Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Iconsider myself a patient person in that if I go into a situation knowing it’s going to take some time, I can wait for the pieces to fall into place. A take-private tech deal once took years of me slowly circling like a buzzard on roadkill until the time to strike was right.
However, with note cards, markers, and a bulleted list of strategies for Addie and me to practice her lines with, her only wanting to draw pictures has me on the brink of crawling out of my own skin.
“Is that a bunny?” my mom asks over her shoulder.
Addie nods enthusiastically.
“That’s just wonderful,” Mom coos. “Did you see this drawing, Reese? A bunny.”
It looks like a cat. A rainbow cat.
“Lovely.” I drag the drawing and markers away. “Maybe we can draw more after we’re done rehearsing these lines.”
I almost had her start practicing while I finished cleaning the tasting room so I could keep working, but since I’m a fish out of water with her as it is, I needed to be able to focus.
Little did I know, distractions are everywhere, my mother included.
“Don’t you need to nap, Mom?”
“No.”
We exchange icy looks before she wanders out of the kitchen, leaving Addie and I alone with a craft store worth of supplies.
I give Addie her copy of the script, the lines for Dorothy highlighted in bright yellow.
She looks at the paper then looks at me.
Instead of Gavin there to make Mom’s car feel too small on the drive home today, it was the silence. I felt myself panicking in the quiet—I don’t know anything about kids!—and found a Taylor Swift playlist to fill the void.
Now, in my mother’s kitchen, I still don’t know anything about kids, but Taylor Swift’s poppy lyrics aren’t here to save me.
I clear my throat. “Where should we start?”
Addie’s face scrunches as she looks at the mountain of supplies in front of us—there are a lot of supplies.
Maybe I should throw some away. Out of nowhere, I think of Banyan’s singular line of wisdom about pruning.
Trying to keep everything, kills everything.
If I wouldn’t come across as unstable, I’d sweep everything off the table.
Addie pushes the bridge of her glasses, quiet.
I don’t know what I expected out of today, but it wasn’t this.
It wasn’t a deafening silence while my own words choke me and worries of how I’m messing this up worm through my brain.
I thought she’d just pick up the script and read and I’d say good job then hand her a cookie.
Instead, the silence drags and drags and drags and the anxiety builds and builds and builds.
When I’m scouting new acquisitions, I’m business focused—goals, numbers, plans—but sometimes, especially with the companies we deal with, there are people who want to get to know me.
It’s not my favorite, but I do it. Learn about who they are and tell them just enough about me to build a trust that will carry us through negotiations.
This is no different. I need to get Addie to feel comfortable so we can get to work.
“You like living with your Uncle Gavin?” I ask.
She nods.
“I live in a condo,” I tell her. “Do you know what that is?”
She shakes her head.
I pull out my phone and find a few pictures of my building. I don’t expect much of a reaction—they’re a dime a dozen in Chicago—but Addie’s eyes light right up.
“Wow,” she says.
I swipe to the next picture, this one of the rooftop patio. “This is right in the middle of the city.” I point to the tall buildings in the background. “I can see skyscrapers.”
“You can play hide-and-seek there.”
I laugh. “I could.”
“Is it loud?”
“Kind of,” I admit. “But you get used to it.” I set the phone down. “Did you know that I knew your mom? We were friends when we were kids.”
“She died.” Her gaze drops to her lap. “With my dad and brother.”
I didn’t know the baby was a boy. Now that I think about it, she was pregnant at my dad’s funeral ten years ago and Addie’s only eight. Something must have happened. Something else I don’t know about.
“I’m sorry. She was a good person.” Her eyes meet mine. “Bet she was a good mom too.”
She nods.
“And I bet she’d love that you were auditioning for a play.”
Her smile returns.
“Let’s try reading this first line.” I point to the script and read a line from Aunt Em. “‘Where have you been, Dorothy? I’ve been calling for you!’”
Addie looks at her line, her tongue resting between her lips, then looks at me. “At the barn in Kansas.”
“Good.”
It was not. There are two full sentences, and the only word she got right was barn.
“You missed a few words.” I point as I read in my most dramatic Dorothy voice, “‘I was at the barn looking at the sky. Wouldn’t it be so nice to fly away on a cloud, Aunt Em?’’” I smile; Addie’s is bigger. “Let’s try again.”
I spin the script so she can read it.
“There was pizza at lunch today,” she says. I expect her to tell me why that’s relevant to the task at hand, but she says, “Bobby put his peaches on it.”
