CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ALEXANDER
Lily wakes at twelve minutes past six.
I know because I hear quick footsteps on the floor below, followed by a door opening, the faint creak of the stairs, and a voice carrying through the corridor.
“Dad!”
I am on my feet before I think and nearly trip over the shoe I left beside the bed. My heart is already racing when I open the door, prepared for a fall, a nightmare, or some emergency I have not yet learned how to handle.
Instead, I find Lily standing in the corridor in dinosaur pajamas. Her hair is everywhere, and her stuffed rabbit is tucked beneath one arm.
“What happened?”
She looks mildly surprised by the urgency.
“Nothing.”
It takes my body a few seconds to understand there is no danger.
“Then why did you call me?”
“I wanted to know if you were still here.”
The answer lands so precisely that I cannot speak at first.
There is something devastating in how casually she admits that she crossed two floors simply to confirm my presence. Lily does not accuse me, nor does she look frightened. She only needed to make sure I had not disappeared during the night.
“I am,” I say once my voice works again. “And if you ever need to know, you can ask.”
She smiles, satisfied.
“Okay.”
Then she turns and starts walking back toward the stairs.
“Lily.”
My daughter looks over her shoulder.
“Was that all?”
“Yes. You can go back to sleep if you want.”
“I’m not sleepy anymore.”
She disappears down the corridor, dragging the rabbit by one ear.
I remain in the doorway.
A child does not check whether someone is still there unless disappearing seems possible. I do not know whether Lily’s fear came from me specifically, from the absence of a father she never knew, or simply from a child’s understanding that some people leave.
None of those possibilities makes breathing particularly easy.
I get dressed and go downstairs. Isabella is in the kitchen with her hair tied up carelessly and a mug held between both hands. She is wearing pajama bottoms and an oversized sweater, but her face tells me she has been awake for some time.
From her expression, she heard everything.
“Lily did that with me for almost two years,” she says.
I open a cupboard in search of coffee.
“She used to call for you in the middle of the night just to make sure you were still home?”
“Sometimes she woke crying from a nightmare, but most nights she just called my name. Once I answered, she went back to sleep.”
“When did it start?”
Isabella wraps both hands more tightly around the mug.
“After she learned to talk. There was a period when she woke three or four times a night.”
I picture a younger Isabella exhausted and alone, crossing a dark flat to reassure the child who should have been ours. I picture Lily too small to understand why only one voice ever answered.
“Why did she do it?”
“Children are afraid the things they love will disappear.”
I do not know whether she means it as an accusation. Perhaps it does not need to be intentional to find exactly where it hurts.
“Were you afraid of that too?” I ask.
Isabella looks up.
“After you sent me away, I spent a while waiting for everything to disappear. Clara’s flat, the money, the pregnancy. Even my own body felt like something I couldn’t rely on. Lily probably absorbed more of that insecurity than I would have liked.”
There is no useful answer. An apology would only turn another one of her memories into a scene about my remorse.
“She seems secure now,” I say.
“I worked very hard for that.”
“I know.”
“You’re beginning to.”
I accept the correction.
Lily walks in before the silence can grow too heavy.
“I want pancakes.”
“There is cereal,” Isabella informs her.
My daughter points at me.
“Dad makes them.”
I do not know how to make pancakes. I can run an acquisition across three time zones, identify fraud in financial statements, and negotiate with people who have spent their entire careers refusing to concede ground.
I have never made a pancake.
“Of course,” I say.
Isabella raises an eyebrow but does not interfere.
I open cupboards, find flour, eggs, milk, and a worrying number of utensils whose purpose I cannot identify. I arrange everything on the counter and realize I have no idea what the proportions are.
Lily climbs onto one of the stools.
“Do you know how?”
“Yes.”
Isabella chokes discreetly on her coffee.
I pick up my phone. Before I can unlock it, Lily reaches out.
“No searching.”
“That sounds like a rule you invented this second.”
“It is.”
“Excellent. Are there any others that should have been disclosed before the activity began?”
“You can’t ask Mum.”
I look at Isabella. She hides a smile behind her mug.
“Perhaps she could provide the proportions. That would not be assistance, merely a technical consultation.”
“You said you knew how,” Isabella reminds me.
“Technically, I said I would do it.”
Lily follows the exchange with interest.
“Dad, do you lie?”
The kitchen goes silent.
Five years ago, I would have found an efficient distinction between imprecision, exaggeration, and lying. None of them serves me in front of my daughter.
