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I couldn't dance around why she was with us. "It sucks that you have to be afraid."
"It does. But I don't feel afraid here." She pulled the elastic straps around the rolled mat to secure it, then picked up her Nalgene bottle from the grass. "Fancy a drink?"
"Oh, um, I don't—"
"Because of Neil, right." She flushed deeper crimson than her exercise had left her.
"Well, no. Because of the diabetes. But yeah, in a way, because of Neil." Because he didn't want me to die. Because he was tired of losing people he loved.
And that was why it was so crucial for Valerie to be here. He loved her. No, not in the way she wanted him to. But he would always feel a responsibility for her that, while illogical, would leave him devastated if anything happened.
"Well, I just wanted to see how you're settling in." I looked up at the windows of the house that had recently been my mother's. I wanted to stake some kind of claim for her out of loyalty. Now, who's illogical?
"Fine. I am fine, Sophie. But I would like to handle the rest of this privately." Valerie had always been good at drawing boundaries. Not necessarily respecting other peoples' but good at setting them for herself, at least, where I was concerned.
"I'm not going to pry. I know you'll come to us if you need anything." She would go to Rudy, who would tell us. I had a feeling we would never see Valerie in a weak moment, ever again.
Though my feet wanted to carry me back to the house in avoidance of the true reason for my visit, I couldn't put it off any longer. "Look, there's something I need to talk to you about. And I don't want it to upset you, but you have a right to know."
Her expression froze, and I could only imagine what horrible thing she was imagining. Or what horrible retort she would make.
But she didn't snipe at me. Instead, she nodded toward the house. "All right. Come inside."
Entering my guest house slash my mom's house slash Valerie's new, temporary home was strange as hell. Because Valerie now inhabited the space, it felt off-limits to me. That shouldn't have struck me as odd. After all, I was the one who'd promised that I would treat the place like Valerie's actual home and not regularly pop over. But I didn't know exactly how to behave in Valerie's space. I would have had no problem plopping down on the sofa and putting my feet up on the coffee table in the living room, as I would have when mom lived there. It was even the same sofa and the same coffee table. But it wasn't mom's anymore, and maybe Valerie had table-and-foot-related rules.
I sat stiffly on the edge of the couch, and Valerie took the armchair that had swiftly become Tony's once he'd moved in. She leaned over with her elbows on her knees and spread her hands. "All right. What did you need to upset me with?"
"It might not upset you."
It would upset her.
"El-Mudad is going to adopt Olivia."
Valerie's face registered confusion. "Pardon?"
Why was it more difficult to say the second time around? "After the CPS visit...when we were worried about what you—what Laurence—might do, we sat down with our lawyer. He told us that if something happened to Neil and me, El-Mudad wouldn't have any legal right to see her."
She looked down; I could tell she wanted to argue that it was unnecessary, but she couldn't possibly. We both knew that she absolutely would have tried to take Olivia from us while she'd been under Laurence's influence.
"I know you don't like him," I went on.
She stopped me. "It isn't that I don't like him. I understand why you and Neil do. He's attractive, and he's charming, and he's a good father. He comes with built-in kids for Neil." She shook her head and smiled fondly, but it quickly faded. "Olivia already has two guardians. You and Neil."
"And in the state of New York, a child can have more than two legal guardians. We're going to do that for Olivia. El-Mudad is a father to her already. There's no reason he shouldn't be legal." That was my argument, as plain and logical and unemotional as I could have presented it.
"Ah." Valerie nodded in understanding and cleared her throat. "So, she can have more than two legal guardians. And you chose El-Mudad."
"Yes. And if you feel like you have to challenge us, we were expecting that anyway. But we hoped that now, with Laurence out of the picture, you might..."
"Roll over on this?" She sighed heavily. "I don't understand this. But I don't have the energy to fight you."
What didn't she understand? "We're just thinking about Olivia. About protecting her for the future."
