him. “Wait a second. Mariposa isn’t back, yet, and Olivia is going to be up and down all night. Why don’t we just bring her to bed with us?”
“You said sleeping with her in our bed was like sleeping with a bulldozer made out of lava,” he reminded me.
He wasn’t wrong. Olivia pushed us around the bed like a tank and put off more heat than the sun. But she was miserable, and she’d been gone for a long time. “She needs the cuddles.”
Neil pretended to consider. “I could stand some cuddling.”
“We can bring the playpen in, if she gets too impossible to sleep with,” I suggested. “Why don’t I grab that, and you can carry her Pull-Ups and PJs.”
“Potty,” Olivia reminded us somberly. She wasn’t fully toilet trained, yet, but she did like to use the potty before bed, just to get in the habit. When we reached the nursery, Neil took her to the bathroom and patiently helped her get situated on the little green frog potty. I got the playpen from the closet and a thin summer nightgown from her dresser, plus a couple of Pull-Ups.
When I heard Neil exclaim, “Well done!” in the bathroom, I went to the door.
“Did you do potty?” I asked with a big smile for her.
“Ta-da!” she announced, clapping her hands.
Over her head, Neil mouthed, “Now what?”
I picked up some baby wipes from the counter and tossed them to him. “Now, you clean her up, Afi.”
Before he could argue, I grabbed the supplies and stranded him.
I dropped Olivia’s things off in our bedroom then returned to the kitchen, where Mom and Tony were still eating.
“Did you get her down already?” Mom asked, surprised. She’d heard many epic tales about the battles fought at bedtime.
I shook my head. “No. We’re going to sleep with her in our bed. I didn’t want you to think we abandoned you.”
“No way,” Tony assured me. “You do what you need to for that little girl. Maybe it’s not my place to say so, Sophie, but I’m real proud of you.”
Getting a compliment from my future stepfather was too weird to deal with, so I deflected. “Don’t forget, I have a full-time nanny.”
“Yeah, you do,” he conceded. “To make sure she’s cared for and don’t want for nothing. That’s good parenting.”
“Well, I’m not a parent.” I couldn’t remind people of that enough. It felt too much like I was pretending to be Olivia’s mother. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“I’ll just clean up here, and we’ll head out,” Mom said.
“Okay. Just call security and tell them to set the night alarms.”
When I got to the bedroom, Olivia lay in the middle of our bed, rolling back and forth in nothing but her diaper, her feet in her hands as she chanted, “No, no, no,” at varying volumes.
Neil sat beside her, the nightgown held helplessly in his hands. “How does Mariposa get her dressed?”
“Brute force, I assume.” I took the nightgown from him and tossed it aside. “She’ll be warm enough without it.”
He pulled the covers back, and Olivia rolled to her stomach to crawl toward the pillows, squealing with delight when he playfully flipped the corner of the sheet over her head.
“Don’t rile her up!” I warned him. “I’m not going to be responsible.”
Neil went to the bathroom and took out his contacts, but I wasn’t ready for bed at eight at night. He probably wasn’t, either, but he would lay with Olivia, anyway. I wondered how often he’d done this with Emma when she was sick or sad or otherwise needed him.
The hardest part about caring for Olivia wasn’t the day-to-day. Changing diapers sucked, tantrums in public were the worst, and I don’t know how or why she’d thought putting one of my earrings up her nose was a good idea, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was watching Neil compare every stage and quirk and behavior to his memories of Emma. I never knew if I should want him to see them there or not.
“Afi?” Olivia called, scooting as though she would try to reach the end of the bed.
“Nope.” I picked her up and put her right back into the middle. “Just wait here for Afi. Tell me about what you did at Grandma Valerie’s house.”
“Varee’s house?” Olivia pointed toward the door. “Over there.”
“Yeah, it’s not in here, is it?” I lightly petted her back, and her little eyelids drooped. She wriggled onto her stomach.
“Critch a back,” she ordered sleepily, toddler speak for “scratch my back”.
“You went away for seven sleeps,” I informed her, drawing circles with my fingertips on her impossibly soft skin.
“I tired. I gotta go night-night.”
“Yup,” I agreed, and yawned. “Maybe I should go night-night.”
“No…” Olivia’s voice faded and gave way to a small snore.
The bathroom door opened, and I held up a finger to preemptively silence Neil when he came out.
“Is she already asleep?” he whispered, approaching the bed.
I tested by slightly shifting on the mattress. She snorted, and one hand flew up. I held my breath. Then, her body eased, again.