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But I’m trying not to. I should have said I don’t know how to make pancakes, but I can learn.”
Lily accepts the answer easily.
“Mum knows.”
“Excellent.”
“But she’s not helping.”
“I noticed.”
“You can look on the flour packet,” Isabella suggests after allowing me to suffer long enough. “There’s a recipe.”
I inspect the packaging and find instructions printed on one side.
“Does that count as searching?” I ask.
Lily thinks about it.
“No, because it was already in the kitchen.”
The rule has obvious flaws, but I do not challenge them. I attempt to follow the recipe while Lily demands a dinosaur-shaped pancake.
“I’ll start with a circle.”
“That’s easy.”
“Exactly. We are establishing basic competence before progressing to prehistoric forms.”
The first pancake burns before I manage to flip it. The second is raw in the middle and breaks apart in the pan. On the third attempt, I lower the heat and discover that waiting is a fundamental part of the process, which may apply to more things than breakfast.
The result is asymmetrical but appears edible.
I place the pancake in front of Lily and wait while she cuts off a piece. My daughter chews with alarming seriousness.
“Is it bad?”
“A little.”
“Thank you for your honesty. Could you be more specific?”
“It tastes like flour.”
“That is technically unavoidable.”
Isabella breaks off a piece from the edge and tastes it.
“You didn’t mix the batter properly.”
“Your consultancy arrived late.”
“I can charge by the hour.”
Lily pours honey over the pancake and continues eating.
“You don’t have to finish it, sweetheart,” Isabella says.
“I have to teach Dad.”
Something in Isabella’s expression changes.
Our daughter, however, is far too occupied drowning breakfast in honey to notice. To Lily, my ignorance is not an irreparable failure. It is simply something that can be taught.
I make another pancake, then a third.
The final one is not good, but at least it no longer tastes like raw flour.
“Better,” Lily declares.
“In percentage terms?”
“A little.”
“I’ll take it.”
When she goes upstairs to get dressed, I begin cleaning the counter. There is flour on the floor, batter on the hob, and a pile of utensils I almost certainly did not need.
Isabella stops in the doorway.
“We have people who can do that.”
I recognize the words from the kitchen in our old house, when she found me cutting strawberries for a romantic breakfast. Back then, I believed outsourcing everything I did not know how to do was simply efficiency.
I look at the mess.
“I want to do it.”
Isabella remains by the door for a few more seconds.
“You need to soak the pan. If you scrub it now, you’ll make it worse.”
“Was that help?”
“A technical consultation.”
She leaves before I can respond.
An hour later, we take Lily to school. During the drive, she explains that I cannot enter the classroom without permission, that the headmistress outranks parents while the children are inside the building, and that there is a teacher named Miss Collins who can tell when someone is lying “just by looking.”
“She sounds dangerous,” I say.
“She knows maths.”
“Even more so.”
At the entrance, Lily introduces me to her teacher as “my dad who doesn’t know how to make pancakes.” The woman receives the information with admirable restraint.
“He’s learning,” Lily adds.
“Then we’ll look forward to trying one when he’s ready,” the teacher says.
“That may take some time.”
Isabella kisses our daughter and hands over her backpack. Lily runs inside, then turns after three steps.
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Will you be home later?”
The question carries less anxiety than the first one, but I recognize the need beneath it.
“I’ll work during the day and be back before dinner.”
“Okay.”
She goes inside.
Isabella watches until the door closes.
“Don’t promise times you can’t keep,” she warns.
“I can keep that one.”
“Your work doesn’t always respect plans.”
“Then my work will have to learn.”
She studies me, perhaps trying to determine how much of the statement is genuine determination and how much is recent guilt.
“We’ll see.”
My old house is twenty minutes from the rental. I go there to collect clothes and documents, but the property greets me with a silence I never noticed before.
Everything is clean, organized, and exactly where it belongs. Yet none of the rooms feels inhabited. There are no pencils scattered across the rug, no bowls whose color determines whether breakfast is acceptable, and no voices calling through the halls to make sure someone is still there.
For years, I called that privacy.
Now it looks like absence.
Margaret is waiting in my study surrounded by folders and reports.
“You could have sent someone for your things.”
“I know.”
“The board meeting starts at ten.”
“I’ll attend remotely.”
“Richard insists you be there in person.”
“Richard is free to insist without me.”
