"Well, you should have,” I scolded her. “And if this is the kind of bullshit you pulled when Emma was little, no fucking wonder she didn't want you raising her daughter!"
Oh. Shit.
Valerie pushed her chair back abruptly, and her voice choked with tears. "Excuse me. I need to go say goodbye to Olivia."
She ran from the dining room, her footsteps still echoing off the wood parquet floor when Laurence stood and loomed over the table. "If Emma had known you were such a whore, maybe she wouldn't have left her child with you."
For a moment, I feared he might take a swing at me. El-Mudad must have, too. He jumped to his feet, and I thought, It's all over. I've ruined it forever because he's going to fight him, and the police will come, and he's going to get deported. But Laurence stalked out before anything physical happened. I stared after him, totally numb, finally finding my voice to respond after he'd already left the room. "Joke's on you. She already knew."
I’d meant it as a witty retort, but it just came out full-on sad. I burst into tears.
El-Mudad put his arms around me and pulled me close.
"I shouldn't have said that," I wailed into his chest.
"You shouldn't have," Neil agreed, still frozen in his seat. "That was...very cruel."
He didn't sound angry. He sounded disappointed. Which everyone knew was worse.
"They weren’t particularly kind," El-Mudad said, almost reproachful of Neil.
"I still shouldn't have said it. We shouldn't have done this at all. I ruined everything," I wept.
"We all wanted this to work," Neil said grimly. "And we all came here with good intentions. Valerie and Laurence—"
I stepped back and wiped my eyes. "No. This isn't Valerie. This isn't the kind of person she is. You know that, Neil."
"She isn't the person she used to be." He sounded so lost and hurt.
El-Mudad turned to him. "But this is the person she's choosing to be now. Neither of you should make excuses for that type of behavior."
"I wish I could make an excuse for mine," I said quietly. "But I meant it. I'm sorry she heard it, but I'm not sorry I said it."
Neil stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. "I think we may need to involve some kind of mediation or family counseling."
"You don't even have to do that," El-Mudad reminded us. "You have custody. The matter is legally settled."
"Legal isn't what I'm worried about," I said, staring glumly at our beautifully set table that had never even made it through the first course. "It's the harm this is doing to Olivia."
But the harm that cutting them out of her life entirely would cause would be far greater.
There was no way we could win.
Chapter Three
Sometimes, the universe just knows when a person needs a freaking break.
A fortunately timed business crisis took Valerie back to London, possibly indefinitely, if Neil’s elation over the news had been any indication. Even pointing out that it was his company in crisis hadn’t dampened his mood. By mid-December, we'd all moved back into normalcy.
On a remarkably stress-free Thursday, I went into the city to have brunch with my friends Holli, Deja, and Penny. The three of them all had children. Holli and Deja were moms to Piet, now almost two years old. Penny had the twins, Arthur and Jane, whose ages were tabulated in months and milestones. Our rule was that we would keep our child-related conversations to a minimum since it was rare for them to get away without their kids. Somehow, though, the topic of motherhood always eased in.
For example, when Penny downed half a mimosa and leaned over the table to whisper, "So, after you could finally have sex again...did you get like, crazy horny all the time?"
Penny was short and thin and blonde, like Tinkerbell but with a better personality and a Malibu Barbie tan. Even though she was married and had two kids, she still seemed too adorably pure to talk about sex so frankly. It charmed the hell out of me.
"No, my post-partum was too bad," Deja said, shaking her head. In the past year, she'd gone from extremely short hair to a long, sleek weave; now that the baby wasn't grabbing hair, she'd explained, it was safe to have some again. The style made her look even younger than she already did. Her flawless brown skin glowed with bronze highlighter, and her white cat eyeliner made her simple fitted black t-shirt and belted, high-waisted khakis seem way fancier than they were. It would have been difficult for anyone to imagine that so glamorous a person could have been crying in her dirty laundry just months before, but that was the bitch of the invisibility of mental illness.
Holli, my very best friend since college and Deja's partner, leaned forward in her chair to interrogate Penny. Also blonde, Holli had the energy of a genetic fusion of a chihuahua and a person who hunts Big Foot for a living. A tall, willowy, and gorgeous professional model and actress, she smolders in photographs but is a big, silly mess in person. She stared Penny intensely in the eye, like a gunfighter. "How horny are we talking?"