“Yup,” I whispered back with a sigh of relief. Slowly, like a grenade might go off, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “So, we’re off the hook, if we want to be.”
“No.” Neil pulled his shirt over his head as he went toward the closet. “I don’t want to leave her here alone.”
I waited to respond until he returned, clad in some white-and-blue pinstriped cotton sleep-pants. Ugh, he looked so good, no matter what he wore. And he looked absolutely adorable slipping under the covers to snuggle up beside Olivia’s worn out little form in the center of the bed.
“It’s, like, eight. Are you really going to bed, right now?” I teased.
“She isn’t going to be this small forever. The days of cuddling a baby are fast escaping us,” he mused.
I held my tongue and did not remind him that, while those days might be escaping him, I was escaping them. “Well, you enjoy. I’m going to go see if Mom needs help with the dishes. And then, I’ll probably do some of the normal human things people do when they don’t go to bed at nine.”
I gave them one last glance and dimmed the lights on the way out. Parent or not, that little girl owned my entire heart. The thought of any hardship or disappointment befalling her made weird panicky feelings assault my brain. Someday, something would happen that I couldn’t control or prevent. I was completely helpless.
It was terrifying.
And Neil had known that helpless feeling in the worst way.
I thought about my sister, the other daughter of Joey Tangen. He’d probably put her in bed beside him when she hadn’t felt good. He’d probably felt helpless when they’d learned of her diagnosis.
I ached for myself that I’d never had that. I ached for him that he’d had to endure it.
I went to the kitchen, knowing I would find Mom there. Our conversation on the subject of my kidney had been far from over when we’d gotten interrupted.
True to form, Mom was slowly washing the last of the dishes. “Tony went down to the house. I’m just finishing up.”
“And waiting to see if I’m okay,” I tacked on for her.
She sighed. “I just don’t understand them. You’re successful. You run a magazine, you’re a published author, you’ve got billions of dollars. Why not be proud of that? Why wouldn’t they want to know you?”
“Maybe because I have billions of dollars?” I waited for Mom to come to the same conclusion I had; that money had changed me, that my heart wasn’t as good as other peoples’, that something about me was defective.
And of course, that’s not a conclusion my mom made about me. “Do you think they don’t want to seem like they’re after your money?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” I took a paper towel and went to work wiping up the counter. “Maybe I shouldn’t have offered them money in the first place.”
“They might be embarrassed,” Mom said, tilting her head. Then, she tilted it the other way. “Or they’re upset that you offered before they could take you for more?”
“No, I don’t think that’s the case.” And I didn’t want to believe that, either.
“Sophie Ann,” Mom began softly, “you’re not doing this because you think it will make them like you?”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “Susan and I have been shockingly honest with each other about how weird this is. Neither of us really knows how to navigate it.”
“It’s a very strange situation.” Mom braced her hands on the edge of the sink, the sponge still in her hand. “I am so sorry. I had no idea how hard this was going to be for you.”
“What, when you were banging a strange teenager at a party twenty-eight years ago?” I made a mock-stern face at her. “Where was your good judgment?”
“Where was your good judgment when you went to a hotel room with a grown man?” she countered.
I just held up my hands and gestured around the vast expanse of the huge kitchen. “Duh.”
“You know you’re not in it for the money. You never were.” Mom went back to scrubbing a pan. “What does Neil think about this? I know he’s very supportive, but what does he really think?”
“I don’t know.” I took the pan from her and rinsed it. “He kind of blew up when I first told him. But I think the fact that this is someone’s child, and they might lose her…”
“Gotcha.” She looked up guiltily, as she almost always did when we discussed Emma, even in the abstract. It was like a weird brand of survivor’s guilt or something. She didn’t want to remind him that he’d lost a child when she hadn’t.
“That’s a big part of why I’m doing this,” I admitted. “I saw what Neil went through. I don’t want that to happen to whoever Joey Tangen ended up with. I know I don’t owe them anything. And I know they won’t owe me anything in return. But it’s the right thing to do.”
“As long as you don’t get hurt, honey.”
If that was as good as my mom could do, I would take it.
After she left for the night, I headed back to the bedroom. I stood in the doorway, watching Neil and Olivia. He slept on his side, his arm above his head, practically falling off the edge of the bed. She sprawled spread-eagle in the center, taking up way more real estate than I would have assumed a toddler could manage in a California king.
I’d made up my mind. There was no sense in putting it off further.
