Chapter 18. Alex
ALEX
“Alex.”
This house has Tudor windows. Maybe they’re the original windows from when it was first built, the glass slightly warped. There’s a glass conservatory with sweeping views of rugged green landscape and the North Sea beyond, a pond that looks straight out of a fairy tale.
I hit Save. You know, just in case.
The next one has nine bedrooms. An old manor house nestled in acres of trees and grass and glittering streams. An art studio that Evie might like. A room overlooking the garden that I know Fleur would love.
Save.
“Alex.”
“Huh? Shit, sorry.”
“I have other clients who actually make use of my time.”
I close the property website on my laptop, where the location on the filter drop-down has accidentally ended up in Scotland, rather than New York City.
It happens.
Robert is looking at me over his glasses like he’d quite like to throw his notebook at me. “Sorry. Distracted.”
“Has something in particular happened this week?”
“Something in particular happens every week,” I grumble. He raises an eyebrow, like he’s not accepting that as an answer. “I thought I saw my father.”
“When?”
“Before London. I was in a coffee shop and … I was so sure. And I felt like he’d come to the café to … I don’t know, taunt me … and I ran out and I confronted this guy in the middle of the fucking street, and it wasn’t him, obviously, and I just felt like …”
“Felt like your mother.”
I nod, swallowing thickly. “Doesn’t that worry you? That I’m turning paranoid? Isn’t that how it all starts?”
He blinks, shoulders sinking on a long exhale. “No, Alex. I’m not worried you’re on that path. Stress can do incredible things to a brain, and you’re under a lot of it.”
“Do you think it’s genetic?”
“What?”
I sweep a hand over myself, at how exhausted I must look. “I don’t know … this. If I had kids, would they be miserable, too?”
I’d hate that.
“Is that something you worry about? Your future children?”
Jesus Christ. “Does the final exam for being a shrink involve answering every single fucking question with another question?”
He laughs, sipping his tea. “Pretty much. You’ve never mentioned kids before.”
I’ve never considered I might have a future before.
I shrug. “If Ophelia wanted kids and I … if I’d make them …
I think I got issues from my mom and my dad.
I don’t want her to … I don’t want to …” I trail off, unsure what I’m even asking.
I don’t want to end up like my parents. I don’t want her to end up with a son like me. I don’t want that future for Ophelia.
“I think your struggles have a lot to do with your environment and experiences.”
I swallow thickly. Force out a nod. “Okay.”
Emails ping through on my laptop incessantly, but one sender catches my eye. Harris Carmichael. Before I can read it, Robert steals my laptop from my desk and shuts it.
“I was reading an email.”
“Do you want to keep paying me almost four figures a session to watch you read your emails in silence?”
“Why is it my problem that you’re massively overcharging?”
His smile is genuine, mustard-colored socks appearing as he stretches his legs in front of the sofa, hooking one ankle over the other. I trace over a squiggle across my notebook for the millionth time. “Bad day?”
It is a bad mood day. One of the lowest. One where I don’t understand how I’ll make it to midnight.
One where money has lost all meaning, food has no taste, and work issues don’t drum up a single reaction out of me.
The world feels like a wildfire chasing me down, and dying feels like a crisp, cold swimming pool. “I don’t understand why I want to die.”
“When you’ve finally got Ophelia back?”
“Yeah.”
“A relationship won’t fix your depression, no matter how much you love her.”
“It does in the movies.”
“Mice cook meals inside chefs’ hats in the movies, Alex, that’s not a good frame of reference.”
“It’s a rat. It’s literally called Ratatouille.”
He waves his hand like it’s an inconsequential detail. Ophelia would have something to say about that. “You’re depressed, Alex. Ophelia might not fix it, your mom getting better might not fix it, leaving Green might not fix it, your father being caught might not fix it, either.”
“That’s reassuring. Thanks.”
“Your view of Ophelia is not particularly healthy, as we’ve spoken about a hundred times before.
She is not the cure to all of your problems. But feeling supported and loved will make it a lot easier for you to support yourself.
You can’t look after yourself at the moment because every waking minute of your life is spent thinking about your father. ”
“I just can’t keep treading water forever.” I’m tired.
“Sooner or later, the first domino will fall.”
