Chapter 11

Brandt

I sat at the kitchen counter sipping my coffee and looking around the house. I jotted a few more to-dos down on the paper in front of me and sat back on the stool. I had taken the day off work, something I did about once a month. I got Sicily off to school, letting my mom sleep in and had a lot of things to get done that day. It was my monthly deep clean, the day I took to completely overhaul the house. I did normal cleaning things every night before bed but with me being gone all the time, it was hard to keep up with everything. My mom had offered to do it and keep up with it weekly, but I put enough on her as it was and didn’t want to treat her like the help.

Early on, when Josie had first left, I thought about keeping the nanny on, even hiring a maid to keep up with everything, but I felt like I was setting my daughter up for a view of the world that very few people really got to see. Sure, she would be set for life with me owning the company, but I wanted her to be grounded, to know what it was like to be raised by at least one parent. I never thought she would be a nanny’s responsibility, which had been a huge argument when Josie had originally hired her. It was one thing to be taken care of by her father and her grandmother, another to be taken care of by a complete stranger. I didn’t mind taking these days off. It gave me a chance to clear my head and have a little pride in the apartment.

I got up from the counter and refilled my coffee cup before heading to the closet and pulling down all the boxes on the top shelf. It was a bunch of old paperwork that at one time had seemed important, but I was sure I could get rid of most at that point. I took the boxes down, carried them over to the coffee table, and sat down on the couch. I opened the boxes and started sorting, needing some kind of organization or I would end up tossing everything. I started to go through each paper individually when I was interrupted by a knock on the door. The only people who knew I was home were the people at work, and most likely they would call before showing up at my house unannounced.

I walked over to the door and opened it, and then my chin nearly hit the floor. There Josie was, in all her glory, standing in my doorway. I thought about closing the door in her face and going back to what I was doing, but I knew she wouldn’t go away that easily. She hadn’t shown her face in two years, and now that she was there, I was kind of curious why she would come there. I gritted my teeth and took in a deep, slow breath, trying to keep my calm, just glad Sicily wasn’t there for this.

“What do you want?” I said coldly. “You can’t show up at my front door anymore.”

“I figured Sicily would be at school,” she said calmly. “So I wanted to come by and talk to you about seeing her. Obviously, I could have shown up when she was here, but I didn’t want to disrespect you.”

“Since when have you given a shit about respecting me or not?” I said, chuckling. “Really, why are you here?”

“I’m telling the truth,” she said. “I want to see my daughter. Are you going to invite me in?”

“No,” I scoffed. “I don’t want you in my house. And hear that clearly, Josie, it’s my house, not yours any longer. How dare you just show up here out of the blue? You know where I work. You have my cell phone number. You should have called first. How did you even know I would be here? “

“I called your secretary, and she said you were off. I took a shot in the dark you would be here.”

“You abandoned us,” I said. “You abandoned your daughter when she was five years old with no birthday cards, no phone calls, no fight for her in court. You left and washed your hands of this entire family. You left me with the responsibility to take care of her. We haven’t heard anything from you besides signing the divorce papers, in two fucking years. You need to leave.”

“Brandt,” she said, obviously trying to keep her cool. “I know you’re upset, and I know I have made mistakes, but Sicily has a right to see me.”

“She does,” I said, shaking my head. “But she never even talks about you, not even a little bit. The judge doesn’t think she wants to use that right. Trust me, I know, because every year there is a follow-up with the judge where she asks if you have made any contact.”

“You’re making a mistake here, Brandt,” Josie said angrily. “You cannot play God and just decide whatever you want. You cannot keep me from my daughter.”

“You don’t like it? Take it up with the judge,” I said, slamming the door in her face.

I leaned against the door, breathing heavily. I listened as the elevator beeped and she climbed inside to leave. I couldn’t believe after all that time, she would have the nerve to show up without warning and demand to be part of Sicily’s life. She acted like she had some kind of claim to her because she gave birth. Being a parent was more than about giving birth. It was being there through everything and fighting for the time with your child. She was a selfish bitch who had run off at the first sign of distress, not caring the least bit about the wellbeing of her child.

