Chapter 11
David
“Daddy! I’m back!”
I’ve barely changed out of my suit when the front door opens and my daughter’s energy fills the apartment. “—the park and it was just fine. But then it became amazing—”
I pull on sweatpants and a soft T-shirt, trying to keep track of what Michaela’s yelling into the void as I head into the kitchen. She’s already peeling off her coat and slinging it over the back of a chair.
“—and then Angus, who is three and basically feral, tried to ride him like a horse, and he just stood there because he is noble and patient and a credit to his species, and Amelia braided his ear, which I thought was disrespectful but he seemed fine with it, and then—”
“Shoes,” I say, turning on the espresso machine and taking a mug out of the cupboard.
Michaela kicks one shoe toward the door, the other toward the opposite wall. “—and then we formed the A-team and Serena said we had to leave but I negotiated a future meeting—”
“Shoes together, please.”
She retrieves the rogue shoe with a put-upon sigh and places it next to its partner with exaggerated care.
Serena appears in the doorway behind her, slightly wind-blown.
“She’s alive,” Serena announces. “Possibly too alive. I don’t know where she stores the energy. I’ve been on my feet for three hours, and I need to lie down for a week.”
“That sums up parenting pretty well,” I say, gesturing to offer her a coffee. She shakes her head.
“I don’t know how you do this every day.” She leans against the kitchen doorframe. “Genuinely. I’m in awe and slightly traumatized.”
“You get used to it.” I hit the buttons to make a strong latte and turn to Michaela. “Sounds like you had fun at the park.”
“The park was excellent,” Michaela says, climbing onto the kitchen stool and immediately reaching for the fruit bowl. She selects a banana with the deliberation of a sommelier choosing a vintage. “We went to Lincoln Park, and Miss Nora was there.”
I almost fumble my mug.
“You saw Principal Harrison?”
“And Archimedes.” Michaela peels the banana. “That’s what I was just telling you about, Dad. Archimedes was at the park with Miss Nora, her sister, and her sister’s kids—Amelia and Angus. We had an incredible time.”
I look at Serena. She’s watching me carefully—the expression of a crisis management professional who has identified a potential detonation point and wants to choose her words accordingly.
“It was all totally random,” she says, as if I’d somehow think otherwise. “Michaela spotted the dog from about two hundred yards and broke into a dead sprint before I could stop her.”
“I have very good eyesight,” Michaela says through a mouthful of banana.
“You have zero impulse control,” Serena corrects. “But yes. She was there. We said hello. The kids played with the dog. It was nice.”
Nice. A word that carries approximately seven layers of subtext when delivered with that particular Serena Morgan inflection.
“She seems lovely,” Serena adds. “We chatted for a few minutes. Her sister was there—Miranda? Very funny. Good energy.”
“Right.” I keep my voice level. Neutral. The voice I use in depositions when someone introduces evidence I wasn’t expecting. “That’s nice.”
“It is nice.” Serena pauses, just long enough for the air to thicken. “Michaela may have . . . made some promises.”
“Promises.”
“About a visit.”
“A visit.”
“With the dog.”
I look at my daughter. She’s eating her banana with the focused innocence of a person who knows exactly what she’s done and is strategically not making eye contact.
“Michaela.”
“It wasn’t a promise,” she says to the banana. “I asked if Archimedes could come here and see my room. Miss Nora said it was something you needed to decide. So it was a preliminary agreement pending parental review.”
“Where did you learn that phrase?”
“Uncle Caleb.”
Of course.
“I’ll handle it,” I tell Serena. “Whatever was discussed, I’ll follow up.”
“There’s also the playdate she mentioned—with the A-team.”
“The what?”
“The A-team, Daddy,” Michaela repeats, as though emphasizing the A makes it self-explanatory.
“Archie and Miranda’s kids,” Serena translates. “It’s a whole thing.”
“I see.”
“I don’t mind organizing it,” Serena says. “I’m the one who opened that door. I can text Nora’s sister and arrange something. It doesn’t have to involve you at all—just the kids and the dog at the park. Low-key.”
She’s being helpful. She’s being practical. She’s offering to take the thing off my plate because she can see the plates are stacked dangerously high, and she’s the kind of person who steps in before the crash.
“I’ll handle it,” I say again, and the edge in my voice surprises both of us.
Serena’s eyebrows lift. One millimeter. Serena Morgan doesn’t miss things—it’s literally her profession—and I’ve just handed her a data point she didn’t ask for.
