The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,28

before Zoe and Cathy Clark was already there, with Jaime and Fiona. Jaime had been crying, Fiona was holding an ice pack to her lip, and Jaime held her arms out to her father and started crying again.

“We have a busy young lady here.” Cathy smiled sympathetically at him. “I’ve called in a plastic surgeon for her lip, and we need an X-ray for her arm.”

“A plastic surgeon? Why? Is it that bad?” He hadn’t seen the cut yet, and Cathy reassured him.

“Just a few stitches, but a good rule to follow: Always get a plastic surgeon for injuries to lips and ears, especially lips. You don’t want a scar there later, lips and ears are funny that way. Once you interrupt the lip line, it always leaves a scar. And we don’t want her beautiful smile affected later on. He said he’d be here in a few minutes. And I have a feeling her arm is broken.” Austin looked crushed, it brought to mind his argument with Zoe all weekend, and he was angry at her again. He looked like a storm cloud when Zoe walked in ten minutes later, and he explained the situation to his wife. They both knew it could have been avoided with the gate he had put up and she had taken down. Zoe looked sick at the thought.

Cathy took Jaime to get the X-ray then, and she was right, Jaime’s arm was broken, it was a clean break, but needed a cast for the next six weeks.

“She’s so young to have broken a bone. I didn’t do that till I played football in college,” he said sadly.

“You were lucky,” Cathy said kindly. “She’s a busy bee, some kids are adventuresome. She’ll keep you busy now that she’s walking.” He didn’t tell her that he had put up a gate that would have avoided the whole thing. He kept silent out of loyalty to his wife, but he was furious with Zoe. The X-ray confirmed that the arm was broken just as the plastic surgeon arrived. Austin held her while they numbed her lip and sewed it up. It only took two stitches, but was traumatic nonetheless.

After that, the attending orthopedist put on a fluorescent orange waterproof cast. Cathy stayed with them the entire time, and appeared not to notice that Jaime’s parents hadn’t spoken to each other since they arrived. They thanked Cathy when they left, and went back to the apartment. Fiona made Jaime lunch, and Austin and Zoe went to their bedroom to talk.

“I’m sure you know what I’m thinking,” he said coldly. “If you’d left the goddamn gate up, this wouldn’t have happened. You have to run everything and decide everything, with all your goddamn theories about respecting a one-year-old, so now she has two stitches in her lip and a broken arm. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Zoe just sat on the bed and cried. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just don’t like gates for kids,” she said meekly. He felt terrible for shouting at her, and sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her.

“I’m sorry too. Sometimes I’m right, though. We’re in this together, Zoe. You can’t always call the shots. She’s my daughter too.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I feel terrible. I can’t believe she broke her arm and cut her lip.”

“At least it wasn’t worse,” he said generously, calming down. He could see how awful Zoe felt.

They both had to get back to work and left together after kissing Jaime, and thanking Fiona for handling it so well. At least the war between them was over, as they shared a cab uptown. He kissed her when she dropped him off.

He told his mother about the incident the next day when she called him to say hello and she was shocked.

“Why didn’t you put gates up now that she’s walking?”

“I didn’t have the time,” Austin said, covering for his wife. He’d rather look like an idiot to his mother than have her know that Zoe opposed him and took it down, particularly since Jaime had gotten hurt.

“I thought Zoe was careful about those things.” She sounded surprised. She sensed that something was off, but she couldn’t tell what. She knew him well.

“We both misjudged it. We’ll be more careful from now on.”

“I hope so,” she said and they hung up a few minutes later.

That night, he and Zoe made love for the first time in months. He felt closer to her