“Both,” Eli said.
With a nod, she looked me up and down. “I don’t use disposable menstrual products. They’re bad for the environment. And totally toxic.”
“That’s commendable,” I said.
“Try telling the school nurse that. She wanted to give me a pad that was the size of a fucking raft.”
The secretary gave her a pointed look. “Language.”
Brigid waggled her eyebrows as Eli shook his head. “Anyway, I gotta go.”
Eli gave a little laugh and leaned forward to give her a kiss on the forehead. “Tell your mother I said hi.”
“She broke the pool filter,” Brigid said. “She told me not to tell you.”
Grinning, he ruffled her silky hair. “I’ll send the pool guy out to take a look.”
Brigid skipped out of the office, swinging her bag at her side.
Eli and I headed back out to the car, and I didn’t know where to start. Eli had a daughter. And maybe an ex-wife. Well,anotherex-wife. Or they could just be separated, I supposed. It sounded like she was still living at their house. Wherever that was. I guessed that helped make sense of why he chose to live in staff housing on a doctor’s salary.
“You have questions,” Eli said.
“A few.” He didn’t owe me answers, but wewereliving together. However temporarily that might be. And if he was technically married, I didn’t want to complicate anything.
Eli had always been like this. He never felt the need to fill in the gaps or explain the context of his life. It was the difference between people who couldn’t handle awkward silence and those who were entirely unbothered by it. It was as though he didn’t need or want anyone to understand.
Brody was always the one to give me the CliffsNotes of Eli’s life. Explaining his tense relationship with his father and how they had a summer house with a live-in chef and how he went to the kind of high school that had a rowing team and a library with stained-glass windows.
The fact that Eli appeared to be willing to answer my questions now felt like a trap.
“How old is Brigid?” I asked, not ready for the answers to the big questions.
“Fifteen going on twenty-eight.”
“She’s fiery.”
He nodded, the corners of his lips lifting. “God, don’t I know. We gaveher my mom’s middle name. Brigid, the goddess of poetry and midwives, which was fitting. Her mom is a labor and delivery nurse.”
We drove through the gates of Starlight Palms as I pushed onward. “So are you two separated or...?”
He shook his head. “No, no. Nothing like that. Selene and I were a one-night stand during residency. We tried to make it work once we found out she was pregnant, but—” He shook his head and left it at that.
“And she’s staying at your house?”
“She’s going through a messy divorce, so I gave her and Brigid the house until things settle. I’d had the apartment at Starlight Palms for when I need to be on call or if something came up in the middle of the night.” With a chuckle, he added, “I didn’t want to put Brigid through the trauma of watching Selene and I try to cohabitate. We’ve figured out the parenting game. We’re good at that. But not under the same roof. The only thing we agree on is Brigid’s well-being.”
“Wow. I, um... This whole time I thought you had a girlfriend, honestly. I mean, I guess you still could, but I just figured all the late nights and—and the hair ties.”
“The hair ties?” he asked.
I pointed to a couple hair ties in the cupholder with a few blond strands of hair wrapped around them.
“Brigid leaves things everywhere she goes. Like breadcrumbs.”
I smiled. “We should go inside.”
He looked over at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “We should... but Vera?”
