Starting Over (Treading Water Trilogy) (24 page)

“One, two, three, sleep.” She pressed her lips to his chest and sighed with contentment.

He felt her drift off to sleep, but he was awake for a long time, thinking about everything she’d told him and trying to figure out how he could fix it for her.

Chapter 21, Day 72

Brandon was suspended somewhere between sleep and consciousness when he felt a hand moving on his chest. He was aware enough to remember he’d slept with Daphne, and reached for her hand. Her tiny hand… His eyes flew open to find Mike standing beside the bed. Cursing himself for forgetting to put his shirt back on, he held his breath and waited for her to say something.

“You have hair on your chest,” she whispered, scandalized by the discovery.

“Uh, yeah.” He was not at all sure how to handle this. Since Daphne was curled up to his back sound asleep, she was of no help to him at the moment. “Do you feel better?”

“A little.”

He lifted the sheet to invite her to lie down with them.

She looked at him for a long, endless moment, as if she was making up her mind about something before she got in next to him.

He pulled the covers up around them and rested his hand on her face. “You still have a bit of a fever,” he whispered. “Does your belly feel better?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you mind that I’m here?”

“No. I asked you to stay, remember?”

He nodded.

“Do you love my mom?”

He was touched by the question and her serious expression. This was important stuff. “Both of you,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to move anymore. I want to stay here with you.”

He tugged her closer to him and kissed the top of her head. “We’re going to figure something out, squirt. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

He sacrificed his morning run to have breakfast with Mike. They let Daphne sleep while he made Mike toast and brewed a pot of coffee. She told him where everything was and bombarded him with orders—cut off the crusts, put the cinnamon on first,
then
the sugar.

“Don’t eat it too fast,” he warned her. “You don’t want to upset your stomach again.”

She licked the butter and cinnamon off her fingers. “I hate throwing up. It’s so gross.”

“But you felt better afterward.” He caught her studying him. “What?”

“You look different in the morning,” she said with a giggle.

He sat down at the table with her. “Different how?”

“Your hair’s all messy, and you have scratchy stuff on your face.”

“Well, excuse me, madam, but no one told me this was a dress-up breakfast.” He feigned offense as he ran a self-conscious hand through his hair and then over his face. “Most girls like the scruffy look.”

She made a face that told him she wasn’t one of them.

“Are you bummed about missing school today?”

“There’s no school today, silly. It’s Good Friday.”

“Ah, so it is. I forgot.”

“We’re on vacation all next week, too.”

“Great way to start your vacation—being sick.”

“I know, but my mom will let me have all the ice cream I want later,” she said with a mischievous grin.

He was relieved that she was feeling better and acting more like herself this morning. “What’s your favorite kind?”

“Chocolate chip.”

“Mine, too!”

Her smile was full of love for him, and he could’ve burst from the simple joy she’d brought to his life.

Daphne came into the kitchen and made a beeline for the coffee.

“She’s not a morning person,” Mike whispered to Brandon.

“Good to know,” he whispered.

“I can hear you two,” Daphne grumbled as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

Mike giggled.

“Are you better today, Pooh?” Daphne asked.

“She’s planning an ice-cream party for later, if that’s any sign,” Brandon offered, feasting his eyes on Daphne’s sleep-rumpled hair and rosy cheeks.

She met his glance and held it as a hundred thoughts and feelings passed between them. “Thanks for letting me sleep in. I can’t remember the last time I got to sleep past seven.”

“I had a lesson on how to make cinnamon toast Mike-style,” Brandon said as he got up to leave.

Daphne rolled her eyes. “The pampered princess will only eat it
without
the crusts.”

“So I discovered.” He kissed the top of Mike’s head. “I’ll be out for a while today, but I’ll check on you when I get back, okay, squirt?”

“Okay.”

He held out a hand to Daphne, and she walked him to the door.

“Not a morning person, huh?” he whispered in her ear as he put his arms around her.

She snuggled into his embrace. “Not usually, but I could get used to this.”

He tilted her chin and kissed her. “That would be fine with me.”

She ran a lazy finger over the stubble that had fascinated her daughter. “I’ll see you later?”

“I can’t wait.”

After his AA meeting and coffee with Joe, Brandon called Alan. They’d spoken a few times by phone but hadn’t seen each other since Brandon’s last day of rehab.

“Hey, Brandon, nice to hear from you. What’s going on?”

“I was wondering if you might have a few minutes free today. I need some legal advice.”

“You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Since it’s Good Friday, my office is closed, so I’m just catching up on some paperwork. Come on over.” He gave Brandon directions to his office in Dennis on Cape Cod’s north shore.

“I’m in Harwich, so I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” Brandon said.

Arriving at the office, he saw a sign for Alan St. John, attorney at law, and realized his days of anonymity with Alan were over.

Alan waited for him in the reception area.

“You’re looking well, Brandon,” Alan said as they shook hands.

“Thanks. How’re you?”

“Busy as hell, but it keeps me out of trouble.” He led Brandon into his spacious office and gestured for him to have a seat on the sofa. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Alan poured himself a cup and sat down across from Brandon. “What can I do for you?”

“If I tell you something when I’m not technically your client, it’s still confidential, right?”

“Of course. You have my word, Brandon. Nothing we talk about will leave this room unless it’s something I’m legally required to report.”

“I have this friend. She’s a single mom with an adorable five-year-old daughter.”