I was so angry, so livid, that I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I turned back and walked into the living room, continuing to go through the papers. I needed to stay on track, blow off some steam, and clean the hell out of that place. That was exactly what I did, too. I went through every paper in the house, filed the ones I needed, and threw out the rest. I vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, washed the laundry, and did everything else that normally got neglected, and all of it was done by the very early afternoon. I sped through that house like a madman, trying to get the anger inside of me out before Sicily got home. I didn’t want her to know anything about any of it, and I didn’t want her notice how to upset I was. She was really good at picking up on my emotional status because she knew me so well.

When I was done folding the last of the clothes and putting them away, I walked into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. I grabbed a beer and went out on my balcony, needing to feel the cold air hit me hard. I plopped down at the table and set my plate down, feeling a little better about everything. At least at that point, I was calm enough to put my feet up and think without feeling nothing but rage. I looked out over the cityscape, watching the planes in the distance flying in and out of LaGuardia. I could faintly hear the honking of the horns below, and I tuned them out, trying to clear my mind.

Immediately, my thoughts went back to Emma, a place I was getting used to being. I thought about her wide eyes as she looked out the window at the night cityscape like she had never seen anything like that before. In reality, she probably hadn’t seen anything like that, especially growing up in such a small town like Camden, Maine. I had looked it up online and didn’t even realize places that small still existed in this country. I thought about how sweet she was, how she seemed like the kind of girl who would never make trouble for anyone, the kind who made everyone laugh with her wit and sarcasm. I thought about how gentle she was, how she spoke in soft tones and her eyes lit up when she thought of something exciting. I knew she would probably make an amazing mother to someone one day, if she wasn’t already.

I scoffed at myself, already knowing that answer. Something had happened that night when she walked out of my room, but I didn’t think for a second that Trevor was right by saying she probably was married with kids. She didn’t come off like the kind of person who would ever do that to someone, me or the person she might be married to. She seemed like the kind of person who would go out of her way to keep people from getting hurt. I sighed, taking a sip of my beer and thinking back to that night when everything in my world seemed to stop.

She had walked into that party with her fancy dress, her fancy shoes, and her happy friends, but I could tell right away she was different from anyone else in the room. There was something about the way she looked at everyone and everything around her. It was like she was seeing the world for the first time. I knew it was her talking to me before I ever looked over at her, and my heart had skipped in my chest as she chuckled sweetly at her own joke. When I was standing there in front of her, the building could have burned down around us and I would have never noticed. When she came back to the house with me, it was immediately comfortable like she belonged there. I rarely ever had a woman at my place, but I didn’t see any other option with Emma. I needed to have her with me, close, in my home, in my bed.

Ever since that night, she had consumed my mind. Everything I did, no matter how focused I was, she was there in the background taunting me, calling for me. It was nuts, absolutely crazy to me that after only one night and after her taking off like that, I couldn’t get her from my mind. I had never felt that way about any other woman in my entire life. No one had ever breached my head like she did. I knew I couldn’t keep going like that, keep wanting something but not knowing how to get her out of my mind. The answer was staring me right in the face, but I was scared of it, terrified even, especially after seeing Josie earlier.

The answer wasn’t deleting her from my memory, and it wasn’t moving on and hoping that one day she got out of my head. The answer was finding her, doing everything I could to make it happen and get her in front of me again. I wanted to know why she left, why she ran away without a word. I wanted to know if I lingered on her mind the same way that she did with me. If her answer was no, fine, but at least then, I could come home and start to move on from all this. I hated feeling like I was losing it all the time. My friends thought I was nuts, and I had to get ahold of the things in my life. Distraction wasn’t what I needed. I needed to know once and for all if there was any future with this girl. I was going to find her no matter how long it took and finally put it all to rest.