I’d been thinking Emma might be ready for potty training.
Maybe we’ll wait a few years.
Actually, I think I’m still wearing an accident. From yesterday. Have I showered this week? I’ve scrubbed down with hand sanitizer and washed my hands so much they’re almost raw, but have I showered?
“Nine days out of ten, it’s better,” he replies. “Isn’t it?”
I grumble an answer and squat to pick up more stuffed animals that need to go through the wash. Again.
Emma’s a freaking snot factory, and she’s spread it all over everything. We’re going to have to move into Mom’s house while this entire place is sanitized once she quits producing green goo out her nose, which thankfully is just yellow today.
“Lila giving you any shit about not being at work?” he asks.
My mom brought by my work laptop, and I’ve kept up with the most important emails, but not much else. “She’s tied up with some shit with Wellington’s estate and her publishing thing. Which means I’m now a week behind on finding new coaches, but Herrera took the VP job. Starts Monday. Should help me pick up the slack.”
And that’s all I’ve done.
When my kids have been sleeping and I haven’t, I haven’t done much work at all.
Nope.
I’ve either been emailing Lila, thinking about Lila, or doing research on Lila. It’s a remarkably good distraction from worrying that my kids are going to regress any minute and require hospitalization and IVs for fluids and antibiotics and having their lungs pumped.
Yeah.
Distractions are good. At this point, distractions are healthy. I can’t live in fear forever.
I could call Davis and ask for tips from the internet master who knows things that I don’t want to know, but I don’t want him to know I’m trying to learn more about her.
He’ll think I’m asking for reasons I don’t want them to think I’m asking for.
Which means I probably shouldn’t be googling her either, but here we are.
And I have more questions than answers, plus some guilt for looking into the ulterior motives of a woman who sent me and my kids fresh soup.
She’s not on social media. There’s nothing about her on the Wellington website. And the only thing I can find about her by doing a reverse image search of the one picture I have of her lists her as a top graduate of a private college not far from where my in-laws live.
It’s bland and it doesn’t fit the woman I know at all.
Googling her name gives me hundreds of results for a suffragette from the early twentieth century, but very little about the Lila Valentine who works for Dalton Wellington and inherited a baseball team.
Beversdorf’s obituary references that he became her guardian when her parents disappeared on their way to a vacation and were never found.
And that’s it.
There has to be more though.
Doesn’t there?
“Earth to Tripp. Dude. Sleep is your friend.”
I shake my head to clear it and realize I’ve finished picking up all the stuffed animals and am now just standing in the middle of my living room, staring at the empty fireplace between my couches while my brother waits on the other end of the phone. “Sorry. Distracted.”
“You need help, man.”
“They’re only young once.”
“I meant with your whole life.”
“Thanks. Appreciate the vote of confidence.”
Levi’s sigh is so heavy I feel briefly like he’s sitting on my head and pushing me into the ground. “You’re human, idiot. Quit acting like what you’d want in a president of operations and start acting like an owner. Hire people to do the shit like we planned. If Lila doesn’t like it, fuck her. Wait. Don’t actually fuck her. But tell her to get over it. If she wants the team to succeed, you need more than the two of you fighting over the best way to do it. And if she doesn’t like what it costs, then maybe she’ll see the light and sell. Preferably before that mascot poll of hers goes live.”
That plan to meet Wellington?
Not going so well.
Davis tells me it’s like trying to spot an alien on Mars while looking through backwards binoculars pointed at the sun.
“Daddy! Daddy, Emma said my cow is ugwy!” James wails.
“Put that little guy on,” my brother orders. “Let Uncle Levi handle this one.”
I don’t have it in me to argue, and I wouldn’t even if I did. “James, come talk to Uncle Levi.”
My four-year-old thunders down the stairs like an elephant carrying seventeen tons of toys on its back. “Unka Wevi!”
I scrub my phone with an antibacterial wipe before handing it to James. “I’m going to start the laundry. Do not put my phone down. Bring it back to me when you’re done, okay?”
“Hold on, switch us to video,” Levi says.
I get them set up, start a load of laundry, and head to the toy room to check on Emma. One day, the room will swallow her whole, but today, she’s burrowing under a pile of dress-up dresses and baby dolls and stuffed unicorns and singing a song about James’s cow being ugly.
In two-year-old speak, but I get the gist of it.
“Emma. Not nice.”
She bursts into tears.
“Cows are our friends,” I remind her. “They’re pretty in their own way.”
Swear to god, I even saw some new neighbors walking a cow earlier today, along with a pack of dogs.
Life’s weird sometimes, but at least I know why my kid is singing about cows.
Two hours later, they’re both in bed, humidifiers running, windows locked, white noise makers on, and I’m crossing my fingers that tonight will be the night they both sleep through the night.
I can’t find my phone, which wouldn’t be a problem if I could find my car keys. After losing one set permanently earlier this year, I put an app-controlled tracker on my key ring that works in reverse when I lose my phone, so losing both is a nightmare of new proportions.
It’s probably a sign I’m not supposed to drive or call anyone the rest of the night, so I sneak down to the kitchen for a half glass of wine and that steak Beck and Sarah left yesterday.
I step out onto the deck to fire up the grill and come face to face with a balding guy in his late fifties or early sixties. He’s stretched out on my Adirondack chair, hands casually tucked over his gut, one loafer dangling from the foot crossed over his knee, looking for all the world like this is where he’s always lived.
“Mr. Wilson. We need to talk.”
I have no phone.
No keys.
Nearest alarm emergency button at least twenty feet away.
If not for the ambient light from the kitchen spilling through the deck door, I wouldn’t be able to see him at all. Chills race from my neck to my tailbone, and my grip tightens on the raw steak plate.
“Not going to hurt you,” he says, icy blue eyes boring into mine. “Or your children. Yet. But we need to discuss your little habit of trying to dig up dirt on my favorite niece.”
I could throw the steak at him, but I don’t know what he’s packing, and I’m pissed that he got past the cameras without me getting a phone call.
Except my phone’s fucking missing.
I probably got the phone call and didn’t know it.