A Billionaire for Christmas

My brow furrowed as I endured her advice. I didn’t generally like counsel without invitation, particularly from someone without any kids of her own.

She sensed she’d overstepped. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place. Just...it wasn’t that long ago that I was sneaking out of my house, and I thought I could help.”

She was genuine and utterly enchanting, and I realized, I wasn’t bothered after all by her intrusion. I was grateful.

I wanted to kiss her for it. Because she had perfect plump lips. Because she tasted like honey. Because she was warm and the night was cold, and I’d been in the dark for so long.

But casual kissing wasn’t what we were about, and I was in a rush, so I nodded my goodbye, and dashed out the door.

It took less than ten minutes to walk from my building to Ellen’s. The doorman let me through, having been alerted that both I and the police would be arriving. When I got to her unit, I rapped quietly on the door, aware of the wee hour of the night.

She answered right away, ushering me in quickly.

“Tell me what happened,” I ordered, already heading to Aaron’s room to see for myself that he was indeed not there.

She followed after me, tripping over herself to keep up with my wide gait. “He went to his room right after dinner, around seven, saying he had homework he wanted to get done ahead of the weekend. I did some work, changed into my pajamas, then curled up with a glass of wine in the living room to watch a holiday thing on Netflix. I meant to check on him when I went to bed, but I guess I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I looked then, and he was gone.”

“So you have no idea how long he’d been missing?”

“No. But I couldn’t have fallen asleep before nine-thirty or ten. It was probably after that when he…”

Unless he’d snuck out before then, while she wasn’t paying attention.

New York flats being what they were, it only took a second to verify Aaron’s absence. I turned to my ex-wife, looking at her for the first time since I’d arrived. She was wearing a long sheer nightgown with a silk robe that nearly reached her feet.

She’d never worn anything that fancy to bed when we’d been married.

I took a step toward her. “You were alone all evening?” I meant to sound as accusatory as I did.

“What are you asking?” She clutched the lapels of her robe like she did to her defenses.

“You’re sure you weren’t entertaining a male gentleman and that’s why you didn’t realize our son had disappeared before three in the goddamned morning?”

“As though it couldn’t happen on your watch.”

“I find it hard to believe I wouldn’t notice a thirteen-year-old boy sneaking out of a flat this size. It’s not like this is Grand Central Station, for Christ’s sake. It’s not even two thousand square feet.”

She stuck her chin out. “Really? You’d notice? Like how you noticed your wife had been having affairs for nearly a year before you confronted her about it?”

Splice. Right through the skin, straight to the heart. She knew where to hit me, how to strike with her words. I hadn’t noticed her affairs. I hadn’t wanted to.

And maybe she was showing me something of herself too—that she’d wanted me to notice, and I hadn’t. She’d wanted me to save her, and I couldn’t. Another reminder of how I’d failed her. How I’d failed all of us.

See that, Audrey? Love doesn’t win. It just disappoints. Over and over again.

“Mom? Dad? What’s going on?” The thin voice in the doorway pulled our focus immediately.

There he was, still bundled in his coat and a beanie cap that said Excelsior! in bold red letters across the front.

God, we were both shitty parents—Ellen and I. So wrapped up in ourselves and the same old argument that we couldn’t even notice the kid we were looking for when he came home.

“Aaron!” Ellen ran to him, enveloping him in her arms. “You’re here! You’re all right! We were so worried! We called the police and your dad came over and I was out of my mind…”

Her relief at his appearance quickly faded and the anxiety of the night crept in to take its place. She pulled out of her embrace and gripped him tightly by the upper arms. “Where the hell have you been, young man? How dare you frighten us like that!”

“I went out!” he answered defiantly.

“To that damn YouTube meetup with your friends, didn’t you? The one I said absolutely not to when you asked if you could go?”

His guilty expression told the answer as much as his silence.

I hung back and watched, my own relief seeping in slowly and heavily, trapping me like quicksand. What could have happened? What might have been? This late on the streets of a busy city. Barely a teenager.