Chapter 15 Penelope
Chapter fifteen
Penelope
Later that night, after I put Danny to bed, I step out of the basement door into the night, leaving it open just enough so I can hear Danny if she stirs.
Danny and I moved to the basement when she was born.
Her crying in the middle of the night for feedings wore on Gen’s nerves terribly, and Chastity and Grace would complain when they would try to sleep in.
So it just became easiest for us to move to the basement.
With an entire first floor between us, her cries didn’t wake them at night.
It’s unfinished, but we’ve made it cozy.
Our mattresses may be on the unfinished cement floor, but we have dozens of blankets and pillows, and have hung blankets from the unfinished walls to give them decoration and a little insulation.
I wrap a blanket around me to ward off the chill of the night, pull my phone out, and dial Cara.
“Tell me everything. Now,” Cara says before the call has even connected all the way. I can’t help but chuckle.
Cara’s autistic. She’s a brilliant computer wiz who taught herself to code before she was ten and became emancipated at fifteen so she could attend college early when her parents refused.
They never could accept their neurodivergent child when they had two neurotypical ones.
But she’s thrived on her own, and her blunt form of communication is refreshing to me.
You always know exactly where you stand with her and what she thinks about you.
“Well, good evening to you, too,” I tease, a smile tugging at my lips.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she quips back, and in my mind I can see her twirling her hand like she does when she’s annoyed with small talk.
I lean against the wall of the house as I ponder where to start. I guess at the beginning.
“You know how I got a new job at a sex club cleaning?” I mean, of course, she does. That’s why I drop off Danny, but it seems like the best place to start.
“Mhm.”
“Well, one afternoon I realized I’d left my phone there, so I knocked on the door and guess who answered. Daniel. Apparently, he owns the club and was there for some sort of celebration with just a few people?”
“And?”
My smile widens. “And he wants a second chance at a relationship. He wants to get to know Danny...” I hesitate to tell her this next part, but I need a friend to tell me if I’m being ridiculous about the money or not.
Cara’s made millions with her software, but she’s also completely neutral about money.
It doesn’t mean anything to her. One dollar or a million, it's the same to her. So she’s the perfect person to tell me if I’m uncomfortable because of my upbringing - and, honestly, our current financial predicament.
“He gave me a check for half a million dollars, Cara,” I whisper into the phone, as if the universe is going to hear it and snatch the check away from someone who clearly doesn’t deserve it.
She’s silent, but I can hear her keyboard clacking.
“That makes sense,” she says finally.
“What do you mean!?” I whisper-shout, turning so my back is towards the front of the house.
“Daniel King. Net worth...”
“Stop! I don’t want to know what his net worth is!”
“... are you being weird about money again, Nell?”
I groan. Because am I?
“I don’t know, Cara! I’ve never seen that many zeros on a check in my life.
It’s more than I ever thought I’d see in my entire lifetime, and he just handed it to me like it was a newspaper!
It feels icky. Why is he giving it to me?
Because I birthed his offspring? Am I a Clydesdale now?
A surrogate?” And then a worse thought occurs to me. “... a charity case?”
Cara’s quiet for a long, uncomfortable time as I know she’s working through her thoughts.
“What would have happened if you had found him when you went back to the ski school?”
“What?”
“If he had been there,” she says, like she’s struggling to have patience with me.
I probably would be too if I were in her shoes.
“Alright. I’ll tell you what would have happened.
You would have told him you were pregnant.
He would have married you. Or at least dated you and been there to help raise Danny.
He at least would have paid child support, but I think it would have been more than that.
This article says he looked for you for years.
The email address for this article is still active. ”
I nod. He’d told me that, but I hadn’t had time to wrap my head around what that meant.
I hear the keyboard typing more before heavy silence. Knowing my best friend, there’s something uncomfortable she wants to tell me, but is hesitating because she knows she can be blunt.
“Tell me.”
“Have you been to his house yet?”
“No.”
More silence.
“Take the money, girl. You deserve it. Take the man too. Life is too short. What would your dad have wanted you to do?”
It feels like an ice-cold hand plunges through my gut to grip my stomach tightly.
Because, I don’t know what he would have wanted. His dying wish was for me to keep the family together. But he would have wanted me to be happy, too, right? If he knew about Daniel? Wouldn’t he want his granddaughter to be with her father?
I think about my dad and my relationship as being so special, because we were each other’s only family for most of my life. Would he want Danny to miss out on that? Where does that leave me? I can’t leave Gen and my sisters. They can’t take care of all the cooking and cleaning.
They’re adults, a small voice in the back of my head reminds me. Yeah, but they have other priorities. Priorities that are not this family.
Great. Now I’m talking to myself.
I remember I’m still on the phone with Cara.
“Just think about it? Please? I want to see you do what’s right for you for once,” she says, and I wince at the implied statement.
“I will, Cara. I promise.”
More silence.
“Alright, babes. I’m going to head to bed.
I’ll text you in the morning. ‘Night, beautiful,” I say.
Cara struggles to develop relationships with men because of her autism, so I always make sure to send her “good morning, beautiful and good night, beautiful” text messages.
She always rolls her eyes at me, though, at the asinine thought that she could need affirming texts, but I send them anyway.
“‘Night, love,” she replies before hanging up. I sneak back into our basement and lock the doors behind me. I tiptoe over to our “bedroom” and watch Danny’s soft brown curls as she sleeps. Uneasiness settles deep in the pit of my stomach.
I know we didn’t have a lot of money growing up.
I know kids ask for dumb stuff. But I look at my sleeping baby and know deep in my bones that if she asked for something, within reason, and I had the ability to give it to her, I would without hesitation.
Even if I couldn’t afford it or it was frivolous, I would sit her down and explain why I couldn’t give it to her.
I wouldn’t ever want her to feel like a burden.
I recall my father’s long, loud sigh whenever I asked him a question.
I remember how disappointed I would get when he would deny me that small ounce of connection to the only family member I had.
And as I lie on my back, arm propped behind my head, the exposed floor joists of the first floor illuminated softly by a nightlight, my mind spins.
Thoughts of lazy Saturday mornings making pancakes with Daniel, daddy-daughter dances, someone to hold me and love me, someone to love Danny, a beautiful home, a beautiful family - made from love and respect and not obligation.
But could all that be mine? Ours? Could I let us hope for something that seems so out of reach?
I toss and turn with these warring thoughts and ideas until the early hours of the morning.
Without a single answer