Sophie (The Boss 8)

I sighed and unfolded my legs from the position they'd fallen asleep in. Sundays were lazy PJs day, a stark contrast from the family dinners we'd had weekly for the brief, precious period that Emma, Michael, Neil, and I had all lived in New York at the same time, which was why Sundays were also bleak, sometimes, even now.

I braced my hands on the sofa cushion in preparation to stand once the blood flow returned. "We don't want you to go off and suffer by yourself. We want to lessen your suffering. Which is...valid but silly."

"Not at all a contradiction." Neil shot me an irritated glare.

"Valerie is here on the grounds. Security knows she's not supposed to leave the property with her," El-Mudad patiently reiterated all the reasons we'd used to convince Neil that we didn't need to keep up supervised visits in our home. "Olivia is just down the hill. And Valerie has sworn she's had no contact with Laurence since June."

"I know, I know." Neil waved El-Mudad off.

I rocked forward slowly and pushed myself to my feet. "Do you think Valerie told her about Laurence?"

Neil stopped pacing.

"She's not going to stop asking." This was a touchy subject, one I'd tried not to bring up too often over the summer. But now, with Olivia increasingly confused over why her grandfather hadn't visited her in so long, I had to step in. "This isn't good for her. And when she finds out that we haven't been honest about this, she might not trust us the next time one of us has to go on a trip or something. Laurence can't be 'away on business' or 'visiting family' forever, or she's going to assume that anybody in her life can disappear without explanation."

"Valerie and I think—" Neil began, and that combination of words is what did it. It's what made me snap.

"I'm sorry, would you like to raise this child with Valerie? Or with us?" I gestured to El-Mudad and me. "Were you going to consult with the guy who's going to be Olivia's father in a few months?"

Neil put his hands in his jeans pockets and looked down. "Valerie and I think El-Mudad is right, is what I was about to say. At her age, it's far easier—"

"It's easier for you!" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "You're wrong. You are all so wrong."

"Then what would you have us do?" El-Mudad argued. "Tell her all about domestic violence, take that innocence away from her?"

"Children have that innocence taken away from them every single day." Had they honestly never considered that?

They both just blinked back at me while I scoffed. "Neil, did your dad ever hit your mother?"

"Of course not!" His jaw went tight with outrage.

Too bad. Sometimes, hurting his feelings was a necessary evil to keep him from being a privileged, dickish snob. "And did you ever hear them arguing?"

"Never. They had a very happy marriage." He folded his arms. "But my parents have nothing to do with this."

"They have everything to do with it. You never witnessed any conflict between your parents. That's not normal. That's weird, aristocratic English bullshit. Every day, millions of kids younger than Olivia don't have their parents acting on their most polite behavior in front of them. Or to them," I explained. I turned to El-Mudad and pointed squarely at him. "And you. You are bringing a lot of your hang-ups into this. You want to preserve Olivia's innocence because you came from a fucked up home life, and you want to protect her from the world, but guess what? You've had difficult conversations with your girls about divorce and loss. This isn't any different."

Their silence now felt more like a shamed realization.

There had been too many times when I'd stepped back, assuming that the actual parents in the room knew best. But Emma had wanted me to parent this kid. She'd put both Neil and me down in that will. She didn't have to put my name, but she did.

And she would not hide something this important from her child.

"I'm sorry, but this is non-negotiable." I crossed my arms and dropped them, symbolically wiping Neil and El-Mudad's garbage opinions into the metaphorical dumpster where they belonged. "We will not lie to Olivia. We are never going to lie to her or try to hide the world from her. Not from this point on."

"Then how do you suggest we broach the subject?" Neil asked. He meant to call my bluff.

It didn't work. "When I was about six years old, my mom had this friend from work. Tara. And Tara was married to a guy named Casey. They were close to the family. I called them Uncle Kay-Kay and Auntie T. Sometimes I spent the night at their house if my mom had to work third shift." My voice became surprisingly hoarse. I hadn't had to think about them for a long time. When I'd started my anecdote, I'd had no idea that it would bother me to recount it.