16. Ashton
Ashton
“We’re up because we were going over lessons,” I say through the door, already on my feet, dragging pants off the floor while Imogen pulls the sheet to her chin.
“At night?” Luke’s voice comes through the wood, unconvinced.
“Boring scheduling. Go back to bed. I’ll be in to tuck you in a minute.”
Behind me, under her breath, Imogen repeats it back. “Boring scheduling.” Like she’s marking it down as the worst lie she’s heard all week.
“You’d have done better?”
“I’d have said arguing. More plausible, and it’s true four mornings out of five.”
She’s got the worn shirt over her head and her hair shoved back before I’ve found my own. She’s at the door first and I follow her into the hall, where my son stands in his pajamas with the rabbit dangling off one fist, his eyes going from her to me.
“Your hair’s weird,” he tells her.
“This is my emergency hair. It only comes out for very important company, so you should feel honored.”
“There’s no company.”
“You’re company. You’re the guest of honor. Back to bed, your excellency.”
“Why are you both in Dad’s room?”
The hall goes very quiet.
“We were going over the schedule,” Imogen says, without missing a beat. “Very boring. Lots of numbers.”
Luke looks at her, then at me. “Okay,” he says, in the voice he uses when he’s decided not to push a thing but wants you to know he noticed it.
Imogen’s waiting in the dark hall when I pull his door to its crack. Neither of us says anything about the last hour. She tips her head toward her own room, the question and the answer both already in the motion, and I nod, because there’s a kid who’s still half-awake only a door away.
“Get some sleep,” she whispers.
“You too.”
She goes, leaving me standing in the dark a moment longer than I need to before going back to my own bed alone. Sleep doesn’t come back. I lie in sheets that still smell like her.
The phone rings at seven while I’m at the coffee machine watching the light come gray off the water.
“Ashton.” Sophia, warm over the top, but with the constant edge underneath. “Up early. Or did you not sleep at all? You always twitched the night before something slipped your grip.”
“What do you want?”
“My lawyer’s sending across my terms, but I wanted you hearing it from me, since we’re playing so nicely now.” A sound almost like amusement. “A review of custody. In light of the changes to Luke’s home.”
I put the cup down on the stone. “There are no changes to his home.”
“No? A young woman living under your roof. Sleeping a few doors from our son.” She lets it breathe. “People talk, Ashton. It would be a shame for a judge to get the circulating version before he gets yours.”
“She tutors my kid. She has a contract and references that would embarrass yours.”
“I’m sure. I’m sure it’s spotless.” I can hear the condescending smile now. “I’ve had someone take a look at her. You trained me to be thorough, after all.”
And there it is. Not a thing she’d ever commit to paper, just a woman letting me know, sweet as antifreeze, that she’s set eyes on Imogen.
“I said stay away from her, Sophia.”
“And I said I’m nowhere near the girl.” Her voice doesn’t change. “I’m looking after my child. Same as you claim to.”
“He’s my son.”
“He’s our son. That’s the part you keep forgetting.”
I end the call before I say something she could use against me. She’ll mark the hang-up as a win, and she can keep it, because the only other option is staying on the line and giving her the rise she dialed in to harvest.
Then I do my go-to thing when things get out of control. I call the security firm and tighten everything up. A camera on the approach. A second man overnight on the bluff. Every contractor who’s set foot up here this month run through the checks again.
Imogen finds out about the new protocols in two hours. I should’ve known I wouldn’t get a day.
She comes into the office while Luke’s bent over a workbook down the hall.
“There’s a car on the access road,” she says.
“It’s been parked there since nine with a man in it that didn’t leave once.
And the contractor who waved at me yesterday got stopped cold at the gate this morning and asked for ID he’s flashed every day since we came here.
” She crosses her arms. “What’s going on? ”
“It’s a precaution.”
“A precaution against what?”
“It’s being handled.”
“That’s not an answer. You’re shutting me out again.” She comes another step in. “You doubled the guard on this house without telling me about it. If somebody’s watching that road, I’d rather hear it from you than work it out from a parked sedan. I thought he was stalking us.”
“What’s on that road is my concern, not yours.” It comes out cold and I don’t soften it. “You work for me, Imogen. You teach my son. My security arrangements aren’t a thing I run past the staff for approval.”
“The staff.” Her arms come up across her chest.
“That’s the arrangement you signed. Do I need to remind you what the job is?”
“No. You’ve reminded me plenty.” The bright thing’s gone out of her voice.
“Six hours ago you had your hand in my hair telling me you didn’t know what to do with me.
Now I’m the staff, and I don’t get told when a strange man’s parked outside the house where I sleep.
So which is it, Ashton? Because you can’t have both. ”
“Imogen.”
“My job is your kid.” She talks over the sound of her own name.
“He’s the thing I’d be standing between and whatever’s in that car.
And the man who hired me to do exactly that has decided I’m safer stupid.
That’s not protecting me, that’s handling me, and I can tell the difference because I grew up with a world-class expert in it. ”
“You need to drop it,” I say, but immediately wish I hadn’t.
She rocks back on her heels, her eyes narrowing. “Fine. My mistake. Forget I asked.”
I watch her leave and don’t go after her. I’m not alone long because she’s back in forty minutes. I hear her in the hall before the door, quick steps, and when she comes through her face has gone past anger. She’s got the phone out in front of her, screen turned to me.
“You want to talk precautions,” she says. “Walk me through this one.”
I take the phone.
It’s an older photograph, the focus soft, a conference room I’m very familiar with.
It’s me, four years back, dark suit, pen down on the page, signing a document laid flat across the table.
The divorce filing. My own name running half the line.
I don’t remember the picture being taken, but it clearly was and someone kept it four years in a drawer only to send it this morning to a number that should never have crossed their desk.
There’s one line under it.
He’ll discard you too.
“It came from a blocked number twenty minutes ago,” Imogen says. “I don’t know what’s going on except that someone’s telling me you’ll put me out on the curb the way you put out your wife. So I’ve earned the right to ask about the rest of it now. All of it.”
I look at my own younger hand closing a marriage, and the wall comes down without my permission. I set the phone face down and turn the second chair toward her in case she wants to sit. She stays standing, arms folded, waiting, and I find I haven’t got it in me to come up with a lie.
“She wasn’t discarded,” I tell her. “That’s the story she sells, and it’s been working for her, because she’s the first one to believe whatever version makes her the wounded party. But that’s not what happened.”
“Then what did?”
“She was never really in the marriage. She was cold with Luke too from the start. It’s like she never wanted a kid.
She skipped the things he needed her there for.
She wasn’t cruel to him, but she also wasn’t all there.
She treated him like a piece of furniture in a place she stopped by between better plans.
” My jaw’s locked but I keep talking through it, because she’s right, she’s owed this.
“Then she had him for a day. A handoff. She left him on a curb by himself because a better offer turned up in one of New York’s fancy restaurants that a kid wasn’t allowed in.
A little boy on a sidewalk not knowing if anyone was coming back for him.
That was the morning I quit trying to make it work.
I filed for divorce and I did it for him, not against her. ”
Her arms ease open a fraction. “And she walks around telling people you froze her out.”
“She tells them I married the company and left her out in the cold. She always finds the softest thing in the room and puts the knife there.” I tip my head at the phone. “This morning the softest thing is you.”
Imogen turns the phone back over, reads the line one more time, then lifts her eyes to mine. The bright thing has come back up into her face, but there’s a blade set into it now.
“He’ll discard you too,” she says. “She really doesn’t know the first thing about me. That’s not a threat. Where I come from, that’s a dare.”