19. Eli
CHAPTER 19
ELI
W ork had always had the ability to occupy Eli’s thoughts and to help him calm himself. But ever since Maddie’s revelation and subsequent departure, it hadn’t had the same effect on him.
He still couldn’t believe that she was gone. It seemed beyond belief that she had left so quickly — didn’t she care about Charlie? Hadn’t she thought about the situation this would put them in? She should have stayed, he thought irritably. She should have hung around until he had hired someone else. That would have been the very least she could do.
“When are we getting a new nanny?” Charlie asked.
He sounded exhausted and frustrated, which was just how Eli felt. Eli had been working from home since Maddie’s departure, and Charlie had been forced to spend his days in the house, largely in front of the television. It was for his own safety, of course, but Eli also knew his son longed to go swimming or skateboard shopping, and there was a part of him that wanted to indulge those things.
The problem was that every time he stepped away from work, he was overwhelmed by thoughts of Maddie. And every time he thought of her, he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had treated her terribly.
He couldn’t think about it without feeling overwhelmed by shame. Maddie was pregnant — she was having his child. She had come to him to tell him about it, and he had handled it in what had to be the worst way imaginable. No wonder she had left! How could he have done that?
And yet… could he have done anything else? Eli knew that he was not a good father. He hated the knowledge, but it had been Maddie herself who’d made that clear to him. He wasn’t what his own son needed. If Fiona had still been alive, he might have been tempted to withdraw a bit from Charlie’s life — as much as it would have broken his heart to do it — because he knew his inability to be a good father was making his son’s life worse.
This baby — and Maddie — had a chance for a life that wasn’t tarnished by his presence, and they deserved that. He wasn’t going to get in the way.
Maddie had no doubt been hoping for more from him. But what Maddie wanted was to see him transform into someone new. He’d heard what she had said the day they had fought about how much time he spent at work. She believed that his priorities were out of order. She wanted to see him choose family over work. She didn’t understand how bound up together those two things were, how the only reason he worked as hard as he did was to ensure that his son would have a good life. She didn’t know what it was to be hungry and not to know where your next meal was coming from.
At the end of the day, the most important thing he could provide for any child was financial security, and he was giving that to Charlie and to this new baby. Nothing else could possibly matter as much as that. In time, Maddie would come to see that, and she would be grateful to have it without having to attach herself to him personally.
Maybe she would marry someone else, and the kid would have a good father — a father who could actually be involved.
Eli was surprised by how much that idea pained him.
“Dad?” Charlie said.
“Hmm?”
“I asked when we’re getting a new nanny.”
“I don’t know, Charlie. As soon as we can, I guess.”
“I don’t really want one.”
“You’re too young to be on your own all day,” Eli told him.
“I know, but I want you to be with me. Not a nanny.”
Eli sighed. “Charlie, you know I can’t do that. You know I have to work.”
“You’re the boss, aren’t you? At your job?”
“Yes.”
“So why can’t you make it so that you don’t have to work?”
“That’s not the way it works,” Eli told him. “My job is important. If I don’t go to work, a lot of people might find themselves without jobs, and that’s not a good thing. I have to make sure I’m there for them, to help them.”
“But…” Charlie frowned. “Dad, I know your job is important, but you have a lot of people who work for you, like you said. Can’t anybody else do your job?”
“Well…” It was a fair enough point, of course. There were plenty of people capable of doing what Eli did on a day-to-day basis. “They can,” he said eventually. “But if I’m there, I can make sure everything is done perfectly.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “It’s just… other people can do your job, but you’re the only person who can be my dad.”
The words rocked Eli to his core.
Charlie was utterly correct, of course.
It was the same thing Maddie had tried to explain to him over and over. By choosing work, he was choosing not to prioritize Charlie, and Charlie was his only son. Charlie should be the most important thing. He went to work to provide for Charlie, but both Charlie and Maddie were right — his constant presence was not required in order for the business to run.
He didn’t want anything to go wrong at work. That was why he was so determined to be present all the time. But while he was making sure things were running smoothy at the office, things could easily go wrong at home.
And with a pang of horror, he realized that things had gone just about as wrong as they could go.
Maddie was pregnant — with his child, with Charlie’s sibling — and he had let her get away. Worse — he had driven her away with his actions. He couldn’t even blame her for having left. Of course she had.
He was the only person who could be Charlie’s dad, but he was the only person who could be that baby’s father, too. He was so devoted to his work that he was letting his family slip through his fingers, and there would be no correcting these mistakes.
He closed his eyes. How was he going to hire a new nanny after what had happened? How could he ever bring himself to do that?
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Charlie.”
“I think we should get Maddie back.”