I’d claimed the loft over the den for my home office. There were plenty of rooms in the house, but being there, tucked away beside the chimney of the giant fieldstone fireplace, I felt a little like I was in the loft of a cabin back home. Granted, cabins back home would have had a hundred percent more antlers, and the wood beams crisscrossing the ceiling would have been a lot more rustic than the sleek ones I looked down on from my little nook. But it felt homey and secure.
While my computer booted up, I tried to figure out what I was going to say. “Yeah, I’ll give you my kidney” seemed anticlimactic, but what else could she possibly want to hear from me? All the reasons for doing it that were so important to me, so critical to my decision, would mean nothing to them. The only part that would matter to them was the part where I gave their sister my kidney.
I stared at an open email window for at least fifteen minutes before I even attempted to type. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t doing this to prove myself to them. That I didn’t expect anything in return, but that I wouldn’t reject them, either. I wanted to solve everything and see it settled tonight. If I could have added the damn kidney as an attachment, I would have.
Instead, I typed in her email address with the subject line, “Decision”. Then, in the body of the email, I told her, “Okay. I’m in,” and hit send.
****
The next day, Deja caught me by the elevators as I left for lunch.
“Off to see my lov-ah?” she said, making the word sound as gross as possible.
“Ew.” I snorted. “Yes, I am. Are you coming with?”
“No, I’ve got the Bills.” She made a pained face and ran her hand over her growing-in hair. “The Bills” were our accountants. Their names weren’t actually Bill, but the firm was Williams & Williams. We had to make our own fun.
“Do you want me to stay behind?” Accounting was almost certainly something I should have been involved in, right?
She waved a hand. “No. Don’t bail on her. She’s been looking forward to seeing you after being incommunicado for an entire week.”
Deja knew why I’d been “incommunicado”, and we both knew that it was the dirty details Holli was looking forward to.
“Well, take notes or something?” I sounded weirdly hopeful, and that didn’t sit right with me. I shouldn’t have to ask to be included in the business of the business that I co-owned. But if Deja thought it was more important for me to see Holli, maybe she was just trying to be a nice wife by handling it all herself.
Tony had the car waiting in front of the building, and I gave him a wave as I stepped out of the door. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“That’s my line,” he said, then added, “Well, minus the ‘sir’.” He opened the rear passenger door for me, and I got in, immediately reaching for my phone.
The partition was down, which was strange. He usually left it up. And he hardly ever talked to us through it; he used the Maybach’s intercom system. So, it shocked the hell out of me when he got in and said, “Can we have a chat on the way to… It was Public Kitchen right?”
I blinked. “Yeah. No problem. And, um, yes. Public Kitchen.”
He punched something into the GPS and pulled away from the curb before he spoke. “I’ve been thinking about talking to Neil. About leaving the job.”
“Oh?” That would make it easier on Neil, who’d been stressing out about how to fire his future father-in-law.
“Yeah. You know, I’ve been his driver for a long time. Way back. His ex-wife hired me. That’s how long I’ve been working for him.” Tony cleared his throat, as though it had occurred to him that I wouldn’t want to hear about the previous Mrs. Elwood. “You guys are good employers. The pay is good, the benefits are fine, I’m not mad at you or anything—”
“It’s just weird to be a part of the family, working for family,” I finished for him. “We get it. We’ve actually talked about how to approach you over this.”
“Not thrilled with the idea of having your stepdad drive you and your honey around on dates?” he joked.
“Something like that,” I said uncomfortably. Because that was one of my big concerns: places he’d taken us in the past, things we’d done just a partition away from him…
Like the time before Neil and I were even officially dating, when he’d made Tony circle the block so Neil could finish making me come.
Ugh, what I wouldn’t give for a time machine.
“Anything that happened while I worked for you guys is confidential, you know?” he asked, his eyes briefly meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
Not for the first time, I wished they made these cars with ejector seats.
“No, I get it. I don’t think you’d… I mean, I’m sure Mom doesn’t want to know—”
“Not at all,” he agreed. “Not that I would say anything. I mean, who wants to hear that kind of stuff about their kid? And why would I even want to talk about it?”
“Exactly.” I felt like we were in a scene in a mob movie where we were both trying to stress that nobody saw nothin’ and we were all going to keep our snitch mouths shut. “I appreciate your discretion.”
“Good. And I appreciate yours, too,” he said, and this time, I didn’t quite pick up on the knowing tone.
“Excuse me?”