“Gross,” I say. “Now this line says tha—”
“Your face is pretty,” she interrupts.
I laugh a little.
“Thank you.” I shift in my seat. “Yours too.”
She sits up a little taller.
“And your face will be really pretty when you’re on stage spitting these lines out like Goldie Hawn.”
She looks at the paper, then back to me, smile slipping, just a little. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe,” I insist. “You can’t say maybe. If you want something, you have to choose it.”
She looks at me like she might not follow.
“Before I go into a big meeting, I always imagine how great it will go and choose excellence—that’s what my dad always said to do. I say, Choose excellence, Reese.”
“Does it work?”
“Every time.” That’s a slight exaggeration, especially considering the situation I’m in, but she’s nervous and needs the confidence. “You just choose it.” I snap my fingers “It’s just that easy. You want to try?”
She nods and it propels me forward. “Think of something you want to do, then choose it. I choose to—” I coax her with my hand to fill in the blank.
“Play checkers with Miss Reese.”
She laughs; I frown, gesturing with the script. “About the play.”
“I choose to play checkers with Miss Reese after the play.”
I want to bang my head against the wall. “Let’s try the line again.”
“Do you have nail polish?”
A voice inside my head that’s much freer than me screams like a banshee. “My mom does.”
“Me too.”
I roll my shoulders. “Neat.”
She wiggles in her chair. “I can paint your nails.”
“If you practice this line, we can play checkers and paint nails.”
“How do you like to play?”
I glare at her like my mother and Trish and Sylvia put her up to that question. “I walk to work”—I kick a foot up to showcase my foot—“in pumps.”
Unlike anyone else, she is thoroughly impressed by this. “Wow.”
“Wow is right,” I agree. “And you should see the condition of some of those Chicago sidewalks. And I’ve never fallen on a drain grate.” When I think I’m done: “And some of those heels are four inches.”
I don’t know if she fully grasps how impressive that is, but her expression says she does. “I don’t have any shoes like that.”
I give her a conspiratorial smile. “We’ll have to fix that, won’t we?”
She exudes pure joy.
“At the building I work in,” I say, leaning in a little closer to her, “I have to ride the elevator all the way up to the thirty-second floor every single day.”
Her mouth drops.
“And it’s full of people.” My brows raise. “And I’ve never freaked out once.” The light in her eyes is the most validating sight I’ve ever seen. I gesture with the script. “Should we try reading again?”
She nods with a little more enthusiasm this time, gripping the paper in her little fingers as I read my line. At her turn, she says, “My children are the spawn of hell, and you’re the devil.”
“What?” My eyes bug out as I flip through my own script; that line is nowhere.
Addie says, “Joanna says that in Overboard.”
The laugh that bubbles out of me surprises both of us and is followed by a thought smashing into me. “Addie—” I point to the highlighted line. “Do you know how to read this?”
Tongue between her lips, she stares at it. “I . . . was . . . at . . . the . . . barn . . . l—oo—k—ing—locking—”
“Looking,” I correct her.
She smiles, repeats me, and continues sounding out the words as she confirms what I should have known: Addie isn’t reading the script because it’s easier for her not to.
Gavin knew, that bastard. You helped me, he had said.
This was never about the play.
When she finishes her line, I stack the scripts and toss them aside. I’ll do some research on different ways for us to do this tomorrow but today is a wash.
“Mom,” I shout, not surprised when she appears in the kitchen less than a nanosecond later. “Can you bring us some nail polish?”
She holds up a clear cosmetic bag filled with colorful bottles. “Would you believe I was already holding this?”
Delighted, Addie clambers for the polish.
She struggles to hold the brush and her fine motor skills make containing the paint to my nails impossible, but with her tongue pinched between her lips, she makes every one of my fingertips hot pink then beams when she’s finished.
“Perfect,” I tell her.
She grins. “I think Uncle Gav loves you.”
I snort a laugh, pinching her pinky between my fingers to paint it. “Why’s that?”
Her voice lowers to a whisper. “He’s going to the shop.”
That makes as much sense as the butterflies it makes me feel. “It’s for work,” is all I say.
After nails are painted and checkers are played, she hugs me goodbye and thanks me.
She runs home and I wave to Gavin across the yards.
I’m so content it takes a moment to name the feeling.
I rarely feel this at work. One win turns to the next goal.
It’s illogical to feel this way—there was no win—Addie didn’t learn a single line—yet here it is just the same, me feeling like we did everything we set out to do.
Mom hums like she lives in my brain. “I knew it would be good for you.”
I barely even consider sticking a knife in her incision.