Eleanor & Grey(53)

If he wasn’t on the phone talking business, there was a very good chance he wasn’t talking at all.

He and Karla were so similar in many ways, so cold and distant, but the difference was that Karla was mean while Greyson was not. He was just insanely lost.

Whenever Lorelai and I had dinner in the dining room, I swore Greyson and Karla went out of their way to avoid coming anywhere near us. They simply grabbed their food and went to their own personal spaces.

Like father, like daughter.

I didn’t think too much on it. They wanted their space, so I gave it to them. Most of my focus went toward Lorelai.

She was the blessing at the end of hard days. There wasn’t anything that could keep that young girl from laughing. In a house full of darkness, she was the light that flooded each room.

Each evening after dinner, Lorelai and I would pretend we were dragons flying into a new world where our only job was to make people realize that dragons were friendly creatures. It involved a lot of jumping up and down and roaring, of course, something we both were fans of.

One night as the two of us played in Lorelai’s room, our volumes reached a new height as we laughed and laughed at Lorelai’s new, deep guttural roar. Tears rolled down her cheeks from laughing so hard, and every time she tried to catch her breath, she laughed harder.

Those were my favorite moments with children—the wild ones.

As the two of us lost ourselves, we were interrupted by a loud bang on the bedroom door. We all looked up to see Greyson standing in the doorway with a stern look on his face. The laughter faded away as we all noticed the seriousness in his eyes.

“Hi, Daddy,” Lorelai said, her voice lower than before.

“What’s with all the noise?” he scolded, his brows knitted together.

I cleared my throat and smoothed out my clothing. “Oh, sorry. We didn’t know you were home. We were just having a great round of—”

“A word, Eleanor,” he hissed, cutting me off. “In my office.”

I stood taller, chills racing over me.

“What?”

“I would like a word with you in my office,” he repeated, not waiting for me to reply before he walked away. I took a deep breath before turning toward Lorelai. Her eyes were widened and she appeared shaken by her father’s aggressive arrival.

“Is he mad because we were loud?” she asked, her voice quivering. Her shoulders slouched forward, and I could see the worry in her eyes. It was as though she’d let her father down in some way.

The shame of it all was that if anyone was letting someone down, it was her father who wasn’t showing up for his daughters.

“No, honey. Your father and I had a meeting scheduled, I just forgot about it.” I pulled her into a hug, and she hugged me back tightly. I savored the sweet embrace. “Now go get ready for bed, alright? I’ll come check on you soon.”

She nodded and hurried off to pick out her pajamas. I headed to Greyson’s office, where the door was wide open.

“No offense, but did you really need to barge in with such a tone? You scared Lorelai half to death,” I stated as I walked in. He was pacing the length of the room, clasping his fingers together as his chest repeatedly rose and fell heavily.

“Where do you take her?” he snapped, completely ignoring my comment.

“Excuse me?”

“Where do you take her?” he barked once more, this time his voice louder, scarier.

I took a step backward, unsure of what he meant.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Grey—”

“Mr. East!” he hollered, making me take more steps backward.

He was fuming, and I had no clue why. I’d never seen him so upset. For the most part he just coasted on a nice wave of detachment. In this moment, though, he was mad—livid, even.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying hard to not take his temper personally.

“I received an email this afternoon asking for an update on Karla. It turns out she hasn’t been to school in weeks, specifically since you’ve been driving her. So tell me, where have you been taking her?”

“I…” My voice shook as my mind tried to catch up with the words he was speaking. How was that possible? How was that a thing? “I take her to school every day after I drop off Lorelai. I don’t understand how she wouldn’t be attending.”

“You see her go in every day?” he questioned.

“Well, no, because I drop her off a few blocks away like the other nan…” My words trailed off and reality set in.

Oh, my gosh, I am an idiot.

Karla had lied about the other nannies dropping her off blocks away from the school building, and I was the stupid person who’d believed her sob story.

Greyson hadn’t caught on to the realization I’d come to, though. He kept staring at me with a hard glance, waiting for answers. I swallowed hard and explained the situation, looking away from him.

“You’re joking, right?” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I—I just thought…” I stuttered, feeling as if I’d been fooled by a fourteen-year-old. My face grew warm, and I couldn’t look at Greyson. I was humiliated by my na?ve mistake. She had played me. I’d been royally played by a teenager. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t make up for the fact that she has missed weeks of schooling.”