9. Cali
CALI
"I'll get them," he offers.
My knee-jerk reaction is to argue. "I can do it."
"I know you can." He's already unbuckling his seat belt. "But it's a hot day in a big parking lot with a long line of anxious helicopter parents, and I'd rather you didn't stand in the middle of that shit any longer than you have to."
I still want to argue with him. But I'm tired today after yesterday's squabble, so I just wave a hand at him. "Fine. You're a martyr. Go."
I watch him cross the street. A few of the other parents glance at him.
The moms especially. In their defense, he's hard not to glance at.
Big, dark, filling out a button-down shirt very nicely, moving through a crowd of Upper East Side Pilates mamas in leggings and dads in golf polos like a shark cruising through a koi pond.
I sit for a minute, but then I get fidgety in the car, so I climb out just to stretch my legs. Aimlessly, I pull out my phone and check the tracker app that I made Ronan give me the login credentials for.
The dot on the map that is my car sits right where it should. The two dots that are the kids' backpacks are inside the building, drifting toward the door for dismissal.
I'm still mad about the trackers.
I'm also, though I'd never admit it out loud, a little bit comforted by them. That seems to be my whole life now: two true things sitting on top of each other, refusing to cancel out.
"Cal."
The voice comes from behind me, close, and I jump so hard I nearly drop the phone.
I turn around.
It's Todd.
For a second, I don't believe it. He's changed.
Three weeks ago on my steps, he looked bad.
But this is worse. He's thinner. His face has gone hollow under the cheekbones, and there's gray stubble on his jaw that he never used to allow to peek through.
His shirt is wrinkled and untucked on one side.
He keeps squinting past me, at the parked cars, at the corner, at the sky, everywhere but at me for more than a second.
"Todd. What the hell?"
"I know. I know." He holds up both hands. "Thirty seconds. That's all I want."
"How did you even—"
"I knew the camp schedule. I used to do pickup, remember?" A ghost of the old cocky smirk, gone before it even gets halfway across his mouth. "I've been sitting up the block. I saw you pull up."
Which means he's been watching. A month ago, that would have terrified me. Now, it just makes me tired in a whole new way.
"You need to go," I say. "The kids are about to come out. You don't want them seeing you like this."
"No," he agrees fast. "No, I don't. That's— Yeah. That's kind of the point."
His eyes cut to the black SUV, and then a little farther down, to the Bratva soldier who's trailing us today to be extra sure that nothing goes wrong. The man looks at me in concern, but I wave him off subtly. I can handle one scumbag ex without backup muscle.
"He's got people on you?" Todd observes in a nervous mutter.
"Yeah. Lots of them."
"Good." I'm surprised that he says that like he actually means it. "That's good."
I don't know what to do with that unexpected twist. I don't particularly like what it implies.
"You look terrible," I tell him. "Are you sleeping?"
"Not really. Not in the same place twice. Not if I can help it, at least." He rubs the back of his neck. "It's, uh. It's been a bad few weeks."
I fold my arms. "You told me the feds talked to you. But you made it sound like they just asked you some questions and let you go home. This doesn't look like that."
"I, er… may have undersold it." He still won't look at me.
"They got a little bit deeper than I let on.
I signed some things, Cal. I said some things.
When they put it to you the way they put it to me, you don't feel like you have a choice but to sing the exact song they want you to sing, you know?
" He swallows. "Later, I found out there were some other options.
But by then, I'd already gone through with the one they wanted. "
"What the hell does that mean, Todd?"
"It means the street thinks I'm a rat." There's no spin left in him, none of the old salesmanship. He's stripped down to the bone, and even that much looks to be on its way out. "Probably because I am one. Ha. Basically, I'm a dead man. I just haven't gotten the official notice yet."
"Jesus, Todd—"
"Somebody came to me this week." He talks over me, fast, as if he'll lose the nerve to get the whole spiel out if he doesn't maintain momentum. "Not a fed. I know feds now, I can smell 'em. This wasn't that. This was somebody else, and they didn't want to arrest me."
My mouth has gone dry. "What did they want?"
"Doesn't matter." He shakes his head hard.
"I'm not telling you. I'm leaving tonight.
And I'm not telling you where, either, because the less you know, the better for you and the kids.
If anybody ever asks, you don't know a thing.
That'll be the truth, and you're a terrible liar, so it's better if there's nothing to lie about. Lies were always my game."
I don't have pity for him. I can't, not after what he did to me. He deserved the damage I dealt, the public humiliation. For shaming me about my body and cheating on me and trying to rip my life out from under me… Yeah. Well-earned.
But I do feel something for him. Whatever is less than pity.
