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CHAPTERONE
Iwoke to the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen.
I blinked several times and realized that Sophie and Elaine were already up. Elaine must have decided to let me sleep in, and for that I was thankful, but I felt a bit guilty.
I reached out to feel the empty bed beside me, missing Drake, who had gone back to Manhattan to meet with lawyers about custody arrangements for Liam. Alone again for the second day, I stretched in the bed, the light from under the curtain telling me that it was already pretty late. I checked my watch and sure enough, it was after eight in the morning.
Sophie was usually up around seven. I’d slept in for almost an hour and a half…
I got up quickly, went into the shower and got ready as fast as I could, dressing and pulling my hair back into a quick ponytail. I went down the stairs to the main floor and saw that Sophie was seated at the kitchen island, eating her breakfast and coloring in a book at the same time, spoon in one hand, marker in another.
“I see you have everything under control, Elaine. Thanks for letting me sleep in.”
“No problem,” she said. “I heard Sophie talking to herself when I got up for a pee and decided to let you sleep in for a change.”
“You’re great. Has anyone ever told you that?”
She laughed lightly. “All the time. Mostly you and Drake and Ethan. But I’ll take it.”
I went to Sophie and gave her a kiss on the top of her head, checking out her latest artwork. It was a yellow and pink unicorn. She liked unicorns and mermaids. And dinosaurs — which I thought was a pretty cool combination.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked as I poured myself a cup of coffee. “Trip to the beach? Maybe go to the shops and get some fresh fish for supper?”
“The zoo! The zoo! Can we go to see the giraffes?”
I smiled. Sophie loved the zoo. There was a good one north of the city. “We could go. Do you want to invite Alyssa?”
“Yes. Alyssa. Alyssa!”
“It’s settled. We’ll go to the zoo this afternoon and then pick up some groceries at the shops for supper. You could invite Alyssa to for supper. But first, I have to eat and then I have some packing to do.”
Alyssa was Sophie’s friend from nursery school. I hated the thought that Sophie would lose the friends she’d made at school, but I knew that there would be new friends wherever we ended up living in New York. She was young and most children made friends easily. There would be new friends and hopefully, we would be in a good neighborhood with schools and parks.
I hoped that Maureen and Chris had good sense when it came to picking a place to live. Brooklyn would be nice and would have more of a neighborhood feel to it than anywhere in Manhattan.
After I finished my breakfast and did a quick tidy, I popped in to see my father, who was watching the television news on the flatscreen across from his bed. Beside him was a tray with the remains of his breakfast — orange peel, crumbs from toast and a cup of coffee.
“You good today, Daddy? I see Elaine already took care of your breakfast.”
“Good as expected,” he said, his voice muted from behind an oxygen mask. “As good as any man with one foot on the grave and the other on a banana peel…”
“Oh, Daddy,” I said and kissed his forehead. “Stop. You’re getting better every day.”
“I am and thank God for that. Hopefully, I’ll be up for the trip back. Don’t want to be a burden on all of you.”
“You could never be a burden to us. We love you.”
He gave me a smile that said he didn’t really believe that but turned back to his news show. I left his room and saw that Sophie was happily playing on the patio with her toys, so I went to my office which overlooked the yard and got to work packing my own things.
I first went to my closet, where I’d stored a lot of items that we’d brought with us from Manhattan and the 8thAvenue apartment. I was going to move them all to the side of the room so they would be easier to retrieve for the movers, who would be coming in a few days to pack us up.
One box in particular caught my eye. It was a collection of my papers and files from before I married Drake. I was going to just move the box to a place by the door when I decided to take a brief trip down memory lane instead and opened the lid. It had been closed by a thick line of packing tape, but the tape came off easily, and could be replaced with new when I was finished. I wasn’t sure I wanted to haul everything back to New York, and considered the possibility that some of it could be trashed. I could call a shredding company to come and pick up some bags if I decided not to bring them with me back to the USA.
I sifted through the contents and came upon one file with the label MISCELLANEOUS. I remembered making it, hoping that Dawn didn’t read it just in case she came across it while I was away.
I knew she would never approve.
It was all the research I did early on about BDSM while I was planning on doing a paper on the subject. It also included a summary of my discussions with Lara about the Dominant I was going to interview.