“No matter how the final domino falls, it’ll be shit for the girls. Josie still thinks her dad is a superhero. She’s convinced he’s coming back home. I’m trying to prepare them.”
“For having their father die? Or put in prison?”
My pen draws a long, looping line until the sketch on my page resembles Ophelia’s hips. I hope she’s okay. I hope she never knows a mood as low as this one. “Either. Both.”
Fleur is heading the same way I’ve gone. The last thing she needs is more drama, but she’ll get it. She’ll probably get it for the rest of her life.
The rest of my session with Robert is the same: me despairing, him offering sensible and rational answers that I refuse to listen to. The only highlight was discovering he went on a date with Jacqueline last week.
My phone buzzes to life as he leaves. Ophelia. I decline and fire her a quick text.
Alex
I’m bad company today, baby.
Ophelia
Not to me. Just calling to say I’m back at Sorrowsong safely.
Alex
Evidence?
I’m rewarded by a picture of her in her shitty Sorrowsong bedroom, my hoodie pulled tight around her face like it was when I left. Her face is smiling and freckly.
It’s the perfect reminder of exactly why I’m still treading water.
Alex
Cute
Alex
I’ll call you later.
Ophelia
I’ll wear stockings.
Oh, that’s it. I’ve been teased by stockings long enough. I hit FaceTime on her contact. She picks up but hangs up right away—just long enough for me to hear her cackling on the other end.
Ophelia
I gotta go to an evening lecture. Later.
Alex
Great, now I’m depressed and hard.
Ophelia
When are you not?
I’m smiling at my phone when I lock it. She’s a nightmare. My nightmare. But she’s lit a copper spark in an otherwise charcoal day.
I bring up my emails again. Carmichael has ended his months-long silence with me to forward me a news article from three years ago, like he’s trying to remind me of something.
Sorrowsong University Adds Architecture to Its Limited List of Course Offerings in Rare Break from Tradition.
From Carmichael, it feels like a slap in the face.
No apology for how he treated me, for how he treated my girl, just this.
He picks up my call almost immediately. “Alex. It’s been a while.”
“You’re a real piece of shit, Harris.”
“I wouldn’t delete my email without giving it consideration.” He’s calm. Friendly, almost. Like he’s my father, giving me a man-to-man chat about my career. It only makes me angrier.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve emailing me.”
“I’m genuinely sorry for the way it all played out, Alex.”
“You voted against me,” I bite out, pushing back my chair and pacing my office, the sky so full of black clouds that it’s almost the same shade as my mood. “You almost cost me the CEO job. After everything. I came to Sorrowsong for no good reason. You were never going to vote in my favor.”
“I was.”
I laugh bitterly, and he must sense I’m about to hang up, because he carries on. “I was, until I really got to know you. I could not, in good conscience, agree to elect you as CEO of Green.”
Well, that’s rude. I haven’t dragged the company into liquidation just yet. “I’m doing fine.”
“It’s not a matter of competency, Alex. I knew you’d manage fine.”
“You better start making sense soon, before I get one of Rocco’s men to knock you out.”
“Ask your mother.”
“My mother can’t remember what day it is half the time.”
“She asked me to vote against you, Alex. The same day you left for Sorrowsong. She knew exactly why you were going, and she asked me to, if it came to it, do anything in my power not to let you take your father’s job.”
I open my mouth and shut it again. Confusion, hurt, betrayal, denial. They all make their steady way through my mind. “She wouldn’t.”
“She made me promise.”
“You’re lying.”
“How is she?”
“You have absolutely no right to ask about any of them.”
“Our architecture program is already widely renowned, Alex.”
I hang up, blood boiling. If I could grip him by the purple waistcoat and toss him off Sorrowsong’s tallest turret, I would.
But that would make me my father.
So I delete his email without responding and put my head in my hands at my desk.
MY SISTERS ARE at school when I get back to the house. I left work to finish the day from home, too rattled to do anything else.
It’s odd when they’re not home. Too cold, too quiet in this modern monstrosity of a house. The white walls are clinical, the lights are bright and harsh, the mirrors make me miserable.
I can’t wait to leave this house, these memories, behind. I make a mental note to email my realtor.
