23. Kaitlyn
23
KAITLYN
W hy did everything feel so weird?
I was deep into lesson plans with Harper, and I kept beating myself up because I was having trouble focusing on the task at hand, which was helping her make drawings of things she enjoyed doing. It was a simple exercise to help illuminate her strengths and focus on the positives instead of fixating on the things we still needed to tackle. She was immersed in it, making elaborate drawings of swimming and riding her bike, which gave me the bandwidth to think about the strange distance that seemed to have grown between me and James in the few days since the argument.
I tried to catalog what had gone wrong, but it felt silly to dissect every interaction. I knew I wasn’t imagining the fact that we’d barely touched in the past two days. Sure, he’d been busier than usual and had been called away one of the nights, but he was also just less…there. No texts other than to check in on Harper, and definitely no invitations to sneak off for a quickie. Again, not unheard of since he was so busy, but still. It felt off.
He was home today, but he’d skipped breakfast. He’d never even hung up from his phone call when he came out to the patio to give Harper a good morning kiss on the top of her head. He was speaking in code around Harper, but I could tell the call was about Jess, which made me feel prickly all over again.
“Done!” Harper said triumphantly, holding up a drawing of her on the climbing wall.
“Perfect, I love it,” I exclaimed, relieved to have something to focus on other than James. I looked through the drawings she’d made. “So many fun things, Harp! Now we’re going to move onto something different. I call it ‘favorite places.’”
“Ooh, what’s that?” She clambered up onto her knees on her chair.
“We’re going to talk about all of the places you love visiting, and if you’d like to visit them again.”
She shrank in her seat. “Do I have to go to them?”
“No, of course not!” I reassured her. “But I thought it might be fun to talk about what you like about each spot. Then we can discuss if each place is a green light, which means you’re ready to go there, a yellow light, which means you maybe want to go, and a red light which means you’re not ready yet.”
“Like a traffic light!”
“Exactly, you’ve got it,” I said. “So let’s think of a favorite place. How about Disney World? Is that one?”
Harper’s eyes went wide, and she nodded rapidly.
“Okay, great. I’m going to put that on the list. What color is it?”
“Um…when Daddy and I went we had to go on the plane.” Her face registered hesitation and a hint of anxiety.
It was only a couple of hours to drive—but whatever, of course James would take a plane. “So, red? You’re not ready yet?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Okay, so what’s next?”
We worked through a list of spots and ended up naming six that Harper felt okay to visit. One of them shocked me: the house in Key West. I knew that James and Harper usually took the boat to get there and it wasn’t a quick trip, which meant Harper also felt okay being out on the open water. After staying in the Key West house the night we went to Club Obsidian, I could understand why Harper felt good being there. It had a low-key, relax-and-hang-out vibe that made life feel lazy and happy. Plus the swimming was amazing.
We were wrapping up and getting ready for snacks when James came barreling into the room, catching both of us off guard.
“I need to talk to you.”
It was the no-nonsense, all-business James I’d come to know over the past few days—and I didn’t like it one bit. Harper looked between us with wide eyes, so I opted to play it off even though James looked furious.
“Okay, I have a few minutes, and Harper can eat her snack while she watches a video.” I didn’t move from my chair, a tiny power play to see if he’d shift into a more polite tone of voice.
It seemed to work.
James cleared his throat. “Can you come outside?” A pause. “Please?”
I nodded. “Harper, I’m going to step away to talk to your dad, okay?”
She was already digging into her fruit cup and navigating to the video she wanted to watch on her tablet as I walked out of the room.
I met James in the hallway and was taken aback by how upset he looked.
“Outside, please.” He pointed to the open patio doors across the dining room.
I followed along in silence as my mind spun to try to figure out what could have him behaving this way. Unless there’d been new developments with the Jess argument, I couldn’t imagine what might have set him off.
I expected him to turn and start raging the second we were outside, but he kept walking until he was beneath the shade of a giant palm tree near the pool.
“What’s going on?” I finally asked.
“The CPS visits got out. Someone leaked it,” he managed in a tight voice. “It’s a huge story all over the internet. It’s making me look like an unfit father.”
“Oh no!” I fought the urge to reach for him. “How did they find out?”
“We’ve been keeping the visits incredibly quiet, so I’m guessing that someone planted a bug in the house—which is why I brought you out here to talk about it.” His shoulders sagged, and it made me realize how much he was dealing with.
“James, I’m so sorry.”
He waved my sympathy away. “The point is, we need to get out of this house for at least a day so my security team can do a full sweep. I don’t feel safe here with Harper. But I’m not sure where we can go. She used to be okay to go to Jess’s house, but obviously Jess and I?—”
“I have an idea,” I interrupted, chewing on my lip. “We just made a list of Harper’s favorite spots, and the Key West house was on it. Could we go there?”
“Of course we could, but is she ready for that kind of trip? I mean, she hasn’t been since…”
“Honestly, it’s a bit of a risk,” I replied, staring into space and weighing the pros and cons of attempting it. “She said it’s a favorite place, and when I asked her if she felt okay to go there she gave it a ‘yellow light,’ meaning ‘maybe.’”
