Liam
Esther hired a cleaning crew for after the party, so I didn’t even have to load Wyatt’s birthday gifts into the back of my Yukon. They packaged them up along with the leftover cake. Esther didn’t want any of it staying at her house. I like her so much better as a colleague than a wife. I like her even more now that she’s remarried.
I had a background check done on her husband, Daniel, when they first met because every romance she has is whirlwind in nature. Ours included. He passed with flying colors. She doesn’t deserve him, but I’m glad he adores her anyway. He manages hotels all over the world and mostly sees Wyatt and Callie through video calls. Esther often goes with him on trips.
Which brings me to Rosalie, who is here Monday through Friday and on odd Saturdays. Esther said something that upset her, and I’m not okay with it. Rosalie’s the reason my kids have aschedule. She’s the reason they laugh and play and squabble and still love each other. She’s the reason I can go to work until it’s time to go home and be a dad. Which means I can’t help but worry that she’s sitting in the passenger seat of my Yukon but might as well be a million miles away. It’s not like her. When Wyatt snorts in his sleep from the back seat, she barely smiles. It would probably be more professional to wait and ask her about it once we reach the house, but Rosalie tends to go into task-mode and then escape when she’s upset.
I imagine she’ll help take in the gifts and then leave when I’m not looking.
That’s not unusual for us. I give her space and she gives me space. I don’t ask about her personal life, and she doesn’t ask about mine.
But if this involves Esther….
I glance in the rearview mirror to make sure both kids are asleep. They are. If they were awake, they’d be shoving each other instead of curled up together like little baby squirrels. They’re so beautiful it hurts. Wyatt still has his cape on.
No shirt. Swim trunks. Cape. I love it.
Like she’s reading my mind, Rosalie pulls out her phone, turns, and takes a picture of them.
“Team meeting?” I ask.
She sighs and glances out the window, fiddling with the phone now in her lap. She’s got a flowery swimsuit cover-up on, and there’s a faint streak of sunscreen along her arm. She kicks her legs out absently, her flip-flops dangling from the ends of her feet. “Sure.”
“If you don’t want to talk right now, it can wait.”
She’s silent for so long, I assume this is definitely a bad time, but finally she says, “Your kids are growing up. Soon they won’t need me.”
“Did Esther say that?”
“She’s not wrong.”
“She is. They’ll always need you.” The words come out of some strangely vulnerable part of me, but I ignore that, because I’ll burn down the world before I let Esther thoughtlessly ruinsomething this important. “I’m not planning to change your pay once they’re both in school. Do you need a raise? More responsibilities?”
I can sense Rosalie studying me. She’s probably confused by my desperation. I know I am.
I know it’s inevitable that we’ll part ways someday. Rosalie’s not a robot that never gets to grow and change and move on like the rest of us. I just never want it to happen, and that realization is freaking me out. Am I that set in my ways?
“What if I taught at their school?” she asks.
“I bet you miss teaching.”
When she doesn’t answer, I glance over at her and she shrugs. “I like the idea of having them go with me in the morning and come home with me at the end of the day.”
“I like that idea, too.”
“Except, at the end of the day I’d have papers to grade and emails to respond to. Parent-teacher conferences, IEP meetings, carnivals, fundraisers, curriculum nights.” She smiles to herself. “It would truly be two jobs. I’ve been spoiled.”
I wouldn’t say spoiled, but she definitely doesn’t need to work two jobs for the money. She’s a money-saving machine. She paid off her student loans within the first year of working for me. And she won’t trade in her old car because she likes it. Her Toyota 4Runner continues to run like it wants to spite me for suggesting she replace it. Which means this is about craving advancement or purpose or making sure she’s the right amount of busy. That’s not something she can figure out with one conversation.
“It sounds like you need time to think about this. Are you going to call Brennan tonight?”
“Brennan and I broke up six months ago.”
The awkward silence after that statement has both of us staring out the windshield.
I guess I should have known she wasn’t seeing him anymore, but how? Our unspoken rule of giving each other privacy means we don’t update each other on things like that.
Also, my girlfriend, Maggie, is going to kill me, because the one time she met Rosalie, I could see the suspicion and jealousyrolling off of her in waves. Until I told her about Brennan. The guy who apparently wasn’t in the picture when I said that.