My mom is in the small garden with one of her caretakers, picking flowers and putting them into a vase. She’s coming out the other end of a real low. Every day she eats less, looks frailer. I open the sliding doors noisily so as not to startle them, stepping out into the chilly breeze.
My mom’s face lights up when she spots me, as it always does. Her carer heads inside to give us a moment. “You’re home.”
“I’m home.”
I take a seat on the bench beside her, huffing out a long breath.
She tips my face toward her, scrutinizing me. “Something’s happened with your father.”
“How’d you know?”
“You and Ophelia are fine. I’m circling the drain, but that’s not new. The girls are okay. I don’t know what else could make you look so exhausted.”
“He’s nearby. He’s circling us, I can feel it.”
She sighs, opening up the petals of a flower gently before she slides it into the vase. “He has an awful lot of contacts in the city, and in the travel industry.”
“Yeah. Shame he didn’t get into something like bakeries.”
Her laugh is melodic, eyes bright and alert above the dark circles below. “If he was into bakeries, he’d have been smuggled here in a bag of flour. You know what he’s like.”
“I feel so useless.”
She trails her fingers over the gold band on my index finger—her father’s ring. “I said the same thing to my mom at your age.”
“And she said?”
“You’re not useless; you’re just twenty-three. They can feel similar sometimes. I couldn’t be prouder of you if I tried. And I’m not scared of your father.”
“I am.”
“Tell me about your time with Ophelia.”
I pull out a photo of my girl holding the pizza boxes in the car, her face the embodiment of a thundercloud. My mom laughs. “Make her bigger.”
I zoom in and hand it back. Mom’s joy is almost childlike. The women in my life are way too invested in my love life. “Isn’t she just wonderful? She has such incredible hair. So many freckles. And what a pretty dress.”
“She just bought it from a charity shop. It was two pounds,” I say, swiping to the next photo.
Ophelia’s on my bed at our London home, hugging her knees as she eats a slice of pizza.
She looks much happier in this one. My mom’s smile broadens, if that was possible.
“Alex! Eating pizza on white bedsheets. I didn’t raise you to be a caveman. ”
“I think you must’ve.”
I swipe again, to a picture of Ophelia bundled up so tightly in the duvet that only her eyes and nose are visible. Mom presses her hand to her chest and sighs. “Oh, Alex. I’m just dying to meet her. She must love you so much to be able to see past what your father did.”
That isn’t lost on me. It stuns me every day she spends with me. “I know.”
She looks at me with so much warmth. “How was the house in London?”
“Fine,” I say, shutting off the phone. I leave out any details of the break-in. It won’t do her any good.
I know my mother is not particularly fond of New York. “Do you like that house?”
She picks at a scab on her cracked bottom lip, lost in thought.
“Would you move there?” I clarify, before she gets triggered by some old memory. “When all this is over?”
She shifts her knees up onto the bench, hugging them. “Maybe. I do want to get out of this city, one day. I’ve never really loved cities, anyway. I prefer the countryside.”
“In Scotland?” I say, half joking, half hopeful.
“I’d love that, Alex. But the girls might be a harder sell.”
“That’s true.” Convincing Fleur to leave New York would be the achievement of a lifetime.
“Don’t give up on it, though. Those girls know how much you’ve sacrificed for them; I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d live there for you for two years while you study. We’ve been through a lot here in New York.”
I wonder if the glitz and the glamour and the memories that fill these walls have tarnished into something rotten for any of the girls. If my father’s footsteps echo in the hallways, my mother’s screams rattle the windows for them, too.
I grew up between Paris, London, and New York. This has never felt like home to me, but I’m sure it does to Josie, who has only ever lived here. I need them all on board before I can move us.
“Besides, there isn’t much Mia wouldn’t do for you.”
I smile when she sets the vase of flowers on the stone patio at our feet. “I love that little idiot.”
“She’s got the best bits of your father.” She fiddles with her fingers. “Maybe in a few months, when I’m not on some horrible low, I could fly to meet Ophelia.”
I’m not sure it’s the best idea, but I don’t shoot it down. “I’ll have a chat with the doctors.”
She sighs, contented and happy with the mottled sunlight on her bare toes, and drifts off to sleep with her cheek against my shoulder. I slip my jacket around her narrow shoulders and promise myself never to forget the quiet moments like these.