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“And you’d be relaxing to autopsy reports in some other part of the house?” He grinned at me as I rolled from the bed. “What do you want to watch? I’ll get it ready.”
Since I was probably going to fall asleep no matter what he put on, I shrugged and said, “Your choice.”
I carried my plate, glass, and empty water bottle into the hall and paused. The door to Olivia’s nursery—Emma’s room—was slightly ajar. If Olivia had been inside, the small lamp atop the dresser would have spilled a beam of rosy light across the floor.
Ghosts were pretty low on my list of worries in life, but Emma’s room still gave me the heebie-jeebies, sometimes. She’d always been so present in this home that even when her physical presence had been removed, her energy was very much around. I’d brought it up to Holli, who had, of course, wanted to launch a full-scale paranormal investigation, which I’d smacked down as the tasteless idea it was. If ghosts were real, I didn’t want to think that Emma would be stuck in her dad’s penthouse in the afterlife.
I forced myself to walk past the door, my feet picking up speed a little bit as I did. I wasn’t afraid of being chased by anything. If Emma did haunt this place, she’d do it with withering jabs written in the fog on the mirrors or something. What I was afraid of wasn’t in that room.
It was what wasn’t in it.
Intervention aside, Valerie might still find some way to contest the adoption. Even with the law on our side, nothing in life was set in stone.
That room could stay dark and empty.
We could still lose.
I passed through the living room, navigating the familiar layout of the furnishings in the half-dark; the only light came from the fixture over the table in the dining room beyond the double French doors.
Right there was where Emma had been sitting when Neil announced our engagement. Over there, a basket of Olivia’s toys sat neatly tucked under a side-table.
I went to the kitchen, where dozens of photos of Emma’s childhood had once adorned the wall over the breakfast nook. Olivia’s booster was on the seat.
Memory can be overwhelming when one least expects it. A camera roll of horrors and happiness scrolled through my brain; Emma’s smug, fake smile when I’d stumbled into the kitchen that first moment that we’d met. The flowers that had overwhelmed the apartment in the days after her death. Neil cradling Olivia in one arm as he prepared a three a.m. bottle before he’d trusted the universe enough to hire a night nurse. The lip of the counter that had only recently become a danger to Olivia’s noggin as she’d grown over the past year.
There were too many glimpses into pain past and pain that might yet come scattered throughout the apartment.
There were too many ghosts.
Being Olivia’s guardian-but-not-mother didn’t mean I had to sit back and passively accept the outcomes of other people’s decisions. I’d spent so much time telling myself that Neil and El-Mudad knew best, that I should stay out of it because they were parents, and I wasn’t, that I’d started to believe it. But I did have a stake in this, and a huge one: Emma and Michael had named me, specifically, besides Neil in their will. Not just Neil. Not split with Valerie. Emma had wanted me to have a say in Olivia’s life because she’d thought I would know what I was doing. She’d believed I could. That I would.
Well, I was going to. Neil and El-Mudad might have been perfectly content pretending that we live in a bubble, but I knew better. If things were going to work out for all of us—Valerie included—then I was going to have to swim against the current Neil and El-Mudad had created for me.
I was going to do exactly what Emma would do.
Valerie stayed in the guest house for four days before I got the courage to go down and speak to her. To my surprise, she was in the side yard, doing yoga. I almost turned around to sneak away, but she spotted me and, to my surprise, smiled and waved.
"You certainly don't get this kind of outdoor peace and quiet in the city," she said as she picked up her mat from the grass and began rolling it up.
"I know. I missed that when I moved from Michigan to the city." I slipped my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and rocked on my heels. "You know, there's a path down to the ocean if you wanted to do yoga on the beach at sunrise or whatever it is you yoga people do."
She smiled as she shook her head. "The grass is fine, for now."
Her gaze pulled to the right; one of the security SUVs was parked discreetly down the driveway. I'd passed it on my walk down.
