章 18: CHAPTER 17 NICK

There I was, looking at my computer screen, not really sure how I should feel. Everything seemed completely off-kilter. I had an email from Anne, Maddie's social worker, telling me that they'd done all the tests and there was no further doubt about who Maddie's real father was. That fact, combined with my father's lawsuit against my mother for covering up her knowledge of his paternity for years, had resulted in the court granting him partial custody. That meant the visits that had previously gone through Anne would now be agreed upon by my parents. I was happy when I found all this out—of course I was fucking happy. My sister was finally mine, and she was my sister, period, not my half sister, as I'd always believed. I'd always hated thinking of her father, how his presence meant she wasn't entirely mine, somehow. I'd hated having our visits cut down into a few hours; I'd hated seeing the nasty expressions on the Grasons' faces whenever I took her with me. Things would be much easier now. Or so I believed. I sighed. Now, when it came to Maddie, I'd have to deal mainly with my father, a man who seemed to have lost any notion of how to act around kids. Not that he'd ever been known for his patience with them—just look at the way he'd treated me. Still, I was surprised by how determined he was to win her affection and how hard he tried. As soon as he was able, my father tried to get shared custody and change her name from Madison Grason to Madison Leister. There were still details to work out there. Throughout the process, the one who had suffered most was Maddie, and that made me angry. Her father—the guy who was supposed to be her father for more than five years—had washed his hands both of my mother and of the girl he had watched grow. The bastard didn't even want to help explain things to her. It was a delicate issue, telling her the man she thought was her father wasn't and that she had a new dad and he loved her very much. Often, in cases like this, the person who's raised the child will fight with the biological father for custody or at least for the right to continue being a part of her life. You'd think he'd have wanted to be there if she needed him. But none of that had happened, and all my sister could do was keep saying, But I love Daddy, my real daddy, and she couldn't understand why he didn't love her anymore and had just given her to a new father she barely knew. She was irritable. Where she'd once been precious, with a smile constantly on her face, she was now hurt and angry at the world. My mother left Vegas and got an apartment in downtown LA. Maddie couldn't adapt to all those changes. I was the only person she ever wanted to see, and she'd call me late at night so she could fall asleep. She was scared, she didn't like her new home, all her old toys were gone, she said, and her friends were far away, and her new school was ugly. She wanted to come live with me. That was what she said every time we talked on the phone. "When are you coming to see me, Nick?" she'd ask with a frown. "When can we go to the Ferris wheel? When is Daddy coming back? When will Mama start acting normal again?"Those questions hurt, and they drove me crazy because they meant my mother wasn't taking care of her. She didn't want for anything, she was eating, she was healthy, but what about everything else? In Anne's email, she said my father had asked for Maddie to spend Thanksgiving with him. The judge had ordered him and my mother to split the holidays, and my mother hadn't put up a fight. Before she signed off, Anne reminded me that I no longer had to consult with her about any visits, and that if I had legal questions, I should talk to my father. He had written to me, too, asking me to spend the holiday with him. Maddie would adapt better having me around, he said, and we needed to do everything we could for her. To tell the truth, going home for the holidays—for Thanksgiving or any other day—hadn't even crossed my mind. There was no point in family gatherings or shared meals or anything like that. Was I really supposed to sit at the same table with a man who had lied to me for years and the woman who'd caused my parents to divorce and my mother to abandon me? To hell with that. Going there could only hurt me. Because of the childhood memories. Because of the even more painful memories of things that had happened afterward. For me, that house was Noah; I saw her in every corner; I imagined her coming downstairs in pajamas or in a pretty sundress and low-heeled sandals, throwing herself into my arms and kissing me passionately… Noah in the kitchen eating breakfast. Noah in her bedroom asleep, when I finally realized my heart sped up every time I saw her… Noah in my bed, naked, the first time we made love—I say we because for me it was a first time, too, the first time I ever truly loved someone. I didn't know much about what was going on with her. Now and again Lion told me something about her. The same couldn't be said for me. With the way the press was hounding me nonstop, there was no way she didn't know every detail of my life.I'd been in the magazines because of my relationship with Sophia, but also because of all the downsizing at Leister Enterprises. The papers were calling me ruthless, heartless. The whole thing had me stressed. I always knew it wouldn't be easy to get that company back in shape. Nothing as big as my grandfather's company could be easy to run. But with everyone able to access information all the time, you couldn't keep things under wraps. That was the thing I struggled most with, the lack of privacy, not being able to run my business the way I wanted to. So I'd had to fire a lot of people, I'd had to shut down two subsidiaries, but I'd also opened a new one, and I'd be able to transfer many of the people I otherwise would've had to let go. It had just been a month, but I knew the new branch would create lots of jobs in the future, with better pay than what the employees had received at their previous firm, which had been badly managed and had little room in the budget. Try telling that to people who just want a good headline, though. I looked away from the computer. I was going to call my father the next day and tell him I'd be there for Thanksgiving. What other option did I have? My sister was the most important person in my life now, the only one I owed it to to never be angry, the person I needed to take care of, to teach that there were still adults in the world she could trust. Maddie was seven and a half now; she was getting older, and she understood more and more of what was going on. She was sharp—you couldn't just buy her an ice cream or a toy and distract her. What she'd suffered in those months had marked her; she was growing up, and the lessons she'd learned made it hard for her to trust others. I walked out of my office to get a glass of water. It was late, but I was still wide awake. I needed to do something. I walked to my bedroom and looked at Sophia's nude back. She should have left already. That was rule number one—we never slept together—but we were coming closer and closer to breaking it. I sat on the loveseat in front of the bed and observed her: her dark hair on the pillow, her curves under the white silk sheets… She was stunning, she couldn't be more self-assured, and I liked it. She wasn't like an earthquake that knocked down everything in her path; she was smart, seductive, and could get whatever she wanted with words. I liked her. Of course I did. I wasn't an idiot. She was pleasant; she came from a good family; she was intelligent, had a backbone, and was nothing to sneeze at in the sack. We were good together in that way. Sometimes she took the lead; sometimes I did. She would have made a good girlfriend, a perfect life companion. She was the kind of woman who would always be there, supporting you, giving you advice, hugging you when you needed it, kissing you till you were breathless. She'd be a good mother, too, a working mother, obviously, the kind who would put her kids in the best school, make sure they were always well cared for, well-dressed, and healthy. The kind of mother who knew everything. I imagined her coming home late to tuck the kids in when they were already asleep, giving them a kiss, then sitting down and resting. Sophia was that and everything…but she was no Noah.