Page 61 of Sublimate
“I was thinking that you might want to head over to their house. You can sleep a little.”
“I don’t mind staying with you guys,” I answered but then I understood. This was the same situation as when Cadence’s mom had wanted me gone from their house, and he was also trying to be polite about kicking me out. “Ok, that’s a good idea. Can you get a ride with her?”
We worked that out and he said that the housekeeper would know I was coming so I wouldn’t have to wait at the gate. “My mom will call her so you’re not stuck outside,” he assured me.
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll find my way.” He looked at me for a moment and I wanted to hug him. I only repeated my words. “Don’t worry.”
Apparently, his mom did not let the housekeeper know that I would be arriving, but the woman had other things on her mind. It was a setback, since they did have a tall gate at the end of the driveway, and since no one seemed to answer the intercom when you pushed the button. Luckily, I had developed some climbing skills as a kid, mostly for situations that involved me squeezing in through a window (I was the smallest, and it occurred to me only a few years later that my sister and her friends hadn’t actually known the people whose houses we were entering).
I managed to get myself over the gate and find a button to open it. Then I quickly drove through, before it could close on Nolan’s nice car, and I nearly scared the housekeeper to death when I got the door open without having a key (thanks to skills I’d learned from my mom’s former boyfriend, and I also hadn’t understood what he was up to).
She was busy trying to clean the white rug where the first responders had revived Brock Whitaker, and she wasn’t as worried about him as she was about a stubborn stain that she wasn’t able to remove.
“Is it blood? Have you tried peroxide?” I asked.
“If I make a yellow spot, Mrs. Whitaker will kill me dead,” the woman answered.
“Maybe not. I think this experience may have softened her a little,” I said, but I couldn’t blame her for looking at me like Iwas crazy. If I hadn’t just seen Nolan’s mom at the hospital, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
Since it was nearly the hour that I usually got up in the morning, I planned to work on more math and then start my day. But as soon as I got into the guest bedroom, I sat down on the hard mattress and felt a huge wave of tiredness overtake me. I thought that I was too worried to sleep, though. I was worried about Brock Whitaker but mostly, I was worried about his son. Things like this, traumatic stuff, might have pushed Nolan towards wanting to drink. I wished that he had let me stay at the hospital with him, not to watch—well, kind of watching. Didn’t he need support? I could have been there to give it.
I put my head down on one of the pillows and worried more, but after a while, my eyes did close. As soon as that happened, I fell asleep and I only woke up when someone covered me. It was still so cold in this house.
“Nolan?” I asked.
“I’m here,” he told me. The mattress creaked a little and I knew he was lying down. Due to the heavy white curtains that covered the windows, I had no idea what time it was.
“Is your dad ok?”
“For now,” he answered. “I need to rest before I go back. Viv, where’s your hand?”
I reached out and he took it. I listened to his breathing slow and deepen, and I held on.
Chapter 13
“Beau was right,” I said.
Cadence nodded. “His opinion was hundred percent correct,” she agreed. “Finley is the most beautiful baby in the world.” We both sighed as we looked at the portrait she had painted of Beau’s child. She had captured not just how he looked, but also some of the humor that his son seemed to have, the sparkle in his brown eyes.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she told me next. I hadn’t seen a lot of her work to compare, since she painted in secret in her room and I wasn’t allowed at her house due to her mom’s hatred of me. But I had to agree that this picture was just beautiful. “He’s going to give it to Finley’s mother as a Christmas gift.”
“That’s nice,” I said. It was clear, though, that Cadence didn’t feel the same way. She had started to twirl one of her curls as she’d spoken, and she was also frowning.
“It’s a shame that he won’t get to see it anymore,” she explained when she saw me staring at her. “Beau loves his son so much and that’s why he commissioned the painting. He wanted to capture this moment of Finley’s life, since it’s so fleeting and he misses him a lot when he has to share custody with that woman.”
“You mean, Finley’s mother.”
“Right, yes. His mother.”
“That’s wonderful. How great that he misses his kid,” I said. “I’ve never seen much of that.”
She nodded. “He’s a really good father. It’s very impressive and I’m not used to it either, since I didn’t have it myself.”
“Do you ever talk to your dad?”
She shrugged. “He usually tries to get in touch at this time of year, but I don’t have a lot to say.”
It was because we were close to Christmas. I had noticed that people started feeling all sorts of ways about their relatives around the holidays. It made sense that her dad, who had ditched her with her mean mother, would turn nostalgic for the life he’d left and want to swoop in like Santa to be her best friend or something.
