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Charlie nods and I carry him to the kitchen, putting him on the counter with a warning not to move. He takes my instruction seriously, sitting as still as a statue while I pull the almost-empty cookie jar from the cupboard.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” I tell him. “If I give this to you, we don’t mention it again. Uncle and nephew rules, okay?”
He nods, still looking serious.
“Because your mom will give me a lecture about not giving you cookies at nighttime.”
He nods again.
“And your dad will…” Ah, Myles will do nothing. I decide to stop talking and give the kid a cookie.
He takes his time eating it. I never noticed what tiny teeth he had before. They’re like a chipmunk’s, nibbling around the edges, his tongue licking the crumbs from his lips.
About ten hours later he finishes it and I carry him back to bed.
“Story?” he asks.
“It’s late. You need to sleep.”
“Story. Please.”
And damn if I don’t cave. I pull some picture book from his shelf and sit next to his crib, reading it out loud.
By the time I’ve finished, he’s asleep again. His eyelids so delicate I can see blue veins crossing them. He also has crumbs on his lips, but it’s too late to hide the evidence now. If I brush at them I’ll wake him up, so I’ll just have to hope he licks them away in his sleep.
Tiptoeing out of the room, I pull the door gently shut then walk over to the couch. I’m tired. I got up at stupid o’clock this morning to meet Myles and Liam for golf. And then I drove over to tell Wayne that I want to date his consultant, only to find out she’s his damn granddaughter.
And then she told me she was interested, too.
I let my head fall back on the cushions, thinking about the way she looked today. She has this dignity, this strength. But she’s also vulnerable. When I was holding her today there was this look in her eyes that made me want her more.
This tenderness, this ache. I felt it, too.
And you made a promise.
I reach for my phone. There’s no time like the present to keep it. Sliding my thumb across the screen I open up Safari and type her name into the search box.
The first result is her LinkedIn profile. She has this kick-ass profile picture that’s somewhere between a schoolteacher and a movie star. I linger on it a bit too long before I scroll down to her experience. She went to high school in L.A., followed by college in New York, as she told me. Straight into a job at Warner Power, where she’s been climbing the ranks ever since.
She has an MBA. She’s intelligent, I knew that much. More so than me and I like it.
Reluctantly closing LinkedIn, I look through the other results. Her social media is locked down tight, if she has it at all. I’ll have to ask her. The rest of the links are articles about how she transformed companies, how she volunteers at the local women’s shelter, all stuff that makes her look better than ever.
And to be honest, there isn’t that much. She seemed so intent on me Googling her and I have no idea why. That’s when I remember she’s Greg’s daughter. So I delete the search and typeMackenzie Gauthierinto the box.
The first few results are websites for Wayne and Greg. It’s an unusual name and they get all the top hits.
But then I scroll down and there are some older links. Like the stone age of the internet.
Most of the hits are from a video. I click on the first one and it takes me to some old-looking website. It hasn’t been updated in years, but it reminds me a bit of MySpace. The video is at the top and there are about a billion comments below, but I don’t bother reading them before I click on the little play symbol and the video loads.
A girl appears on the screen. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Mackenzie. She’s standing by the boards of an ice rink which I recognize right away. It’s home to the L.A. Kings. I haven’t played there a lot – I’ve always been in the Eastern divisions – but I’d know it anywhere.
The seats are absolutely full. The game must be over because there are only a few people in the middle of the rink, like there’s some kind of prize giving going on. There’s a voice blasting through the speakers but the sound is distorted and I can’t make out what they’re saying, but then I see Mackenzie start to skate onto the rink.
Okay, you couldn’t really describe what she’s doing as skating. It’s more of a walk-slide – panic thing. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she only takes a couple of steps out before she does an amazing slip, her legs flying up into the air, her skirt flying out, her body landing with a thump on the frozen rink.
The camera zooms in. Really, really close. Whoever did this must have been using professional equipment because I don’t remember phones having great cameras back then.
