His Holiday Crush - Cari Z. Page 0,21
her up at noon, and of course she didn’t show. The teacher tried to call her, and when that didn’t work, she called Hal. He called me, I got the rest of the cops involved, and we started a search.
“The whole time, Hal had to be strong for Steph, tell her that Mommy was fine, that she was going to be back soon, though he was worried she’d driven into a ditch somewhere.” I shook my head. “Marnie was more obviously bothered by it all when she found out that Ariel was missing, while Steph…she internalized it, in some way. By the time Ariel made contact three days later, Steph had completely stopped communicating. She didn’t say a damn word to her mother over the phone.” Ariel had cried. But if anyone deserved to cry over this clusterfuck, it was her.
“Steph is communicating with her counselor some now, though, and she’s participating in school again. She’ll speak every once in a while to Marnie, and sometimes to Hal, but for the most part, she stays quiet.” It was disconcerting, watching my niece go from a bubbly, outgoing girl to a silent, grave little phantom of a child. Five-year-olds were meant to be exuberant, and I sometimes worried that Ariel had stolen her daughter’s vivacity when she abandoned her.
Max winced and shook his head. “I can’t believe she put everyone through that. That’s rough.”
It was, but dwelling on it wasn’t going to make things any better. Ariel was out of the picture for good now. We had to work at moving on, and I was determined not to look back. “She’s getting better,” I said firmly. “She’s got Hal and Marnie, and she’s got me.” I glanced at Max. “She seems to like you, too.”
Max smiled, and the mood lightened along with his expression. “Steph’s always been my buddy. Marnie is everyone’s friend, but her little sister had a reputation of being choosy from infanthood. I was sure the first time I met her that she was going to hate me. She was just six months old, and she hadn’t even let Christine hold her for more than five minutes without yelling her face red yet. When Hal handed her to me, though, I held her up and looked her in the eyes and…” He shrugged. “She settled for me right away, let me put her down to sleep that night without a single tear.”
“That was when they visited you in New York, right?” My vision of Max as a corporate shark with a swank Manhattan apartment wasn’t really jiving with the reality of Hal and his young family spending a long weekend with him there every year.
“Yeah. Hal and Ariel brought a travel cot for Steph and set up in my room, and Marnie and I sacked out on the couches in the living room.” I don’t know what my face looked like, but whatever it was made Max laugh. “What, you think I can afford more than one bedroom in New York City? I’m lucky the kitchen and the bathroom have most of a wall between them—they literally share a sink. It’s a long one, built into the same countertop, look.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled for a minute then handed it over to me.
There was the kitchen…and there was the bathroom…and there was… “What the hell?” I marveled. “How can the landlords get away with this setup?”
“You’d be stunned what you can get away with calling an apartment in New York,” Max said. “I went to law school with a guy who slept in a walled-off section of a locker room. He said all the tile made it pretty easy to keep clean, actually.”
“A used locker room? Like, an active one?” Max nodded with mock solemnity. “Jesus Christ, I’m feeling way better about having to deal with something as mundane as rats now.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
He looked like he was about to say more, then Marnie piped up, “Uncle Nicky, I got green in my scarf!”
…
One hasty wash-and-dry cycle and an early lunch later—my snowman grilled cheeses were amazing, as usual—and Hal was back to take over minding the girls while I drove Max over to talk to the mechanic who’d taken in his car. Unfortunately, the news was nothing good. I glazed over at “cracked cylinder head” and waited out the mechanic’s prediction of a week to get parts in and get the repairs done.
Aside from a clenched jaw and a long exhale, Max