Eli opened his eyes. “Is that what you think?”
“It was good having her here,” Charlie said. “I really liked her. I don’t know why she left. Did she move in with her boyfriend, like Katie did?”
“No, she didn’t. She’s living with her best friend Tess, remember. She told us when she left that that was where she would be.”
“Oh yeah,” Charlie said. “But then that means she can come back. She doesn’t need to live with that Tess person. They’re not going to get married or anything.”
“No.” Eli had to smile. “They’re not.”
“So get her to come back.”
“I don’t know, Charlie,” Eli said. “She decided that she was ready to go. We might need to respect that. It might be that she doesn’t want to work here anymore, and if that’s her choice, you and I need to respect it and move on.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment. “Because she wants to be a dance teacher?”
“Maybe that’s part of it.”
“But then… why can’t she come back and live with us and just not work for us?” Charlie asked. “She doesn’t have to be my nanny. She can just be our friend who lives here. And then she could be a dance teacher, and we could all still be together.”
“That’s what you’d want if you could have your way about it?”
“Of course,” Charlie said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, to be perfectly honest with you. And I don’t know if she would either.”
“I think we should ask her,” Charlie said. “We can ask her, right? We shouldn’t have let her move out, Dad. She was special.”
She had been special. Eli was in full agreement with his son about that.
But what could he do? After the way he had responded to the pregnancy news, how could he call Maddie and ask her to come back? Of course she wouldn’t want to. She probably didn’t want to see him ever again, and if he was honest, he couldn’t blame her for that. Looking at it objectively, the way he had treated her was appalling.
Charlie turned his attention back to the handheld video game he was playing, signaling that — for now, at least — he was finished with the conversation.
Talking to his son shouldn’t be this difficult, Eli thought. And the fact that it was — that was just further evidence to add to the pile telling him that Maddie was right. She always had been.
He had focused too much on work and had let his relationship with his son pay the price.
And now he was allowing his relationship with his unborn child to be taken from him too — all because he didn’t trust his own ability to be a good father.
It couldn’t be more clear that something had to change. He had to find a way to turn this around, to become the father that Charlie — and Maddie and her baby — deserved. It was the most important thing he would ever do with his life, and he was messing it up.
What if he hadn’t had Charlie here to point this out, to tell him how important it was to bring Maddie back to the house? Would he ever have made that discovery on his own, or would he have gone the rest of his life believing that sending her away had been the right choice?
That was a terrifying thought.
All he could do now was hope that it wasn’t too late — that he hadn’t blown his chance to have Maddie and the baby in his life. He would do whatever he could to bring them back. It had taken losing them to make him realize how much he needed them, and it wasn’t a mistake he was going to make twice.
It would take a lot, though, to win her back after the mistakes he had made. He didn’t know if he could do it.
What he did know was that he didn’t want to promise his son more than he would be able to deliver. He didn’t want to raise Charlie’s hopes too high. That was one of the things Maddie had cautioned him about, and he knew he needed to take it seriously.
“Maddie was special,” he agreed. “But we always knew she might be with us for only a short time, Charlie, didn’t we? We always knew that she might move on, and that we needed to be ready for that. That’s what happens with nannies. They stay for a while, and then they have to go — just like Katie.”
“No,” Charlie said firmly. “Maddie wasn’t like Katie, Dad.”
“Tell me why.”
“Because she really loved us,” Charlie said. “Katie just worked here, but Maddie was my friend. If you ask her to come back, she will. I know she will.”
Eli sighed. The trouble was that his son was right — and yet he had no way of knowing whether Maddie really would return.
“I won’t hire another nanny,” he told Charlie. “Not right now, anyway. Maybe we can get by on our own.”
“You mean you’ll work less?”
“I’ll try. But you and I are going to have to work together on this, understand? I still do have to work. If I can work from home, I will. But it’s not going to be like it was when you had a nanny — trips to the ice cream shop and the skate park and the beach whenever you’re not at school. I need you to understand that. If what’s most important is having that kind of fun as much as possible, then we should hire a nanny.”
“No,” Charlie said at once. “I don’t need to do that stuff. I can wait until Maddie comes back.”
Did he understand that Maddie coming back was a long shot? Eli couldn’t be sure. But he had done his best to explain it. Now the priority had to be very simply trying to get her back.
She would come, wouldn’t she?
She wanted what was best for her baby. She would have to come back. She must want her baby’s father involved.
And yet — she perceived him as a bad father, and she probably wasn’t even wrong about that.
Was there even a hope that he could convince her?
Eli rubbed his hands across his face.
He had allowed his family to fall apart.
He would do whatever it took to put it back together.