Moira laughs at me.
“No way. Just sit tight and let me do my thing. We’ll have you back in her life soon enough, but it’s going to be a bit of a fight to get there.”
I nod.
I leave her office and go right to Olivia’s. She’s in shorts and a tank top when I get there, mopping the floors and looking annoyed. I lean against the wall and tell her what Moira said while she works. She’s cleaning with gusto, and when that happens I know she’s trying to distract herself. There is also a bowl of Doritos on the table, and she keeps walking over to it and pushing chips into her mouth. Something’s up, but I know even if I ask, she won’t tell me.
“Do whatever she says,” is all Olivia tells me. There are a few minutes where we don’t speak. Her crunching dominates the room.
“She didn’t seem sorry,” Olivia says, finally. “It was the strangest thing. She just showed up at my office to tell me all of that. She knew I’d tell you. Seems sinister.”
“She’s up to something,” I agree.
“Maybe she’s out of money and she figures she needs to hit you up for child support.”
I shake my head. “Her father built an empire. That company was a small portion of what he was dipping his interest into. Leah doesn’t need money.”
“Then she’s out for revenge, Moira is right. What are you going to do?”
I shrug. “Fight for Estella. Even if she wasn’t mine I’d want to fight for her.”
She stops mopping. A piece of her hair has slipped from the messy pile on her head. She tugs on it then slides it behind her ear.
“Don’t make me love you more,” she says. “My clock is ticking and you’re talking baby.”
I grind my teeth to keep from smiling.
“Let’s make one,” I say, taking a step toward her.
The whites of her eyes explode around her pupils. She hides behind her mop.
“Don’t,” she warns me. She reaches for the bowl of Doritos without taking her eyes from me, and finds it empty.
“Do you think we’d have a boy or a girl?”
“Caleb…”
I take another two steps before she dips her mop in the bucket, and whacks me in the stomach with it.
I stare down at my dripping clothes with my mouth open. She knows what’s coming next because she drops the mop and runs for the living room. I watch her grab onto furniture as she slips and slides across the wet floor. I go after her, but she’s such a cleaning addict she can practically ice skate over wet marble. Amazing. I fall flat on my ass.
I stay there, and she comes out of the kitchen carrying two glass bottles of Coke.
“Peace offering.” She extends one toward me.
I grab the bottle and her arm and pull her down on the floor next to me.
She slides around until we are sitting back to back, leaning on each other, our legs extended outward. Then we talk about nothing. And it feels so damn good.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
My daughter was born on March third at 3:33 P.M. She had a shock of red hair that stuck straight up, like those toy trolls from the 90s. I ran my fingers over it, smiling like a goddamn fool. She was beautiful. Leah had convinced me we were having a boy. She’d stroked my face and looked at me like I was her god and practically purred, “Your father produced two sons, and your grandfather had three sons. The men in your family make boys.”
I secretly wanted a daughter. She openly wanted a son. There was a Freudian element to our gender preferences, which I didn’t express to my wife as she bought and decorated the nursery in greens and yellows “just to play it safe.” Though she wasn’t playing it safe when I noticed a teether in the shape of a dump truck appear in the mounds of baby things, or the tiny baseball-inspired onesie. Since I played basketball in college, the baseball selection could only have been a salute to her father, who never missed a Yankees game on TV. Her lying, playing it safe ass was cheating. So, I cheated too. I bought baby girl things and secretly hid them in my closet.
On the day she went into labor, we were planning on going for a walk on the beach. She wasn’t due for another few weeks, and I had read that most first-time pregnancies went past the due date. Leah was climbing into her side of the car when she made a noise in the back of her throat. Her hands were tan; I watched them clutch her stomach, the white fabric of her dress bunching between her clawed fingers.
“I thought they were just Braxton Hicks, but they’re getting closer together. We might want to go to the hospital and save the beach for another day,” she panted, closing her eyes.
She leaned across the center console, started the car and positioned all three air conditioning vents at her face. I’d watched her for a minute; unable to comprehend that this was actually happening. Then I ran inside and grabbed her hospital bag from the bedroom.
I was shocked when the doctor loudly announced “Girl” before tossing her onto her mother’s chest. Not shocked enough to keep the stupid grin off my face. I named her Estella from Great Expectations. That night when I went home to take a shower, I pulled a box from the top of my closet. It had shown up in the mail a month earlier, with neither a note nor a return address attached. I was baffled, until I opened it.
I sliced the tape open with scissors and pulled a lavender blanket out of the box. It was so soft; it felt like cotton between my fingertips.
“Olivia?” I said softly. But, why would she send me a baby gift? I shoved it back in the box before I could overthink things.
I stared at it with a smirk on my face. Had she known Leah desperately wanted a boy and sent a girl gift to spite her? Or had she remembered how much I wanted a daughter? You could never really get a firm grip on Olivia’s motives. Unless you asked. But, then she’d just lie.
I carried the blanket with me to the hospital. When Leah saw me with it, she rolled her eyes. She would have done more than roll her eyes if she’d known where it came from. I wrapped my daughter in Olivia’s blanket and felt euphoric. I am a father. To a little girl. Leah seemed less excited. I chalked it up to the disappointment of the missing boy child. Or maybe she had the baby blues. Or maybe she was jealous. If I’d said the thought that my wife would be jealous of a daughter hadn’t crossed my mind, I’d be lying.
I held Estella a little tighter. I’d already wondered how I would protect her from the ugly things in the world. I never thought I’d be wondering how to protect her from her own mother. But, that’s the way of things, I thought sadly. Leah’s parents were emotional black holes for most of her childhood. She’d get better. I’d help her. Love fixed people.