Page 42 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
“You’re like my replacement dad,” Paige says.
“I am.” There’s not really much point in denying it. I’m the closest thing to a father she’ll ever have now that Rhys is gone. Would it be so wrong to lean into that idea?
Becoming her guardian terrified me at first. Kept me up at night. How the hell was I supposed to know what to do? It kept me up at night, how badly I failed her in the beginning. I’m not sure I’m succeeding now, but there have been improvements.
Jane has been an improvement.
Paige plays with the dice in her hand. “There are supposed to be two parents.”
“Not always,” Jane points out. “Some people have single parents. Or live with only one parent. Every family is different, but the important thing is that there are people who love you.”
“What if I wanted two parents? Would you stay?”
Jane’s sweet brown gaze meets mine. She looks helpless, warmed by Paige’s words, somehow hurt by them as well, because she thinks it isn’t possible.
“Jane has her own dreams,” I say, keeping my voice casual. “She’s going to college. She’s going to become a social worker to help kids who need it.”
“She could be a social worker here,” Paige says.
She’s stubborn. I’m sure she gets that from our side of the family. “Jane is only here temporarily. We talked about this when she got here, remember? How she’d stay with us for a year?”
Paige gives me a disappointed nod and the tension fades.
With a flourish, she rolls the dice. She lands on New York Avenue and buys it. We continue playing for a few rounds, buying up properties when we land on them.
Paige takes an early lead in the game. I’m not surprised.
She’s damn good at the game.
What does surprise me is how much I want to be in this moment with her, and with Jane. It’s easy to slip into this fantasy of thinking Paige is really my daughter.
It feels… warm to think about her like that. Right. And complicated.
Maybe my love doesn’t have to be dangerous.
Having Paige with me has shone a light on all the pieces of me that are still bent or broken. The parts that still don’t know what to do with all the complexity of the world. There’s a certain guilt that comes with knowing I can’t be perfect for her.
But there’s also a deep sense of love. And in moments like this…
Happiness.
Paige is only seven, but that doesn’t slow her down at Monopoly. She knows the rent on Pacific Avenue with three houses without even looking at the card. She calculates the amount to return when we give the bank money for property in the blink of an eye. The longer the game goes on, the more focused she becomes. She works to gather monopolies, and once she has them, she spends all her money to build houses. It’s a smart strategy. She has less money than us right now, but all it takes is landing on her hotel once to bankrupt us.
Pretty soon she owns the entire left side of the board.
I could let her win. I wonder if that would make me a better uncle. Or a better father, a voice inside my head whispers.
Then again, she could probably tell if I threw the game. Why not give her a challenge?
She already owns the lower-cost side of the board, which I have to admit is the best position. It’s easier to build houses and hotels. And everyone passing Go is likely to land on something before they pass Free Parking.
So I focus on the more upscale properties, the yellows and greens. Soon I own an entire corner. I’m taking rent from the hand over fist with only a single house on each.
“You’re a tough landlord,” Jane says, mortgaging her properties to pay me.
“It’s a cruel world,” I agree, accepting the stack of fifties and twenties.
On the next turn, Jane lands on Baltic Avenue with a hotel. Paige’s property. There’s not enough unmortgaged property left to pay it, so she folds.
That leaves Paige and I battling it out.
There are moments it seems like she’s going to win, but I’m lucky enough to land on Income Tax instead of her hotels. Paying $200 is cheaper than her exorbitant rents. She manages to avoid the now-called corner of doom by landing in jail, sending her back to safety.
In the final moments, my battleship is poised to enter her side. It seems almost impossible that I’ll be able to get through safety another time. We’re both evenly matched, but our properties are stacked so high that a single wrong move will end the game.
Then it’s her turn. She’s still on the orange spaces, in relative safely.
She rolls. It’s a twelve.
Neither of us expected a pair of sixes. That carries her all the way to Pacific Avenue, where she has to shell out $1,400 in rent. That puts a dent in her cash. She also has to sell off some houses, but she’s still standing. I manage to avoid her spaces by landing on Community Chest.
