4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Nicole
Rose screamed into the sofa cushion while Prim kicked the rug hard enough to push it into a crooked heap.
“I want Daddy!” Prim shouted.
“Daddy now!” Rose lifted her wet face and screamed the words again. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
There was no preschool on Saturday, no teachers and busy routine to distract them from how much they missed him. From the moment they woke, every question had been about Alexander.
Was Daddy downstairs?
Was Daddy eating breakfast?
Was Daddy coming to play?
When Nicole said he was working, the questions had become demands. The demands had turned into tears before lunch. Now both girls had been crying for so long that their round cheeks were red and their curls stuck to their damp faces.
Nicole sat on the floor between them. Her own curls were falling out of the loose knot at the back of her head, and the front of her shirt was wet from tears that weren’t hers.
“Come here, baby.” She held out her arms to Prim. “Let me hold you.”
Prim slapped both hands over her ears. “No Mommy. Daddy hold me.”
The words shouldn’t have hurt. Prim was three. She was miserable and wanted the parent she hadn’t seen in too long. Because said parent came home late and left before they woke up. The words still hurt.
Rose slid off the sofa and landed beside Nicole in a sobbing heap. Nicole gathered her close, but Rose twisted in her arms.
“Call him,” she begged. “Tell Daddy come home.”
“I called him.” Nicole rubbed a hand over Rose’s shaking back. “He hasn’t answered yet.”
“Call ‘gain.”
“I will.”
Nicole had tried breakfast in the garden, finger painting, music, and the picture book Rose usually demanded three times in a row.
She’d offered snacks they didn’t eat and cartoons they didn’t watch.
She’d carried one girl while the other clung to her leg, then switched when Prim decided Rose was getting more of Mommy.
Nothing had worked. Every attempt ended with the same question. Where was Daddy?
“Does Daddy live at work now?” Prim had asked while Nicole tried to interest them in lunch.
“No. Daddy lives here with us,” she’d said.
“He sleeps here,” Rose had said.
“Sometimes,” Prim had argued.
Nicole had set down the sandwich neither girl would touch. “Daddy always comes home.”
“When we sleep,” Prim said.
There hadn’t been an answer for that either.
Now Prim crawled across the rug and pushed herself against Nicole’s side. “Make his work be done.”
“I can’t make it be done.” Nicole sighed.
“You’re Mommy.”
“That doesn’t make me in charge of Daddy’s work.”
“Daddy’s in charge,” Rose said through a hiccup.
“Yes.”
Prim looked offended by the simple logic. “Then he can say stop.”
Nicole pressed her lips together. Her three-year-old understood the choice Alexander kept pretending he didn’t have.
Nicole reached for her phone on the coffee table.
Alexander’s name sat at the top of her recent calls.
She pressed it once more. The ringing sound came through the speaker.
Prim stopped kicking the rug. Rose went still in Nicole’s arms. Both girls watched the phone with wide, hopeful eyes.
One ring. Two. Three. Nicole held her breath as if that might somehow make him answer. His voice mail picked up.
Rose’s face folded. “No,” she whimpered.
“Let me leave him a message.” Nicole kept her voice steady and waited for the tone. “Alexander, it’s me. The girls are having a terrible day. They won’t stop asking for you, and I can’t calm them down. Please call me. They need to see you.”
Prim grabbed Nicole’s wrist and pulled the phone closer. “Daddy, come get me! Daddy!”
Rose fought to reach it too. “I need you!”
Nicole ended the message before her own voice could break.
“He didn’t hear,” Prim said.
“He’ll hear the message when he checks his phone,” Nicole explained.
“Now.”
“I know.”
Prim’s mouth opened, and the scream that came out made Nicole’s head pound. Rose joined her. Nicole closed her eyes for one second. She loved her daughters more than anything. She also wanted silence so badly that guilt pressed against the frustration in her chest.
She opened her eyes and called again. No answer. She sent him a message with fingers that shook from strain.
“The girls need you. Can you take even one hour away from work? Please call me.”
Then she called Vicky. The call rang until voice mail. Nicole hung up and tried again, then resigned herself to leaving a voice mail.
