11. Eli
CHAPTER 11
ELI
“ Y ou really don’t have to work all day?” Charlie asked, unable to disguise the excitement in his tone.
“I really don’t.” Eli could hardly believe it himself. It felt like he was forgetting something vital, walking away from work for the day like this, and yet it had been surprisingly easy to do. He had put his mailbox on do not disturb and arranged for his messages to be forwarded to his secretary and one of his associates. Between the two of them, they would be able to handle anything that came through, and he should be fine to take the day off.
A real day off. When was the last time he’d had one?
He wasn’t sure — but he was looking forward to it.
“Can we spend the whole day here?” Charlie asked.
“Maybe not the whole day,” Eli laughed.
“But you don’t have to get back home for work!”
“That’s true, but I think you’d get tired if you were on the beach all day long.”
“I would not,” Charlie insisted. “I want to stay all day.”
“We’ll see,” Eli said. “We’ll see how you feel in a few hours.”
Charlie turned to face Maddie instead. “Maddie, can we stay all day?”
Maddie laughed. “Your dad is in charge, you know, Charlie.”
“I thought you were both in charge.”
“Well, I happen to agree with him, anyway. Let’s see how we all feel after a few hours. I’m not sure any of us are up to a whole day here.”
She glanced at Eli.
He looked away quickly, knowing what she must be thinking. When he had told her that he’d made arrangements to have the day off, she had raised her eyebrows and said nothing, and he’d gotten the feeling that she didn’t quite believe it.
If he was honest with himself, he knew he couldn’t blame her for doubting. He hadn’t shown himself to be reliable about this.
Today was different. Today he really would be spending the whole day with Charlie. What she’d said about her own father the other night — about losing him so young and the memories that had stayed with her — that had really affected him. He had always thought of his relationship with Charlie as something he had forever to get right, but they didn’t, of course. Even if they were lucky and nothing tragic interceded, as it had with Maddie and her own father, Charlie was getting older every day. One day, the mere fact of time passing would take the two of them away from one another, and Eli would never get these years back.
He was determined to make the most of them.
“I’m going to get some shells so that we can decorate a sandcastle,” Charlie announced.
“Don’t go any farther than…” Eli eyed the beach. “See that striped umbrella down there?”
“Yeah.”
“No farther than that.” They had come to a fairly secluded beach today — it wasn’t the one where Charlie had first met Maddie. Eli still felt spooked from having temporarily misplaced his son that day, and knew that it would be easier to relax on a beach with fewer people. Here, at least, he wouldn’t have to fear that anyone had snatched Charlie up — the striped umbrella, several yards off, was the closest person in either direction. “And no going in the water,” he added severely. “Don’t even get your feet wet. I mean it.”
“Aw, Dad.”
“I’m not joking. If you want to go into the water, you come back here and Maddie or I will take you. You can go down the beach a ways to collect shells, but you stay out of the water. Am I understood?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Okay, then. Have a good time.”
Charlie trotted off down the beach. Eli watched him go. Without taking his eyes off of him, he asked, “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
“A mistake? What mistake?” Maddie was setting out beach chairs.
“Letting him go off on his own. That’s what I did last time, and it didn’t turn out so well.”
“Well, things are different this time,” Maddie said. “We’re on a private beach for one thing — I can’t understand why you brought him to the public beach in the first place, to tell you the truth. It’s not as if you can’t afford the membership fee to this place.”
“It’s where his old nanny took him,” Eli explained. “I never bothered with membership fees to exclusive beaches because it wasn’t something I thought about, and because I wasn’t usually the one going, so I didn’t care.”
“But that experience got you to change your mind?”
“Something like that. That and the fact that I just don’t want to spend my day on a packed beach like the one where you used to work.”
“Well, I have to admit, this is a lot nicer than what I used to deal with every day,” Maddie said. “And it makes it easier to keep an eye on Charlie.” She glanced at Eli. “I guess it probably makes it a little easier for you to focus on checking your emails, too.”
“No,” he said, eyebrows lifting. “I told you that I’m not working today, remember?”
“I mean, yeah, I remember that conversation.”
“I knew you didn’t believe me.”
“Well, can you blame me?”
“Just because I haven’t done a good job at prioritizing my home life in the past doesn’t mean I am incapable of it.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Maddie said. “It’s not that I thought you couldn’t step away from work if you wanted to, but…”
“You didn’t think I wanted to.” Eli felt frustrated.
Maddie bit her lip, that captivating affectation that always made Eli forget exactly what he had been talking about. “It’s just… I mean, you didn’t give me the day off.”
“You wanted a day off? You usually work Fridays. And you didn’t say anything about it.”
“But if you meant to be with Charlie all day, and to give him your full attention, you wouldn’t need me,” Maddie pointed out. “I assumed you had kept me working because you planned not to be fully present.”
Eli felt like an idiot. Of course, she was perfectly right. It made sense that she would have thought exactly that. And for that matter, why hadn’t he told her to take the day off? He didn’t need a nanny today — he was planning to spend the whole day with Charlie.
The answer came to him as soon as he had posed himself the question, and it made him feel tense and unhappy to have to admit it.
He hadn’t sent Maddie off for the day for the very simple reason that he wanted to have her around. When he had imagined this day, she had been a part of it.
