Sophie (The Boss 8)

“Do you believe there is any possibility that Neil is using now?” she asked.

I shook my head vehemently. “Absolutely not. He has worked too hard. And frankly, I’m afraid something like this might set him back.”

“I can leave you with some numbers he can call if he needs support,” Jenna offered.

“He has a therapist, thank you.” And he would be calling him as soon as this nightmare interview and search combo was over.

El-Mudad accompanied Neil to the living room, looking just as blindsided as we had been.

“I hear you would like to talk to me now?” El-Mudad asked Jenna with a frown. “And my daughters?”

She nodded. “Yes. But it’s been suggested that it might be in your daughters’ best interest for you to bring them to me.”

“This is bloody ridiculous,” Neil muttered under his breath.

El-Mudad put his hands on Neil’s shoulders and held his gaze. “This is all a mistake. Everything is going to be fine.”

With a nod and a stoic sniff, Neil stepped away, and we watched El-Mudad leave.

“We were just talking about our home environment. And drugs,” I said, trying to sound funny but coming off like a total bitch.

“We’re here because there was a concern that Olivia might be in an unsafe situation,” Jenna translated into bureaucracy. “I’m just asking questions and having a look around.”

“As we’ve said before, there are no drugs in the home,” Neil repeated flatly.

“He’s sober,” I insisted. We’d already been through that.

Maybe that was the point. Perhaps she’d asked more than once to see if the answer changed.

“That’s great. It is,” Jenna said in the face of Neil’s stony glower. “People underestimate how difficult it is to overcome addiction. Congratulations.”

“Would you like to pat us down? Turn our pockets out?” Neil asked. “To make sure we’re telling the truth?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t do those types of searches.”

“Who does them?” Neil demanded.

She typed something into the laptop. “I’ll do a walkthrough of the home, but the police will do any actual searching. Not of your persons, but opening things up, looking inside, etcetera.”

Police? Everything had just gotten way, way too real. “Um. I’m sorry, are you saying the police are coming to search our house?”

Jenna nodded once. “If they can spare someone today.”

“But if they came back tomorrow, we could have like, flushed all our drugs.” God damn it, Sophie! “If we had them. I was being hypothetical.”

She maintained businesslike eye contact. “Believe me, I’m used to people being nervous or angry or shaken up by my visits. I’m not the person most parents or guardians want to see. You’re not on trial with me. I hope you understand that we both have Olivia’s interests at heart here.”

“We do understand,” I said softly. “It’s just...unexpected. And it seems kind of extreme.”

She nodded. I wondered if they trained social workers to pretend to be sympathetic or if it was just something she was good at. It couldn’t be a great feeling, walking into someone’s home and knowing you were going to be hated on sight just because you were trying to protect their kids.

I closed my eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“We don’t have anything to be afraid of,” Neil asserted. “Except for the bill we’ll have to pay the cleaning service for the overtime once the police ransack our home.”

Oh, Neil. He had no idea how much of a privileged snob he could come off as sometimes.

“This is a huge inconvenience, I understand.” Jenna didn’t sound all that concerned about it. “But we have to treat every allegation seriously.”

“The police will have a search warrant signed by a judge, right?” I asked, hoping to clear that up before Neil raged at the police on arrival. Every single outraged rich man instinct in him was probably roaring like a steam engine.

Jenna’s gaze flicked between the two of us. “There is a warrant.”

Neil turned to me, helpless. “Well. It appears this has been in motion for some time.”

So, he saw the writing on the wall, too.

It was a slow crime day in Sagaponack; four officers arrived to search the place. They at least allowed me to get changed before I froze to death in my gross, sodden running gear. When I exited my dressing room, I watched an officer open our bedside table drawers and dump them out onto the bed.

Having a stranger paw through my vibrators wasn’t exactly how I’d wanted the day to go.

I thought about the time I’d walked to the gas station Burger King after school with some friends. We’d passed by a house on the corner of 6th and Mine Street and spotted a sophomore standing in the yard with her younger sister, watching as the police carted all of their belongings onto the lawn. Word had gotten around fast that it was a drug raid and that their parents had been arrested for selling prescription pills. I’d always wondered what had been worse for those kids: their parents being drug dealers or seeing all of their stuff pitched into their yard in front of God and all the people in the Pamida parking lot.