“Vicky, it’s Nicole. I’m sorry to keep calling, but I can’t reach Alexander. Prim and Rose are both very upset. Please ask him to call me as soon as you get this.”
She waited. Nothing.
Prim dragged the heel of her hand across her nose. “Daddy doesn’t want us.”
“No.” The answer came out sharp enough to startle all three of them. Nicole softened her voice. “No, sweetheart. Daddy loves you. He loves you so much.”
“Then why he not come?” Rose asked.
Nicole stared at the silent phone. She didn’t have an answer a three-year-old could understand. She didn’t have one that she understood anymore.
That morning, Alexander had left a note saying he loved them. He’d broken his promise, missed their hurt, and gone back to work before anyone woke up. Now their daughters were begging for him, and he couldn’t even be reached. Something inside Nicole gave way.
She got to her feet. “Okay.”
Prim’s crying hitched. “Okay what?”
“We’re going to see Daddy.”
Silence fell so fast that Nicole almost heard the faint hum from the air vents.
Rose blinked at her. “At his work?”
“At the studio.”
“Now?” Prim asked.
“As soon as we get your shoes on.”
Both girls moved at once. Rose scrambled up and ran for the hall. Prim tripped over the rug she’d kicked out of place, caught herself with both hands, and jumped back up before Nicole could reach her.
“My sparkly shoes!” Rose yelled.
“I want my Daddy shoes!” Prim yelled back.
Nicole didn’t know what Daddy shoes were. She didn’t ask. Taking two distressed toddlers to a working set wasn’t a good solution. It wasn’t even close. She should’ve waited for Alexander to call back. She should’ve found one more distraction and made it through the day.
But Prim had decided her father didn’t want her. That couldn’t be allowed to settle inside her. The girls needed to see him. Nicole needed Alexander to look at the children who’d cried for him all morning and understand that love delivered through notes and promises wasn’t enough.
She called for the car and got both girls out the door before doubt could stop her.
The crying didn’t return during the drive. Prim and Rose sat strapped into their seats, holding hands across the space between them as if they were on their way to something wonderful.
“Daddy will be surprised,” Prim said.
“Very surprised,” Nicole agreed.
“He gonna do bear voice?” Rose asked.
“You can ask him.”
“And he comes home with us?”
Nicole looked out the window for a moment. “We’ll talk to him.”
She wouldn’t make another promise for Alexander.
“I get his left hand,” Prim announced.
Rose frowned. “I get both hands.”
“He needs one hand for me.”
“Daddy has two arms,” Nicole said before their peace became another fight. “One for each of you.”
Rose considered that. “And Mommy?”
The question caught Nicole off guard. “Daddy has plenty of hugs for all of us.”
“We take him home,” Prim said with complete confidence. “Then he does bear voice, and I don’t sleep so I can keep him.”
“You have to sleep,” Nicole said.
“Not today.”
Nicole almost smiled. Prim sounded like herself again. That was all it had taken: not Alexander’s presence, but the belief that he was close enough to reach.
By the time the car reached Cohan Studios, the girls were smiling. Their sudden peace should’ve relieved her. Instead, it made the morning feel worse. The promise of one hour with their father had done what Nicole’s entire bag of tricks couldn’t.
The driver let them out inside the secured lot, and Nicole took one small hand in each of hers. The Cohan name made getting through security simple. Finding Alexander was harder.
People crossed between buildings with headsets, clipboards, coils of cable, and cups of coffee. A golf cart hummed past. Beyond it, crew members moved equipment through the broad doors of a soundstage marked STAGE 14.
Nicole kept the girls close and stopped a man wearing a production badge.
“Excuse me. I’m looking for Alexander Cohan.”
His gaze dropped to the twins, then returned to her face with quick recognition. “Mrs. Cohan. He was around here earlier.”
“I’ve been trying to call him.”
“You might check with Vicky.”
“She’s not answering either.”
His expression changed. “Right. Vicky had a medical emergency this morning. They took her to the hospital.”
Nicole’s grip tightened around the girls’ hands. “Is she all right?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He glanced toward the soundstage. “Mr. Cohan’s dealing with another production problem. Last I heard, he was talking it through with Ms. Stone.”
Of course he was.