Alan raised an eyebrow. “New friends?”

“Yes.” Brandon knew what Alan was thinking in terms of his recovery. Joe had lectured him again on the subject that morning over coffee. Without naming names, Brandon outlined Daphne’s situation to Alan.

“Hmm.” Alan scratched his chin as he pondered it. “So she’s had no contact with the grandparents in five years?”

“No,” Brandon said. “Tell me she has rights, Alan. They can’t just take her kid away from her, no matter who they are, can they?”

“They’d be hard-pressed to find a judge who’d give them custody. They’d have to prove she was unfit, and it sounds as if they’d have a hard time doing that. But these days, the courts are recognizing that grandparents have rights, too. The fact that she’s denied them access to the child for all these years might be a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“They’d probably get visitation, at the very least.”

“She doesn’t want them in her daughter’s life at all.”

“Then she’ll have to decide if it’s worth it to continue living the way she is now.”

“She’d say it’s worth it,” Brandon said with dejection. “She blames them for her husband’s suicide and fears her daughter would get sucked into their world if she gives them an inch. She didn’t come right out and say this, but I also got the sense the father-in-law is crooked and pays people off to get what he wants.”

“I hate to say it, but it does happen—not often, fortunately. Let me run this by a family court judge I know and get his handle on it. Why don’t you bring them out to the house for dinner one night this week? Her daughter can play with my girls, and we can hash it out.”

“That’d be great, Alan. I appreciate your help. Send me the bill for your time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m happy to help. Why don’t we see what we can do to get your friend out of this mess?”

Brandon sighed with relief. He’d come to the right place. “Thank you.”

“So she’s just a friend, huh? The mom?”

“Um, well…”

Alan laughed at Brandon’s befuddlement. “I’m sure you’ve already been read the riot act by your sponsor for getting involved with someone so soon, so I won’t add to the chorus. But I hope you’re being careful.”

“Don’t worry,” Brandon said. “I know what’s at stake—for all of us.”

“I’ll talk to the judge, and I’ll call you to set something up for next week.”

“Thanks again, Alan.”

Brandon left Alan’s office and drove to Foster’s in Harwich where he spent half an hour trying to decide which of the fifty different playground setups would be best for Mike. Since she wasn’t even six yet, he rejected the one with the rock-climbing wall in favor of a tree house, two slides, three swings, and monkey bars. Thirty-five hundred dollars later, there were four huge boxes stacked in the back of his truck. For an additional five hundred dollars, Foster’s would’ve sent some guys over to put it together for him. Brandon scoffed at that. He had a civil engineering degree from Notre Dame, for Christ’s sake. If he couldn’t do it himself, who could?

He hit a bump, and the million pieces inside the boxes rattled and clanked in the truck bed. “Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘some assembly required,’” he mumbled to himself on the way back to Chatham. “Maybe I should’ve coughed up the five hundred extra bucks.”

He’d spent several hours one night recently going over his financial situation, and when he was done, one thing was clear—he’d blown through a shitload of money in the last few years, most of it on booze. The two hundred fifty thousand dollars Aidan had given to his parents and each of his siblings after Sarah died was long gone—the first half of Brandon’s share went toward buying and renovating the house he bought with Valerie. Most of the second half was used to buy her out when they broke up. Brandon hadn’t wanted the money from Aidan in the first place and relented only when Aidan insisted that Sarah would’ve wanted them all to have some of it.

Brandon reimbursed his father almost eight thousand dollars for the payments he made on the small mortgage Brandon still had on the house and sent Colin a check for four grand, hoping it was enough to pay his brother back for bailing him out of jail—twice—and for the bar tabs Colin had paid for him over the years. As far as he knew, Brandon didn’t owe money to anyone else. He figured he’d eventually hear about it if he did.

Dennis used a complicated formula to determine their annual salaries, and what they made depended on how the business did in any given year. Brandon, Colin, Declan, and Tommy were equal partners with Dennis, and in recent years, none of them had made less than one hundred fifty thousand in a year.

Brandon’s night of financial reckoning revealed that after all his debts were paid, he had just over twenty grand left in the bank, and the boxes rattling around in the back of the truck had just put a sizeable dent in that. He was ashamed to have pissed away more than a hundred thousand dollars over the last few years on bars, booze, and God only knew what else.

He would throw every dime he had left at lawyers, if that was what it took to keep Mike with Daphne and to end this crazy cat-and-mouse game she was playing with her former in-laws. His gut clenched when he thought about how expensive a protracted court battle could get. If it came to that, he’d take a second mortgage on his house to pay for it. And if he had any doubt about how hard he’d fallen for Daphne and Mike, he wouldn’t hesitate to swallow his pride and go to Aidan, who still had several of Sarah’s millions squirreled away. No matter what it took, Brandon would find a way out of this for Daphne.

Before he went back to the apartments to check on Mike, Brandon had one more thing he needed to take care of. This had been weighing on him, and it wasn’t going to get any easier if he continued to put it off. So he reached for his cell phone and called the number he’d gotten from Erin.

“Hi, Val, it’s Brandon,” he said when his ex-girlfriend answered.

“Oh, hi,” she said, sounding tentative. “Erin said you might call.”

“Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Um, no. Not at all.”

“Do you mind if I come by for a few minutes?”

“Sure. That would be fine.” She gave him directions to her house.

Brandon recognized the address as a new development in North Chatham. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”