7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Nicole
Nicole wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and watched her daughters chase their grandfather across the garden.
Paul wasn’t moving fast. He didn’t need to.
He held his arms out, made a low growling sound, and waited for Prim and Rose to run close enough for him to catch them.
Then he grabbed Rose around the waist and lifted her into the air.
Rose shrieked with laughter.
“Save me, Prim!”
“I can’t! Grandpa’s a monster!”
“A very hungry garden monster,” he said. “I eat little girls before breakfast.”
“You already had breakfast,” Prim told him.
Their grandfather lowered Rose and frowned as if this were a serious problem. “Then I’ll have to eat you for lunch.”
Both girls screamed and ran toward the lemon trees.
Nicole smiled, but the sound of their laughter hurt.
Her seventy-year-old father had given them his full attention since they’d come downstairs.
He hadn’t checked his phone, he hadn’t promised to play later, and he hadn’t asked someone else to keep them busy while he finished one more thing.
The girls relaxed around him almost immediately.
Susan, Nicole’s mother, sat across from Nicole at the patio table.
“You didn’t sleep,” she said.
“A little.”
“You were walking around at three in the morning.”
Nicole looked down at her coffee. “Then why did you ask?”
“I wanted to see if you’d lie to your mother.”
“I’m thirty-five.” Nicole rolled her eyes.
“And still bad at it.” Her mother chuckled.
Nicole gave a tired laugh. It didn’t last. Susan reached across the table and covered her hand.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Start wherever you need to.”
Nicole had told her parents only the basics when she arrived with two tired children, a suitcase, and bags full of the girls’ things.
She’d said that something had happened at the studio and she needed space from Alexander.
Susan hadn’t pushed. Paul had looked ready to drive to Bel Air and drag answers out of his son-in-law, but Susan had sent him upstairs to help with the girls.
Now there was no reason to delay.
“The girls were crying for him all morning yesterday,” Nicole said. “Nothing helped. Prim said Daddy didn’t want them.”
Her mother’s mouth tightened.
“I called Alexander. I called Vicky. No one answered. So, I took them to the studio.” Nicole swallowed. “That’s where I learned Vicky was in the hospital. I still didn’t know why Alexander hadn’t answered. I only knew my daughters were falling apart, and their father couldn’t be reached.”
“And you found him with Angela.”
“In her trailer. I heard them laughing through the window.” Nicole took her phone from the table. “The window was too high, so I raised the camera over my head to see inside. I started recording before anything happened.”
She unlocked the phone and opened the video. Her thumb hovered over the screen. She hadn’t watched it since the studio. She hadn’t needed to. Every second remained sharp in her mind.
“Mom, I need you to watch the whole thing.”
Susan nodded. “All right.”
Nicole set the phone between them and pressed play.
The bright trailer appeared on the screen.
Alexander stood with his jacket open and both hands in his pockets.
There was space between him and Angela. Their voices came through the cracked window, followed by laughter. Then Angela crossed the space.
Susan’s fingers closed around the handle of her cup as Angela pulled Alexander down and kissed him.
On the screen, Alexander jerked back. His shock was plain.
He wiped his mouth, blocked Angela’s second attempt, and told her to stop.
He told her he was married. He told her the kiss wasn’t wanted.
When Angela tried to use his constant presence at the studio as proof that he wanted more from her, he rejected every word.
Brittle was his job. Angela was part of his job.
Nicole was his life. The video ended as Alexander turned toward the trailer door.
Nicole’s mother let out a slow breath. “He didn’t want her.”
“No.”
“He didn’t kiss her back.”
“Not for a second.”
“Do you believe him?”
Nicole picked up the phone, but she didn’t close the video. Alexander’s face was frozen on the screen. “I know my husband. He didn’t cheat on me. He doesn’t want Angela, and I don’t believe he wants anyone but me.”
Susan studied her. “But you left anyway.”
“Because he still wasn’t there. Even while he was telling Angela that I was his life, our daughters were standing outside her trailer because they had to go looking for their father.”
Nicole opened the folder where she’d saved screenshots.
She moved through the photographs without giving herself time to read every cruel comment again.
Angela against Alexander’s arm at the Academy Museum.
Angela beside him outside a studio building.
Alexander’s hand at Angela’s waist while they faced a wall of cameras.