Nicole hated the thought as soon as it came. Angela was the star of the movie. Alexander was producing it. A problem involving the film would put them together. That was work, not betrayal.
“Where?” she asked.
The man pointed behind Stage Fourteen. “Ms. Stone’s trailer. Big black one at the end.”
“Thank you.”
“Daddy’s in a trailer?” Prim asked as they walked away.
“It looks that way,” Nicole said.
“Is it like camping?” Rose asked.
“Not quite.”
“Can we camp with Daddy?”
“Let’s find him first.”
Nicole led them along the outside of the soundstage.
As they got closer, she noticed less of the working lot around her.
Black curtains shifted inside the open stage door.
Cables crossed the ground under thick covers.
A generator gave off a steady mechanical thrum.
She watched every step the girls took while keeping her eyes on the large black trailer parked behind the building.
Its tinted windows reflected the pale sky. A silver plate on the door had Angela’s name on it. Nicole slowed. Laughter came from inside.
She recognized Alexander’s low laugh. It was relaxed and warm, the sound she’d been trying to pull from him in bed the morning before. Angela laughed with him, light and easy, and then their voices dropped too low for Nicole to catch the words.
A meeting could include laughter. Alexander laughed with people at work. Nicole did too. None of that meant anything. Still, she stood outside with two children who’d sobbed for him while he laughed in another woman’s trailer.
Prim tugged her hand. “Can we knock?”
Nicole looked at the trailer door, then at the girls’ bright faces. She forced a smile.
“Let’s surprise him,” she said.
Rose gasped with delight. “A secret?”
“A very quiet secret. Can you both keep your voices down until Daddy comes out?”
Prim drew two fingers across her lips. “Zip.”
Rose copied her with her whole hand. “Zipped tight.”
Their giggles came out in tiny bursts they tried to trap behind their palms.
Nicole glanced toward the window. One blind had been left partly raised, but the gap sat above her eye line. The window under it was cracked open. Alexander’s voice carried through it, followed by another soft burst of Angela’s laughter.
Nicole stepped closer. She could’ve knocked. She should’ve knocked. Instead, unease moved through her, cold and thin. She wanted one look before they announced themselves. One look to quiet the ugly suspicion created by too many photographs and too many strangers saying she was blind.
This wasn’t how she wanted to behave with her husband.
She didn’t want to watch him through windows or search for secrets in the angle of his body.
She trusted him. She’d spent years choosing that trust over the cruel voices on her phone.
But trust hadn’t made him answer today. It hadn’t brought him home yesterday.
And it hadn’t stopped Angela from looking like his wife in photographs while Nicole raised his daughters outside the frame.
One look, she told herself. Then she’d knock, hand him the girls, and feel foolish for wondering. She pulled out her phone and opened the camera.
“What you doing?” Prim whispered.
“Seeing if Daddy’s right by the window.”
Nicole switched to video, pressed record, and raised the phone above her head. The bright screen gave her the view her eyes couldn’t reach. The image shook. She steadied her wrist and angled the phone through the narrow space under the blind.
Angela’s trailer glowed under bright vanity lights.
On the screen, part of a cream sofa filled one corner.
White orchids stood near the window. Alexander faced Angela beside a garment rack, his jacket open and both hands tucked into his pockets.
There was space between them. He wasn’t touching her. She wasn’t touching him.
Angela said something Nicole couldn’t hear, then tipped her head back and laughed. Alexander smiled.
“You know that’s not what I said,” he told her.
“It’s what you meant,” she said brightly.
“You give me too much credit.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that.”
He laughed again.
Nicole’s arm began to ache, but she kept the phone raised. Her pulse beat hard in her throat.
It was a conversation. Just a conversation about a production problem, in a private place, because Angela’s trailer was close to the stage.
Alexander looked relaxed but relaxed wasn’t intimate.
His hands remained in his pockets. His body didn’t angle toward Angela.
Nothing on the screen matched the pictures Nicole had forced herself to stop studying.
She almost lowered the phone.
Angela stopped laughing. Her dark eyes settled on Alexander’s face. She took one step toward him. He didn’t move. His hands stayed in his pockets.
Angela closed the remaining distance without warning. Both arms lifted and wrapped around his neck. She pulled him down.
Her lips met Alexander’s.