Margaret has worked for me for eleven years, is sixty-two, and has turned lack of curiosity into a professional skill. Today, however, she looks at the suitcase in my hand and then at a small streak of flour apparently still clinging to my shirt sleeve.
“How was the first morning?”
“I made pancakes.”
She blinks.
“You?”
“I do not recommend them.”
A faint smile appears.
“I’ll notify the market. The news may affect the share price.”
“Margaret.”
“Yes?”
“I need to reorganize my schedule.”
She unlocks her tablet.
“Which commitments?”
“All of them.”
The smile disappears.
“Alexander, ‘all of them’ is not a category that can be moved.”
“I want Tuesday and Thursday afternoons clear from three onward, as well as Sundays. On the other days, do not schedule in-person meetings before eight or after six without my approval.”
Margaret scrolls through the calendar.
“The quarterly board meeting falls on a Thursday.”
“Move it earlier.”
“The investment committee does too.”
“Change the time.”
“Singapore confirmed the trip two months ago.”
“I’ll join by video.”
Margaret closes the tablet and studies me.
“You have never moved a meeting with Singapore.”
“I have never had a daughter waiting to see whether I show up.”
That removes all humor from her face. Margaret opens the calendar again.
“This will affect almost every senior executive.”
“They will be compensated for the inconvenience.”
“That isn’t what concerns me. If you intend to build a routine with Lily, you cannot dismantle it the first time the business has a crisis.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Companies do not respect intentions.”
“Then build a structure that does not depend on my presence in every decision.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I’ve been asking for that for seven years.”
“Consider it a delayed victory.”
Margaret makes several notes.
“I don’t want appointments with Lily listed under her name. Use only ‘unavailable.’”
“I had already assumed as much.”
“And nothing about her school is to circulate through the company.”
“Obviously.”
“Thank you.”
As I leave the office, I find Richard by the entrance. He looks at the suitcase, the flour on my sleeve, then at my face.
“Are you avoiding the company?”
“I’m working remotely.”
“From the same house as Isabella?”
“Is that relevant to the board?”
“I’m concerned that you are changing your entire routine at a delicate time.”
“You seem especially concerned about me lately.”
“I always have been.”
“Perhaps.”
I walk past him, but Richard says my name.
“The press already knows about the marriage. They’ll get to Lily soon enough, especially once they understand the value of those shares.”
“I know.”
“Isabella may not be prepared for the exposure.”
I turn around.
“Choose very carefully what you intend to say after her name.”
Richard gives a tired sigh.
“I’m not criticizing your wife. I simply don’t think she understands how this family works.”
“Isabella understands better than any of us what this family can do when it decides to protect its own interests.”
Something changes in his expression, too quickly for me to identify.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Good.”
I start walking again.
“You’re letting guilt control your decisions,” he says behind me.
I stop, and something inside me goes cold.
“No. For the first time, I’m trying to stop fear from doing that.”
Richard does not answer.
I get into the car, and my phone vibrates before the driver closes the door.
Isabella: Lily forgot her pencil case. Are you still near the school?
I look at the time. I have a meeting with representatives of a sovereign wealth fund in twenty minutes, and the drive back to the school takes me in the opposite direction.
My professional instinct supplies the cost immediately: lateness, executives waiting, the possibility of damaging an important negotiation.
Then I look at the question on the screen.
I reply.
Yes. Where is the pencil case?
Five minutes later, I am heading back toward the school with a pink box on the seat beside me. I call Margaret and ask her to push the meeting back half an hour.
“I hope the item is important,” she says.
I look at the dinosaur stickers covering the lid.
“It is.”
When I arrive, the teacher calls Lily to the gate. My daughter runs out to collect the pencil case and throws her arms around me.
“You came back!”
“I said I would.”
“Adults forget.”
I crouch so we are at eye level.
“Sometimes I may forget things too. But when I promise you something, I’ll do everything I can to keep it. If something stops me, I’ll tell you.”
Lily accepts the explanation and opens the case to inspect the contents.
“It’s all here.”
“Excellent.”
“You can go work now.”
“Thank you for the release.”
She returns to her teacher. Before going inside, she turns and waves.
When I get back to the car, I realize I cannot remember the last time a decision cost so much in time and seemed so insignificant to the rest of the world.
Perhaps it is the other way around.
Perhaps making bad pancakes, returning a pencil case, and coming home before dinner are not interruptions to the important part of my life.
Perhaps they are the important part.