He didn’t need her to help him care for Charlie today — but he wanted her along anyway.
And he had no idea how he ought to feel about that fact.
“Now are you glad we left the beach?” Maddie asked Charlie.
Charlie nodded, kicking his feet against one of the benches at the skateboard park. He jumped in the air and tried to spin around before landing. Eli was impressed — he nearly managed it, but he tripped over his own feet at the end. Undaunted, he sprang back up. “Can I get a skateboard, Dad?”
“I’ll think about it.” Eli wasn’t sure how he felt about Maddie exposing Charlie to such a dangerous sport. On one hand, Charlie clearly loved it. He’d been ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the skaters since they had arrived.
“I want to learn how to do tricks,” Charlie pressed.
“Until you have a board of your own, there are plenty of things we can work on to get you ready,” Maddie told him.
“There are?” Charlie asked eagerly.
Eli turned to face Maddie too, interested in where this might be going.
“That jump you just did,” Maddie said. “I can help you learn to do it right, if you want.”
“You know how to do that?”
“Sure I do. I used to be a ballet dancer.”
“Skateboarding isn’t ballet!”
“Well, it kind of is! It’s all about knowing exactly where you are in the air so that you’ll know exactly where you’re going to be when you land. That way you don’t get surprised and trip on your own feet like you just did.” Maddie stood up, positioned herself carefully, then sprang into the air, spun neatly around, and landed in a reasonable impression of a skateboarder’s stance.
“Hey!” Charlie burst into applause. “That was great!”
“You can do that too. It’s pretty easy.”
“Show me how!”
“Okay, come here.” Maddie led him into an open patch of grass, which Eli was thankful for. If he fell, there wouldn’t be scraped knees. “Stand like this.” She demonstrated. “Now, you’re going to push off with this foot, and watch how I wrap my arms when I jump.” She leapt gracefully into the air again. “Pulling my arms in like that helps me turn my body, see?”
“The boarders grab their boards when they spin.”
“They’re jumping off of things, so they have more time in the air than you do. When you’re just jumping up from the ground like this, it’s important to turn fast . Go ahead, try it.”
Charlie tried. He didn’t make it all the way around, but it was a much better attempt, and he stayed on his feet. “Hey!” he cried. “Dad, did you see that?”
“I saw it.”
“Maybe Maddie could be my skateboard teacher.”
“Maybe,” Eli agreed, but that wasn’t what he was thinking. Instead, he was envisioning her as a ballet teacher, a horde of little kids positioned around her as she corrected their technique and helped them to get their spins and twirls just right.
She would be good at it, he realized. She wasn’t just a remarkable dancer. She had a gift for guiding children as well. And on the heels of that realization came another one — he wanted to help her. He wanted to assist her in realizing her dream.
Whether she would let him do that was another question — but he was determined, all of a sudden, to try.
After everything she had already done for him, and for Charlie, it felt as if that was the very least he could do for her in return.
Eli’s resolve to help Maddie open a dance studio was put to the test just hours later as the three of them walked home.
“Come check this out,” Maddie said, turning down an unfamiliar street.
“Home is the other way.” Eli pointed.
“I know,” she said. “But this won’t take long. We’re only two blocks away.”
“Two blocks away from what? I don’t even know this part of town,” he objected. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll show you when we get there!”
“I want to see.” Charlie took off trotting after Maddie. Eli sighed and followed. He wasn’t fond of surprises. That was how they had ended up at the skate park in the first place, and though it had turned out to be a very good time, he still wasn’t sure about the wisdom of encouraging Charlie to take up such a dangerous sport.
But there was nothing dangerous about walking a few blocks together. This was a nice part of town, very commercial. He caught up with his son and took his hand, and Charlie beamed up at him.
It occurred to Eli to wonder at what age little boys stopped liking it when their fathers took their hands in public. He was pleased and grateful to realize that he hadn’t missed out on those years completely.
Maddie had stopped before what looked like an empty storefront. “Here,” she said in a blissful tone that didn’t match the moment at all, as far as Eli could tell.
He frowned. “What exactly are we looking at?”
“Yeah, what are we looking at?” Charlie chimed in. “It looks like a big empty building.”
“That’s what it is now. That’s what it’s been for about a year. But I’ve had my eye on it. If I had my way, I’d lease it tomorrow.”
“For your dance studio,” Eli realized.
“It’s perfect. The size, the location — I can even imagine how I would remodel it. The barre would go along that wall.” She pointed.
“What’s stopping you from moving forward?”
“Money, of course.” She laughed.
“Have you looked into the cost?”
“I can’t even afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment. No way I could afford this.” She sighed. “It’s a pipe dream, unfortunately. But it’s one I can’t help indulging from time to time. Thanks for swinging by to look at it with me.”
“I like it,” Charlie said loyally, and Maddie smiled at him.
They started for home, and Eli couldn’t help noticing that Maddie didn’t look over her shoulder at the studio — or rather, the space she imagined as a studio — a single time. She had indulged in her daydream, but now she was back to living in reality.
And he tore his eyes from the sway of her hips and the curve of her long neck, knowing that he needed to do the same.
It was fun — no, it was blissful — to imagine what might be with Maddie if nothing stood in their way. But the fact of the matter was that she was his employee. He had a responsibility. The line between the two of them was firm, and Eli knew it could never be crossed.