Their heads lowered close enough to make strangers believe they were sharing secrets.
“This has been going on for months,” Nicole said. “People call me his nanny. They say I’m a stupid wife waiting at home while he shows off the woman he really wants. They keep saying Angela will be the next Mrs. Cohan.”
Her mother’s eyes flashed. “Does Alexander know about these?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t use social media.
Maybe someone told him to stand there and put his hand there, and he never thought about it.
Maybe Angela told him it was good for the movie.
I don’t know what he understood or encouraged.
” Nicole locked her phone. “But I know how it made me feel. I was being laughed at in public while he wasn’t home long enough to notice what was happening to me. ”
“And the girls.”
Nicole looked toward the garden. Prim had climbed onto Paul’s back. Rose was trying to climb up beside her, and Paul had dropped to his hands and knees in the grass so she could manage it.
“He doesn’t know them right now,” Nicole said.
“Not the way a father should. He doesn’t know what they’re learning or what they talk about after preschool.
He doesn’t know which cup belongs to which girl, or which one will cry if their toast is cut wrong.
He doesn’t know Prim fell off the play structure last week and scraped her stomach so badly I thought she’d need stitches. ”
The memory made Nicole’s chest tighten. Prim’s scream, the blood, the trip to urgent care. The thin adhesive strips still hidden under her shirt.
“He doesn’t know Rose can count to ten now,” she continued. “She practiced for days because she wanted to show him. Every night, she said she’d do it when Daddy came home. He never did.”
Susan’s hand tightened over hers.
“They’re not only disappointed anymore,” Nicole said. “They’re hurting. Yesterday, they cried until they couldn’t catch their breath. Prim thinks he lives at work. Rose thinks I can make him come home and that I’m choosing not to. I can’t keep doing that to them. I can’t keep doing it to myself.”
“No,” her mother said quietly. “You can’t.”
Nicole blinked hard. “I still love him. That’s the worst part. I heard him tell Angela he loves me, and I believed him. I know he loves the girls too.”
“Of course you do.”
“What if that makes me weak?”
“Loving your husband doesn’t make you weak.
Believing the truth in that video doesn’t make you weak either.
” Susan waited until Nicole looked at her.
“But knowing he didn’t cheat doesn’t mean you have to excuse everything else.
Those are two different truths. You can love him and still refuse to live like this. ”
Nicole’s eyes burned. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You don’t have to know today. You’re exhausted, you’re hurt, and your girls need somewhere steady. Stay here. All three of you can stay as long as you need.”
“Dad won’t enjoy having Alexander come to the house.”
Susan glanced toward her husband. Paul was flat on his back now, with one twin on each side of him and his eyes closed in false defeat.
“Your father will behave,” Susan said. “He’ll complain to me in private, but he’ll behave.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“I didn’t say he’d be cheerful.”
Nicole laughed through the tears that finally spilled over. Susan moved her chair closer and held her. Nicole let herself lean into her mother’s arms. For once, she didn’t have to explain anyone else’s behavior. She didn’t have to make the hurt smaller so the day could keep moving.
After lunch, Paul carried Rose upstairs for the twins’ nap while Prim walked beside him and insisted she wasn’t tired. She was still arguing when the doorbell rang.
Nicole knew who it was before she reached the front hall.
Alexander stood on the other side of the glass-paneled door.
He hadn’t used the code he knew. He hadn’t asked a member of staff to call ahead.
He’d come alone, and he waited for Nicole to let him in.
His clothes were neat, but his face wasn’t.
His eyes were red, and the skin under them looked bruised with exhaustion.
The sight of him pulled at everything tender inside her. Nicole opened the door.
“Thank you for seeing me,” he said.
“The girls just went down for their nap.”
His gaze moved past her toward the stairs. “Can I see them?”
“Not yet. We need to talk first.”
Pain crossed his face, but he nodded. “All right.”
Nicole led him into her father’s downstairs office and closed the door behind them. The room was quiet, with a broad desk and two worn leather chairs that had been there for most of her life. She took the chair closest to the door.
Alexander stayed standing.
“Nicole, I’m sorry,” he started quickly. “I should’ve had my phone with me. Vicky had a medical emergency, and I left the phone in the cast dining area. I didn’t know you’d called until after you left. I didn’t know the girls needed me.”
“They always need you.” She sighed.