“I don’t know.” I took the pan from her and rinsed it. “He kind of blew up when I first told him. But I think the fact that this is someone’s child, and they might lose her…”
“Gotcha.” She looked up guiltily, as she almost always did when we discussed Emma, even in the abstract. It was like a weird brand of survivor’s guilt or something. She didn’t want to remind him that he’d lost a child when she hadn’t.
“That’s a big part of why I’m doing this,” I admitted. “I saw what Neil went through. I don’t want that to happen to whoever Joey Tangen ended up with. I know I don’t owe them anything. And I know they won’t owe me anything in return. But it’s the right thing to do.”
“As long as you don’t get hurt, honey.”
If that was as good as my mom could do, I would take it.
After she left for the night, I headed back to the bedroom. I stood in the doorway, watching Neil and Olivia. He slept on his side, his arm above his head, practically falling off the edge of the bed. She sprawled spread-eagle in the center, taking up way more real estate than I would have assumed a toddler could manage in a California king.
I’d made up my mind. There was no sense in putting it off further.
I’d claimed the loft over the den for my home office. There were plenty of rooms in the house, but being there, tucked away beside the chimney of the giant fieldstone fireplace, I felt a little like I was in the loft of a cabin back home. Granted, cabins back home would have had a hundred percent more antlers, and the wood beams crisscrossing the ceiling would have been a lot more rustic than the sleek ones I looked down on from my little nook. But it felt homey and secure.
While my computer booted up, I tried to figure out what I was going to say. “Yeah, I’ll give you my kidney” seemed anticlimactic, but what else could she possibly want to hear from me? All the reasons for doing it that were so important to me, so critical to my decision, would mean nothing to them. The only part that would matter to them was the part where I gave their sister my kidney.
I stared at an open email window for at least fifteen minutes before I even attempted to type. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t doing this to prove myself to them. That I didn’t expect anything in return, but that I wouldn’t reject them, either. I wanted to solve everything and see it settled tonight. If I could have added the damn kidney as an attachment, I would have.
Instead, I typed in her email address with the subject line, “Decision”. Then, in the body of the email, I told her, “Okay. I’m in,” and hit send.
****
The next day, Deja caught me by the elevators as I left for lunch.
“Off to see my lov-ah?” she said, making the word sound as gross as possible.
“Ew.” I snorted. “Yes, I am. Are you coming with?”
“No, I’ve got the Bills.” She made a pained face and ran her hand over her growing-in hair. “The Bills” were our accountants. Their names weren’t actually Bill, but the firm was Williams & Williams. We had to make our own fun.
“Do you want me to stay behind?” Accounting was almost certainly something I should have been involved in, right?
She waved a hand. “No. Don’t bail on her. She’s been looking forward to seeing you after being incommunicado for an entire week.”
Deja knew why I’d been “incommunicado”, and we both knew that it was the dirty details Holli was looking forward to.
“Well, take notes or something?” I sounded weirdly hopeful, and that didn’t sit right with me. I shouldn’t have to ask to be included in the business of the business that I co-owned. But if Deja thought it was more important for me to see Holli, maybe she was just trying to be a nice wife by handling it all herself.
Tony had the car waiting in front of the building, and I gave him a wave as I stepped out of the door. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“That’s my line,” he said, then added, “Well, minus the ‘sir’.” He opened the rear passenger door for me, and I got in, immediately reaching for my phone.
The partition was down, which was strange. He usually left it up. And he hardly ever talked to us through it; he used the Maybach’s intercom system. So, it shocked the hell out of me when he got in and said, “Can we have a chat on the way to… It was Public Kitchen right?”
I blinked. “Yeah. No problem. And, um, yes. Public Kitchen.”