James paced and ran his hand through his hair. “Any other options? Maybe a few nights at the Ritz in Miami since it’s closer?”
I shook my head. “Nope, I would definitely avoid hotels, even ones that are nothing like the motel where she was kept. If she goes out of her comfort zone, it should be to a place she’s been before, where she’s already comfortable.”
James looked at me. “And that’s Key West.”
“Exactly.”
“What about the boat?”
“Also on the list—and she said it was a ‘green light’ since we’ve been able to board it a few times without going anywhere.”
He pursed his lips, the tension evident on his face. “Okay, can you be ready in an hour? Bags packed for two days?”
“It might take me a little longer to get Harper ready too?—”
He waved me off again. “Focus on yourself. I’ll have Vida pack my things and I’ll take care of Harper’s. We need to move quickly; I don’t want to spend another minute here if we’re being surveilled.”
“Okay, I’ll get to it.”
“We won’t be doing much in Key West, so it doesn’t matter what you bring. And if you forget anything I can have it brought in.” He paused. “Seriously, maybe that’s what I should do for everything? We can just leave as soon as Captain Tim is ready rather than wasting time packing, and I’ll have my house manager order everything we need?”
The idea of buying everything from toiletries to clothing to shoes just to save time felt way too decadent. “No, I can be quick, trust me.”
Fifty minutes later, James and Harper met me on the dock where the sleek white and navy blue yacht awaited us. I studied the little girl as she skipped toward me. She looked excited to be going on an adventure, without any sign of stress on her features.
“Can we play on the boat?” Harper asked when she reached me, grabbing for my hand.
I smiled at her. “Of course we can! I packed the Go Fish cards and some coloring books.”
Harper squinted up at her father. “You too, Daddy?”
He glanced away from his phone. “Of course. I just have to finish one more thing, then I promise the three of us can play all the way to Key West.”
We boarded and kicked off our shoes as Harper took off for the table on the back deck.
“She seems good,” James mused to me, watching his daughter.
“Yeah, we’re off to a great start. No obvious fear, excitement for the journey ahead, focus on activities…all positive signs.”
We were alone on the narrow walkway but somehow maintaining a polite distance. As much as I wanted to hold James and tell him that everything was going to be okay, I didn’t dare. It felt like we’d switched back to an employee and employer relationship, and I wasn’t about to do anything to put myself in an awkward situation.
It didn’t matter how much I wanted James. If he wanted me , he’d have to take the lead.
Harper peeked around the corner at the other end of the boat and beckoned us to come.
“I guess we’re on,” he laughed.
“Guess so. Let’s go keep that little girl busy.”
The three hours to Key West flew, but it helped that James and I both had a great time making Harper laugh during the trip. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she made the journey all the time given how relaxed she seemed. I’m guessing it helped to have both me and James beside her, giving her plenty of attention. It didn’t happen often enough.
Being out on the water seemed to give us all a vacation vibe even though the truth was we were running away from a stressful scenario. The trip was a brief respite from real life, and the way we leaned into it made it clear we all needed a break. James opted to sit close to me as we played with Harper, and we wound up resting thigh to thigh. It felt good to connect with him again, even if it was only a small taste of what I actually wanted from him.
We docked and I watched Harper closely. A shadow of fear passed over her face, and I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“I forgot we have to walk down that long dock,” she said, staring at it mournfully.
“Yes, but once we get off the dock it’s the beach !”
“Yeah Harp,” James added, kneeling down in front of her. “You love the beach.”
She nodded, her eyes still worried.
“I have an idea,” James continued. “Why don’t we go for a swim right away? How does that sound?”
“Really?” Harper breathed. “Right now?”
“Yes, now,” James teased.
“And I can watch you from the shore,” I added.
“No, Kaitlyn, swim with us!” Harper cried. “You have to!”
“I didn’t pack a bathing suit, I’m so sorry.” I’d been in such a hurry that I’d managed to forget that the Key West house had the most beautiful private beach right outside the patio doors.
“I can have a selection delivered to the house in twenty minutes,” James said. “Just give me your color choices. I already know your size.”
Somehow I still managed to forget that James could snap his fingers and get what he wanted.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested. “I don’t mind sitting this one out.”
“No! Swim!”
Harper issued the command with a stomp, and James and I turned to her with our mouths hanging open.
“ Excuse me, young lady,” James said. “That was rude.”
Harper’s shoulders drew up to her ears and she looked down at her feet. “Sorry. Please swim, Kaitlyn?”
It was impossible to refuse her. And given the way James was staring at me, it seemed he was just as eager to get me into a bathing suit.
“Okay, okay,” I finally acquiesced. “Harper, what color bathing suit should I wear?”
“Rainbow!” she cheered.
“Rainbow it is,” I laughed.
She reached for my hand, then grabbed her father’s, and the three of us got ready for our next adventure.