“Sorry.” I scrub a hand over my face. “I’m tired. Long day. I didn’t mean—”
“You’re fine.” She waves it off with a grace that tells me she won’t push. Not now. Not here. But later, in the privacy of her own apartment, she’ll almost certainly mention it to Caleb, who will almost certainly call me tomorrow with a casual check-in that isn’t casual at all.
The Kingsley-Morgan intelligence network. God help me.
“Thank you for taking her today,” I say, standing. “Really. I know it’s a lot.”
“It’s not a lot. It’s a kid, a park, and an inadvisable amount of junk food.” She pushes off the doorframe and grabs her bag. “You know we’re here, David. All of us. You’re allowed to use us without keeping a tally.”
The observation lands and I don’t like how precise it is.
“I know,” I say, because it’s easier than explaining that knowing and believing are two different things, and I’ve spent my entire adult life in the gap between them.
She hugs Michaela goodbye, points a warning finger at her about “no unauthorized contract negotiations without counsel present,” and lets herself out.
The house settles into quiet.
Michaela finishes her banana, discards the peel on the counter instead of in the trash—a small act of domestic rebellion I choose not to prosecute—and slides off the stool.
“I’m going to work on my story,” she announces.
“What story?”
“It’s a legal thriller.”
“A legal thriller.”
“Yes. It’s about an octopus who sues a seal for defamation, and the judge is a golden retriever.”
I stare at her. “Is the golden retriever Archimedes?”
“It’s fiction, Dad. Any resemblance to real golden retrievers is purely coincidental.” She pauses. “But yes.”
She disappears into the living room with a notebook and a fistful of colored pencils.
I take my coffee to the kitchen table and open my laptop.
The apartment is quiet now. Just Michaela’s murmured narration from the living room—something about the jury being compromised because dolphins have a well-documented bias against tentacles—and the faint trace of Leonie’s orange-blossom cleaning spray hanging in the air.
She always leaves something in the fridge on Saturdays when she does her deep clean. Today it’s lemon chicken—and the domesticity of the smell makes the red blocks on my spreadsheet feel even more accusatory.
Michaela’s schedule.
Mapped against mine and Caleb’s, with color-coded blocks for school hours, after-school activities, pickup windows, and the rapidly expanding gaps where Marta used to be.
Marta called yesterday. Her mother needs surgery—cardiac, not minor.
Recovery will be weeks. Possibly months.
Marta was careful with her words, precise in the way people are when they’re trying not to cry on a phone call, but the message was clear.
She can’t come back for at least six weeks. Maybe longer.
Six weeks. The same timeline as the hearing. Because apparently the universe believes in thematic symmetry.
I stare at the spreadsheet. The gaps are red. There are a lot of red blocks.
My mother can cover some of them. She’s been extraordinary—rearranging her clinic schedule, canceling her own commitments, showing up with overnight bags, ice cream, and grandmotherly competence.
But she’s sixty-four with her own practice and her own patients, and she’s also scheduled to fly to the UK to be the guest speaker for a pediatrics lecture circuit.
It’s something she committed to months ago and absolutely refuses to cancel because, in her words, “children in Italy also deserve evidence-based care, David.”
Which is true. Irritatingly true. Also irrelevant to the fact that my life is currently built on a childcare infrastructure made of one overworked pediatrician, one dangerously overcommitted uncle, and whatever scraps of flexibility I can carve out of a law practice I’ve had for barely a month.
Maybe I should add Eddie to the approved pickup list.
I rub a hand over my mouth and dismiss the thought as soon as it appears. Adding anyone new to the list this side of the trial would look reckless.
I stare harder at the spreadsheet, as if intimidation will produce a solution.
It does not.
Mondays are bad. Wednesdays are worse. Thursdays are a logistical war crime.
I have tried to solve this six different ways already.
Caleb can do pickups when he’s not in court or with clients—which is approximately never.
Bennett offered Jenna as a logistics coordinator, which was generous and also terrifying.
Logan offered to build an “optimized scheduling algorithm,” which I declined on the grounds that my daughter is not a server load to be balanced.
Dominic offered to babysit personally, which I declined on the grounds that Michaela would return speaking exclusively in financial metaphors and wearing a suit jacket.
The truth is, I need a temporary nanny. Someone vetted, experienced, available on short notice, and comfortable with an eight-and-a-half-year-old who conducts mock trials and has opinions about literally everything.
I open a browser tab. Type in temporary childcare agency Chicago. Stare at the results. Close the tab.
Open it again. Close it again.