This world has come completely off its hinges.
"So you're leaving," I repeat. "For good?"
He nods. "Or for as long as good lasts, anyway."
I don't really know what to say. "Then why follow me here? Is there something you want?" The way he shifts on his feet tells me I've hit the right button, so I press further. "There is, isn't there?"
He flinches, but he doesn't deny it. "Yeah. I want something."
"Then ask, so I can tell you no and move on with my life."
He looks down at his shoes and whispers, in the meekest voice I've ever heard, "Don't let them hate me."
I blink. "What?"
"The kids." He presses his lips together to get himself back under control.
"I know I don't get to ask for anything.
I know that. I gave up the right to ask you for anything the day I—" He stops.
"The day I did all of it. I know. But they're gonna grow up, and they're gonna ask about me, and you're the one who's gonna be there to answer. I'm not asking you to lie."
"Good, because I won't."
"I'm not asking that. You don't lie to them, you never did, I always—" He laughs weakly.
"I always hated that about you, honestly.
You'd tell 'em the truth about stuff even when a nice lie would've been easier.
Santa. The dog dying. All of it." He wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"I'm just asking you to leave them one version of me that isn't only this.
If there's one good thing you can remember about their dad, someday, when they're old enough…
Just don't take that away from them, too. "
I don't say anything.
I don't promise. I can't. I don't know what I'll do when Isabella is fifteen and asks me why her father disappeared, and I won't stand in a parking lot lying to a man about the future just to make him feel better as he wallows in his own unforced mistakes.
But I don't tell him no, either.
I just stand there and let the not-answer sit between us. Todd looks at me, and I think he understands it for what it is. Not a yes. Not a no. Just the most either of us can give.
"Okay," he says softly. "Okay. That's fair."
Then his eyes go past me again, to the SUV, to the man in the dark coat, and finally to the front doors of the camp, where any second now, two children are going to come spilling out into the afternoon.
He starts to leave, then stops. "Is he good to them?" Todd asks.
Right then, the doors open.
Ronan comes out with Isabella on his hip. She's got both arms around his neck and a construction-paper crown on her head. Hayden is at his elbow, walking fast to keep up, narrating over the top of his sister about something.
Ronan sees Todd.
He stops. Just for a heartbeat. His face doesn't change—for Isabella's sake, I'm sure—but his eyes do.
I catch his gaze over the roof of the parked cars and I give him the smallest shake of my head. No. Not this. Wait.
He doesn't move toward us. He stops right where he is on the walkway, adjusts Isabella higher on his hip, and says something to Hayden that makes the boy pause and look at whatever he's pointing at up in the maple tree. Buying us a minute.
Two men who have both, in their own crooked, criminal, impossible ways, thrown themselves between these two children and the dark. Looking at each other across a parking lot full of minivans.
I turn back to Todd.
And I give him the truth. Not the easy version. Not the kind version. The one I haven't said out loud to a single soul, not even to myself, not in the mirror I threw a soap dispenser at, not in the dark at two in the morning.
"Yes," I say. "He's better to them than I ever thought possible."
To his credit, he takes it on the chin. His eyes go glassy. He nods, quick and tight, and looks away down the block, blinking hard.
"Good," he says. "That's what I wanted to hear. I mean it. That's the best news you could've given me."
He looks at his children one more time.
"Take care of yourself, Cal," he says. Then he turns and hustles away, quick and hunched, hands jammed in his pockets, keeping to the shade of the buildings. He's around the corner and gone before Isabella has any idea her father was ever there at all.
I stand by the SUV for a second.
My legs don't feel entirely attached to my body. I just put a hand on the warm metal of the door to remind myself which way is up.
"Mommy!" Isabella has been released and is barreling toward me now. "I made a crown! Look! I'm a princess!"
"I love it," I say in the most normal voice I can muster. "It's the most beautiful crown I've ever seen."
Ronan opens the back door and swings Isabella up into her booster seat. Hayden climbs in the other side, still yammering a mile a minute. I get into the passenger seat as the kids get all buckled in and situated.
When Ronan is done double checking the seatbelt straps, he shuts the door and slides behind the wheel. Quietly, so the kids can't hear it, he asks:
"You alright?"
I look at him. Gray-blue certainty, that firm jawline, the stubble, the ferocity, the perfection, the infuriation. All of Ronan Akov, right there to be seen and admired all at once.
"Yeah," I say. "I'm alright."
And then I reach out and take his hand.
Just for a second. Just to hold onto something.
After a millisecond of hesitation, his fingers close around mine. "Hold on tight, kiddos," he says with a smile. "Let's go home."