“Come on. I know why you sent us to Vegas while your friend was here,” Tony said, almost reluctant to say it. “You don’t want your mom to know about him or the little place out in the woods.”
My face blazed. Tony had driven Neil and me to the Pavillon Français on our wedding night, so he knew it was there. I guess it was naive of me to not realize that he’d know what it was all about. But I’d never have suspected that he would know about El-Mudad, or what we got up to with him.
“I don’t—” I began, even though I didn’t have to defend myself.
He cut me off. “Look, like I said, I’ve been driving Mr. Elwood for a long enough time that I know the kind of stuff he gets up to. In the abstract. And I got nothing against people being adventurous. But your mom is kind of innocent, you know? She’s not like us.”
Us? Oh, god, no. I did not want to think about my mother being “adventurous” with Tony. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘like us’, but—”
“Hey, you come from the same background as her. Small-town girl, not a lot of wild things to get up to. But you, me, Mr. El— Neil, we’re worldly people. You live in this city, you see some things. You get a real education. But a lot of stuff still shocks Rebecca.”
I didn’t need particulars about what, exactly, he’d shocked her with.
Thankfully, he didn’t provide them. “I know you didn’t want her there while your friend visited. And she doesn’t know that I know what goes on. But if I keep working for you, what happens if she asks me about it? If she says, ‘Hey, is Sophie cheating on Neil with that guy?’, what, am I supposed to lie to her?”
“No, you can’t do that. It’s not a fair position to put you in.” I would have much rather this conversation had gone down between him and Neil, but I fully understood him. “Is this your two weeks, then?”
“It’s my ‘hire another driver soon’ warning.” He guided the car into a different lane. “I don’t want to leave you high and dry, but I gotta look for another job.”
“Another job?” I blurted in surprise, before my logical mind could catch up.
“Well, yeah. I need a job. Gotta keep up with Becky’s QVC bill. She can’t live off of you forever.”
“Right, but…” I hadn’t thought about any of this, and it was going down a road I didn’t like very much. “Won’t you have to move?”
“She didn’t tell you we’ve been looking at places?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting up.
“No!” I would have offered to buy them a place, or help with a down payment.
Maybe that was exactly why they hadn’t mentioned it.
“We want to stay on Long Island,” he went on. “So, it’s not so far from you guys that getting out for Sunday dinner would be a pain in the ass. But it’s really going to be down to where Becky can get a job.”
Mom had been living rent-and-carefree in our guesthouse for a while. The thought of her returning to work boggled my mind, especially considering all the times in my childhood where she’d fantasized about winning the lottery and never working another day in her life.
“I didn’t know she wanted to go back to work,” I mused aloud.
Tony shrugged his big shoulders. “I can’t say that I would, if my daughter were willing to put me up in a mansion for free. But everybody wants to make their own way, right?”
“I guess so?” Even before I’d been with Neil, the thought of turning down free money and no bills would have sounded stupid to me. Then again, when I did get together with Neil, I hadn’t wanted to be seen as a gold-digger, so I’d done everything I could to keep working on my own. And even when it was stuff that didn’t pan out, like beauty vlogging, I’d needed it to keep from being bored and directionless.
Maybe that’s what Mom was going through. Feeling useless and kept really wore a person down.
“I had no idea any of this was going on,” I admitted. “If she was unhappy, why didn’t she tell me?”
“She’s not unhappy.” Tony sounded confused as to how I’d arrived at that conclusion. “She just wants to do something different.”
I nodded, but I still didn’t really understand. “So, you’re going to get a job, Mom’s going to get a job, you’re going to move out, and…”
“And maybe some other guy will get the apartment over the porte cochere,” he suggested, giving me a pointed look.
He’d said “some other guy”, not “some other driver”.
I didn’t really want to discuss El-Mudad with him or anyone who wasn’t me or Neil or El-Mudad. “Maybe. But it’s going to be hard to find another driver who meets the high standards you’ve set.”
“Did I set a high standard?” he asked with a laugh. “I thought the chauffeur marrying a member of the family was a scandal.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re no Tom Branson, Tony.”
He pulled the car over and checked the address on the GPS, again. “And we have arrived. You want me to get your door?”
“No, I got it.” I paused with my hand on the handle. “Thanks for being cool and not mentioning our…lifestyle to Mom.”
“Thanks for being cool and not caring that I’ve broken a Downton Abbey rule,” he replied, and made a shooing motion with his hand. “Have a good time. Call me when you need to be picked up.”
Yeah, coming from my stepdad-to-be, that did sound a little weird.