He ignored me and addressed her. “If you need a good contractor for baby proofing—”
“She will be fine, Neil,” Valerie said with a roll of her eyes. “I swear, sometimes, it’s the nineties all over again.”
“Well, pegged jeans are coming back.” I felt like I was the child here, trying to please two battling parents.
“Well, we don’t want to rush away,” Neil said, casting a glance around the space. “But you’ll want time alone with her here, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I—” She turned toward the car. “I brought a picnic for Olivia and me. I would ask you to join us, but I doubt you’d be interested in splitting a juice box three ways.”
“We’ll just say goodbye, then.” My heart sped up a little in anticipation of missing Olivia. Neil assured me it would get easier as she got older, but I couldn’t see how. Two people I loved dearly had entrusted me with the care of their only child. I would never stop being nervous at handing her off. I leaned over and kissed her sweaty little head. “You be a good girl for Grandma. You’re going to have so much fun!”
Neil took Olivia’s hand and kissed it, adding, “Afi and Sophie will miss you terribly. We’ll have a surprise for you when you come home.”
I shot him a look. “We will?”
“I’m sure there’s something left in New York that he hasn’t bought her,” Valerie quipped.
“And if there isn’t, I can access many other fine countries.” His hand lingered on Olivia’s back, so I tugged at his sleeve.
“Come on,” I said quietly. If it was difficult for me to leave Olivia, it was about ten thousand times worse for Neil. But he’d done this before with Valerie. He should have had a little bit more trust.
Olivia resumed her shrieking circle run as Neil and I headed back to the car. She stopped and held out a hand, opening and closing it and calling “Go bye-bye!” so she was clearly not traumatized at the prospect of our leaving. Tony waited, the door of the Maybach held open.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said as I got in.
“Still visiting the foundation, Mr. Elwood?” It was so weird to hear Tony call him “Mr. Elwood” on the clock and “Neil” the rest of the time.
“Um…” Neil glanced to me then away, again, as if he were ashamed. “No. I think…best not, today.”
Though it wasn’t unexpected, my heart still ached. His greatest achievement, the Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center, had been realized the night Emma and Michael had died. The guilt Neil carried over the fact that the accident had occurred on their way to the gala had prevented him from returning to the building at all. Now that he was more or less back on his feet mentally, he’d been sitting in on board meetings via video calls, but he still couldn’t bring himself to return to the place physically.
I wouldn’t talk about it with him today. It was something he would deal with in his own time, and our conversations on the subject had reached the same exhausted conclusion. Instead, I focused on our interaction with Valerie.
“So, are you just tired of the peace and you don’t want to keep it?” I asked when Tony closed our door. I grimaced at the awkwardness. But one hill to climb at a time.
“Why would you say that?” Neil asked as he buckled his seatbelt.
“Your crack about the baby safety contractor,” I reminded him.
His eyes widened. “What on earth do you mean, crack? I was simply suggesting—”
“That Valerie’s house isn’t safe or that she doesn’t do as good a job at keeping Olivia safe as we do.” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that innocent act. “If she’d said something like that to you—”
“I would have been rightly offended,” he insisted. “But she’s the one who let Olivia roll down the stairs because she neglected to gate them off.”
“She rolled down like four steps, and she was fine. Kids are resilient. Toddler bones are stronger than concrete.” I shook my head. “I love you, baby, but you can’t turn every custody-related thing into a passive-aggressive battle.”
“It isn’t a custody-related thing. We have sole custody. We let Valerie take her for visits.” He’d mentioned that a few times before, and it never sat well with me.
It didn’t sit much better, this time, either. “Is it good for Olivia to see you speak to her grandmother that way?”
Neil made an annoyed noise and looked out the window.
I would not be deterred. “She’s a baby, now, but she won’t be forever. She’s going to notice the friction. And honestly, I can’t believe we’re at a point in our lives where I’m the one defending Valerie.”
Before Emma and Michael’s deaths, Valerie and I could barely stand to be in a room together. Part of it had to do with the fact that I’d done some shady stuff when I’d worked for Porteras, which she ran, now, but most of it had been rooted in unresolved and unrequited feelings for Neil. We’d had a full-on shouting match once, in a public restroom. Not my finest moment. But since Olivia had become the focus of our world—and since Valerie had fallen in love with her current fiancé—there hadn’t been a lot of room for hate in my heart where she was concerned.