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And I would keep it that way.
I waited for Jade to leave, then got ready to watch all of Frozen again. I braided Zoë’s hair so that she looked like Anna and I pretended to be Olaf for the rest of the evening. I thought it was a good evening, but when I put Zoë to bed, she asked me, “Why can’t we be a family, you, me, and Jade?”
“We are a family,” I said. “But not one that lives together.” She thought about this for a moment. “I mean, remember the Smurfs from the Smurfs movie?” Zoë nodded her head. “They live all in the same village, but they each have their own hut, right?” Zoë looked at me with big eyes. “Papa Smurf has his own little hut and Smurfette has her own house and each one of them comes out in the morning and they do stuff together and have loads of adventures.”
“Like birthday parties!” Zoë yelled out.
“Exactly!”
“So… Jade can come to my birthday party?”
“Absolutely!”
I doubted if Jade would be around for the birthday party, and if she was, would she be able to sit through two hours of face-painting and kids jumping on bouncy castles and screaming at the top of their voices.
The following day, after work, I went down to Mac’s house. The old brownstone building had belonged to his parents and Mac said it had been left to him and Jade after their father died three years ago. By New York property standards, the location alone meant that the building would be worth millions. The front door was an antique wooden frame with stone glass windows. I rang the bell and then knocked on the door.
After a while, Mac opened the door, dressed in tracksuit pants and a T-shirt.
“Will!” he seemed very surprised to see me. “Come in.”
I stepped into a foyer with a wooden table that looked like it needed a polish and a huge crystal vase with flowers. The floor was all marble. I followed Mac into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was huge and modern, all steel and gleaming surfaces.
“Do you want a beer?”
He got two from the fridge and opened them for us.
“I’m actually looking for Jade.”
“Oh. I don’t think she’s back yet.”
Mac was looking uncomfortable. His longish hair hadn’t been brushed and I had the feeling he was still wearing his PJs. This messy look was very much how I remembered Mac from college. Since the app was completed, I had discussed doing more work with him, but nothing had been finalized and we certainly had not talked contracts. He’d not been in to the office in over a week.
I nodded.
There was an uncomfortable silence between us.
“This is a nice place,” I said.
Mac smiled. “Yeah, my mom used it whenever she came to the city for important business,” he smiled wryly. “Like the hairdresser or shopping or coming to do her nails.”
“She needed a house for that?”
“Oh, sure. She couldn’t bear the horrid pillows at the hotels.” He rolled his eyes and I had to smile at that. Mac’s self-deprecating sense of humor was one of the things I had always liked about him.
The family had a manor house in Massachusetts. An old stone house with extensive grounds and a small wood. I had been to the house with Mac once and I remembered being awed by the sheer size of the place. No one had lived there for years. Mac’s mother had left the country after her husband’s death and had not been back since. Saying she was not close to her children would have been an understatement.
“How’s it with Jade back?” I asked.
Mac shrugged. “Okay, I guess. She’s been to see you guys I gather?”
I nodded. “Zoë likes seeing her.”
Mac looked shrewdly at me. “I’m thinking, you not so much?”
I shook my head.
He laughed. “The way she talks, she’s moving in next week, ready to play happy families.”
