for entertainment when I’m not around?” I jump out of the pool and drag the floatie out, but the damn cat is still fighting like it wants to stay in the pool and pulverize the unicorn. “What the fuck, cat? Let go. Be free. Stay out of the water.”
It finally wrenches its claw loose, the momentum throwing it into the water.
I leap back in, but before I can reach it, it’s scrambled out, a streak of soaking wet pussy flying into the landscaping like someone just shot it out of the clown cannon my mom bitched about for two years when that one comedian got popular for using it to avenge people terrified of ventriloquists by launching puppets at every show.
She called it insulting the genre by splitting the fan base. Mocking each other is why we can’t have nice things. You can be funny without being mean.
I hadn’t understood, but eventually the cannon dude was arrested for tax fraud, so there’s that.
But back to Daisy and the cat.
“Appreciate the help,” I call to her.
She says something I don’t hear clearly, so I tilt my good ear toward her. “Do I want to know?”
She sighs and splashes the water. “I said, my parents got divorced when I was seven.”
“Because of a wet cat?”
“Basically. Several wet cats. In a manner of speaking.”
I open my mouth.
Then close it.
“Yes, my father was the same kind of philandering asshole that Rafe was. Is. My father is. He’s not dead. Not like Rafe. But he’s still a cheater, and I have three ex-stepmothers happy to share stories, though after the first one, I never bothered to get to know them well enough to invite them over for story time. That would’ve been awkward.”
Huh.
She’s flustered.
I stand there watching her, testing a theory that she hates silence, and it’s not three seconds before my patience is rewarded.
“I’m never having children, but I’m apparently having Remy, so you need to know that we will get along and never say bad things about each other in front of him, even though I don’t know if you’ll be around long enough for him to even remember this, or I will crush you in ways you had no idea you could be crushed, which will also make me very sad, because I don’t like crushing people, but I’ll do it to keep Remy from feeling like any more of a pawn than everyone’s already treating him. Understood?”
That’s reasonable. I don’t think it’s the full story on why she hasn’t issued a single complaint about raising the baby beyond that first night, but it’s a start.
Yeah! A start! my balls crow.
They’re idiots.
So am I, because my place here isn’t real. It’s for show, for the lawyers and judges. Still, I don’t look away from her. “Why do you call him Remy? Is that what Julienne called him?”
“No, she called him Mington.”
I cross my arms. “Why do I even try with you?”
“Pinky swear. Here. Look.” She bends over her phone, and a minute later, she flashes the screen at me across the pool. I hear muffled voices, and I can’t see a damn thing on the screen, so I do something I’ll probably regret, and I dive into the water to cross the pool.
Quicker than walking around.
Plus, I didn’t go into the Marines because I wanted to be stuck on land forever.
I fucking love the water.
I surface, and she’s frowning at me. It’s a subtle frown, her brows barely pinched, her pink lips straighter than turned down, but it’s definitely a frown.
She looks different without all her makeup on.
Like a real woman.
Not the one who’s always on the magazines that my sisters keep when I’m visiting home. And not just because her skin is still blotchy in places.
But only a few places.
“Here. Look. Home videos from her private Instagram account.”
“Private? Like where she said nice things about people?”
Daisy grimaces. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
She lifts the phone again, and I lean closer to watch the video on the small screen.
The scent of coconut floods my nose as I get within sniffing distance of Daisy, and I suddenly need to know what Sierra is doing. How big Baxter and Nina are now. If she ever got remarried.
Noise off Daisy’s phone reminds me to breathe, and there’s another flash of weirdness in my chest as Julienne Carter-Roderick appears on the screen, stalking across the kitchen in her Coconut Grove mansion, wearing heels and a baby sling and talking to the camera. “Mington is three weeks