7. Chapter Seven #3
“Your phone’s low,” I said, glancing at it.
“Go put it in your bedroom on the charger. Now.” It was the same voice I’d used at two in the morning, when I’d made her swear all those dirty promises.
“Then I want you in your pajamas and sitting on the couch with your feet in my lap ninety seconds after that.”
For a second, she just stared at me, amazed. Then something in her body loosened, like a fist unclenching after holding something too tight.
“Yes, Daddy.” She was already up, phone in hand. “What should I wear?”
The corner of my mouth curled in a smirk. “Those cute gray pajama shorts,” I said. “And a tank top.” I paused. “You’ll notice I didn’t say panties.”
Bailey grinned from ear-to-ear. “Yes, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy.” She blushed. “That last part will be our little secret.”
As my babygirl sashayed her way to her room, McKenna watched with an expression somewhere between delight and jealousy. “Holy shit,” she whispered, whistling through her teeth. “I’ve got to say, Mr. C, you have gotten scary good at that.”
“She needed something to stop her from worrying,” I said. “And when I do things like that, it reminds her that she’s more than what Debbie told her she is.”
“Right on,” McKenna agreed.
I headed into the living room. McKenna followed, then Bailey appeared—she must have broken a speed record for how quickly she’d torn her clothes off and put the ones I’d demanded on.
She plopped down beside me and stretched out, her legs splayed across my thighs.
I took one of her feet without being asked, working a thumb into the arch and pressing, hard, in a slow, kneading circle.
Bailey gasped in surprise. “Daddy?”
“Relax, babygirl,” I commanded. “You’re too tense.”
Bailey did. She slumped against the cushions, her head propped up on one of the couch’s throw pillows as I massaged one foot, then the other.
Slowly, the tension bled out of her in degrees.
By the time I got to the second foot, her eyes had gone unfocused and there were little gasps spilling from her, like I’d started rubbing a very different part of her anatomy.
“Holy shit, that feels so good,” Bailey whimpered. “Who taught you to do that?”
“I actually used to do it for Debbie sometimes,” I said. I laughed, and miraculously there was no bitterness in it. “Not that she ever appreciated it.”
“Debbie,” Bailey groaned, “is a fucking idiot.”
I chuckled. “Good girl.”
She actually smiled.
“I want you nice and relaxed tonight,” I told her, my voice soothing and almost hypnotic.
“Hot bath, in bed early. You need your rest.” I smiled.
“Because you’re going to be getting up in the middle of the night, babygirl.
I want you in my bed at two on the dot, wearing nothing but that ribbon, waking me up with your mouth—”
“Oh fuck,” McKenna said.
Both of us looked over. McKenna hadn’t meant it for us—she was staring at Bailey’s laptop, had been since she came into the living room. Now that neither Bailey nor I were talking, I could hear it—the recording, quietly playing.
“I think Debbie gave us more than she realized,” McKenna said.
As Bailey sat up, McKenna cranked the volume. “Listen to this.”
Debbie’s voice: “Girls your age are always behind the eight-ball on student loans. Don’t ask directly—just plant it. You want him to come up with it. Make him feel like the hero for offering…”
McKenna hit pause. “Listen to how smooth that is,” she said. “Debbie didn’t even have to think about it. No hesitation.”
I froze.
Girls your age are always behind the eight-ball on student loans.
Not ‘you’. Not Bailey specifically. Girls.
Like a category. Like something Debbie had coached a whole roster of.
“Bailey’s not the first,” I said, the realization hitting me like a slap. “Debbie’s done this before.”
McKenna scrolled to a different part of the recording. “—worked before,” Debbie said. “Every single time. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
Every single time.
Jesus, how had I not noticed that?
“She’s not improvising,” I said. “She didn’t rehearse this in the car on the way over.
She’s not a desperate housewife who saw the bill coming due and roped in a girl she knew she had leverage over.
” I thought harder. “No, this is desperate. But only because it’s the first time Debbie’s had to do it with someone she actually knows personally. ”
Bailey’s leg pressed against my thigh. “There are other girls?”
I didn’t answer right away. I was too busy doing the math—working through it the way I worked through Brenda’s spreadsheets, except this time what the numbers added up to was way, way worse than a bad sales quarter.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that Debbie’s had a lot of practice.”
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
There were other people out there—other girls like Bailey, who Debbie had screwed over. Who, I now realized, she might have been screwing over for a significant chunk of our marriage. Which begged the question: could we find them?
Because if we had witnesses, this was a whole new goddamned ballgame.