Make sure your lawyer calls after 8:00 a.m. Lily wakes up early and I don't want to explain daddy's new fake wife before breakfast. Hey, Victoria's response came immediately. Noted. And for what it's worth, you're good at this. The husband performance.
Very convincing. Years of practice pretending I'm holding it together. Turns out the skills transfer. That's depressingly relatable. Get some sleep, Ethan.
Tomorrow's going to be complicated. He arrived at his apartment at 1:34 a.m. Mrs. Rodriguez was asleep in his armchair, knitting project in her lap, television, playing some telenovela on low volume. He woke her gently, apologized for keeping her so late. Tried to pay her $50. She waved away the money.
Mijo, you don't pay family. Lily's fine. She went to bed at 8. No nightmares tonight. Mrs. Rodriguez, I need to tell you something.
She studied his face with sharp eyes that missed nothing. You look like someone who just made a decision that's either brilliant or catastrophic and won't know which for several days. What did you do? I agreed to help someone, but it's complicated. It's going to involve changes to my schedule for the next few weeks.
Changes like what? Changes like I might need you to watch Lily more often. Changes like there might be people asking questions about me. Mrs. Rodriguez stood gathering her knitting. This person you're helping, are they taking advantage of your goodness?
She's not. She's desperate and I was available. Sometimes that's how life works. Sometimes desperation makes people do things they regret. Just be careful, Mijo.
After she left, Ethan checked on Lily. She was sleeping peacefully, clutching her elephant. He stood in her doorway, watching her breathe. For the first time in three years, he felt something that wasn't just exhaustion and grief. He felt purpose.
It probably would end badly. But Ethan had stopped believing in good endings 3 years ago. If he was going to make catastrophic decisions, at least this one involved helping someone. He fell asleep at 2:16 a.m. Thinking about the way Victoria had said together, like maybe she'd been fighting alone for so long that having an ally meant more than she could articulate. Ethan woke to 17 missed calls and his phone vibrating with notifications that had been accumulating since 6:23 a.m. The alarm clock showed 7:04.
He'd overslept by an hour and 21 minutes. Lily was probably awake and wondering where breakfast was. He grabbed his phone and scrolled through the avalanche. Text from Kevin at the Regency Crown asking if he'd seen the news. Three voicemails from numbers he didn't recognize.