Before (After 5)

Her freckles are lighter than most I’ve seen and are scattered across the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her lips are big—they pout a tad—and she’s nearly my height. These were things I noticed on her third day of training, when I suppose my interest flared up for a moment.

“I dated her for a while,” I admit to my new friend, and hand her a towel to dry the cup with.

“Oh, I don’t think they’re dating. She would be insane to date a Slytherin.” When Posey smiles, my cheeks flare and I laugh along with her.

“You noticed it, too?” I ask.

Reaching between us, I grab a pistachio mint cookie and offer it to her.

She smiles, taking the cookie from my hand and eating half of it before I even manage to get the lid back on the bin.

Christian

The connections we have with family are supposed to be soul binding. We’re supposed to love our parents and siblings and the rest simply because we are born with the same blood running through our veins. As a young child, he would question this. Was he supposed to love the stumbling man whose loud voice regularly woke him up on school nights? The man whom he would walk out into the living room and see there, leaning against the fireplace mantel in a struggle to take his boots off? The little boy would keep his body hidden behind the wall as he watched the man struggle and fall to the floor. Then he would hurry back to his room as the man’s boot hit the wall near his head.

He hated those nights and he would count the days until his mummy’s friend who laughed a lot would come over. He would wish that his mum’s friend was his dad. Maybe this other man would take him places, he used to think. He remembered the man always carrying a book tucked under his arm. He talked about the books with the boy, telling him their plots, their themes, making him feel smart and grown-up.

The first book the man gifted him he will always remember. That book quickly became the boy’s first real friend, and as he grew older and his mum’s friend came around less and less, he remembered missing him and missing the books during the long periods between visits. Still, even into the boy’s rebellious teenage years, when the man arrived, he always had books with him. The boy knew his mum loved her friend, but he had no idea just how much of his life was a lie because of that fact.

The house is silent. I glance over at Kim, asleep on the couch with Karina lying on her stomach; the girl’s little hands are gripping her mum’s sweater. Kim fell asleep talking to her about me and my accent, telling our little girl that she will have the most adorable voice, a mixture of Mummy’s sweet tones and Daddy’s devilish accent. “Devilish,” she called it. As if the woman can afford to talk. She’s the most stubborn, devilish woman on this earth, and I love the hell out of her.

Kimberly has gone from being my secretary to my business partner, and she has quite an eye for potential. Perhaps that’s why she married me. Or maybe she just really, really likes my son, Smith. It would be pretty hard not to.

A pile of pages sits before me on the counter: a contract for the New York restaurant we’ll be opening in the next year. As exciting as it is, it’s nothing compared to my newborn. I’ve now expanded my investments in restaurants from Washington to New York to Los Angeles, but it’s nothing compared to the joy of getting to see this girl grow up before my eyes, something I’ve not been fortunate enough to have done with my other children.

I glance over at my wife again; snoring louder than usual. So I do the sweet, loving thing and pull out my phone to record her. The contract can wait until tomorrow. I miss my wife. I watch her as she takes breath; the noise is horrendous.

I press record and quietly walk over to the couch. Within five seconds, she opens her eyes, immediately glaring at the phone in my hand, and instantly I feel like an arse for disrupting her sleep when she gets so little of it anymore.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” my love whispers, her voice soft and sleepy as she stretches her arm above her head, keeping her eyes on Karina.

“Yes, my dear, but fucking with you is much more fun.” I laugh, and she kicks her foot out at me. Karina stirs on her chest, opening her little beady eyes to look up at her obnoxious parents.

“Now you’ve done it,” Kimberly scolds me with a smile. She sits up and lifts Karina at the same time, and when I reach for my daughter, she gently places the soft bundle in my arms.

“My beautiful little girl,” I quietly say to Karina, nudging her chubby little cheek with my nose. She yawns, and I see so much of my smile in her face. Smith and Hardin both have that same dimpled smile.

I remember Anne and Ken discussing names for the little boy one night when we were all standing around in their kitchen. Trish’s belly had been so swollen that she couldn’t tie her shoes.

“I like the name Nicholas or Harold,” Ken had suggested.

Harold? No.

Nicholas. Double no.

Trish had smiled softly, rubbing her hand on her bump. “Harold—I kind of like that.”

Admittedly, I didn’t hate the name—it just didn’t feel right. That boy was tough on Trish’s body, kicking her all night and growing so quickly that he stretched her skin to incredible lengths. He was a fighter, that kid . . . the name Harold—Harry—it was too sweet of a name, too calm.

“It’s too common,” I’d interjected before Ken could say anything. “How about the name Hardin?”

It was a name I had picked out for my first child while I was only a teen. As a little boy in Hampstead, I used to think I was going to write a great novel one day and the main character would be named Hardin. Not typical, but very convincing-sounding for old England.

Trish sounded it out to see how it felt on her tongue. “Hardin. I’m not sure . . .”

But when she looked to her husband—who I was so jealous of in that instant—he’d just shrugged, uninterested but trying to be courteous.

“It sounds fine,” he said quietly.

His shoulders did another shrug, and Trish smiled a weak smile. “Hardin? . . . Hardin.”

“There we have it, then,” Ken declared, looking very relieved.

Trish didn’t seem surprised or even bothered by his mild reaction to the choosing of their first son’s name. I cared, though, and I knew Trish really did as well.

I would like to think that Ken would normally have cared, but he was in college and always busy, I had reasoned at the time. He studied so much, and rumors flew that he’d started snorting the devil’s candy while studying for his law exams. His pupils were usually dilated, but he had to study a lot, and I got that. I wasn’t anyone to judge him, but I knew he had been slipping on the facade of being a perfect dad to the little guy, trying it on uncertainly, long before the tyke was even here yet. That bothered me more than it should have, given the situation I’d gotten myself into.