Meet Cute(87)
Emme’s smile falls. “But I haven’t seen you in forever. Please, Kailyn? She can come, can’t she, Dax?”
Emme sends an imploring look her brother’s way. His cheek tics, but he forces a smile. “Of course Kailyn’s welcome to join us. It’s your night.”
“Yay!” Emme throws her arms around me again. “Can I ride with Kailyn? Can we go to the diner down the street? I was too nervous to eat before the performance, and now I’m starving!”
Thank you, I mouth to Dax as she drags me toward the door.
He nods, but his smile has vanished again.
The diner is busy, full of other students and their parents who had the exact same idea we did. Emme sits beside me in the booth and chatters away. Once we’ve ordered she’s dragged off to sit with a few of her friends. “I’ll be back in a few minutes!”
“She seems like she’s doing well.”
“She has really good days. This is one of them.” Dax arranges his silverware, but doesn’t look at me. “You had something you needed to talk to me about.”
I look around the diner. “It’s about Linda.” I reach into my purse and pull out the emails I printed off.
Dax leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest, regarding me coldly. “What about her?”
“I overheard a conversation with someone before the assembly and it sounded rather suspect, so I recorded it. I also found this.” I push the printed sheets toward him.
“What is this?”
“An email chain between Linda and a principal at a private school.”
“What?” Dax skims it. “How’d you get this?”
“She left her email open on a laptop in the library.” I set my phone on the table between us. “I haven’t had a chance to listen to it, so I have no idea if I caught anything helpful or not.”
“Helpful how?”
“In building your case to keep Emme with you.”
“Emme keeps earbuds in the front pocket.” Dax points to her backpack.
I unzip the compartment and smile when I find the little pouch I gave her to keep her girl supplies in when it’s that time of the month. Tucked in beside them are earbuds. I slip the jack in and pass Dax one bud, pushing the other in my ear. He leans forward, forearms on the table, head down and inches from mine as I cue the recording. I turn the volume all the way up, cross my fingers, and hit Play.
It’s not the clearest recording, and the noise in the diner makes it hard to hear. I pass Dax the other earbud and he listens again, and then again, eyes on mine as his expression hardens. He yanks them out. “What kind of person wants custody of a grieving teenage girl so they can cash in on her trust allowance?”
“Not a very good one.”
He scrubs his face with his palm. “She can’t get custody of Emme. There’s no way.”
I glance over my shoulder, checking on Emme, who’s still engaged in conversation with her friends. She’s actually sitting beside a boy who seems to be hanging on her every word. I wonder if that’s Clark. Or Liam. Or Jimmy. She has quite the fan club.
“Come sit on this side.” Dax slides over a few more inches and I move into the space beside him. I quickly pull the rest of the emails between the private school administrator and Linda. He stops at the one about boarding options. “She plans to send her to San Francisco? When has she had time to plan all this?”
I tap the time stamp. “It looks like she started as soon as she filed for custody.”
“Can I keep this?”
“All of it is yours. I just want Emme to be safe and with someone who loves her and wants what’s best for her. I didn’t want to hurt her, or you. Whatever else I can do to help, I will.”
He places his hand over mine and squeezes, eyes soft. “Thank you.”
It’s not forgiveness, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Forgiveness
Dax
Emme is beat when we get home, so she heads to her room, too tired for TV or anything else. Thankfully tomorrow is Friday, and I’m assuming the performance tonight will mean an easy day at school.
I’m hopped up on adrenaline, and my head is spinning, so once she’s in bed, I grab a beer from the fridge and head down the hall to the office with the folder of printed emails Kailyn gave me.
I drop into the leather executive chair with a sigh. Kailyn. I don’t know what to think. She seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to get this information for me, but why? Does she genuinely want to help? I hate not knowing what parts of our relationship were real and what was contrived to further her career. I don’t think anyone can fake the kind of chemistry we have, but even that I can’t be sure of. And now I’m questioning it all over again, because she came to the performance for Emme.
I massage the space between my eyes as I boot up my father’s desktop. Since the funeral, I’ve put off dealing with the majority of the financial stuff that wasn’t directly related to Emme. There are accounts that need to be managed, savings to be transferred, and bank statements to be reviewed. But none of it has seemed pressing since Linda sued for custody of Emme. While I wait, I rifle through the emails from Kailyn, organizing them by date. The first email to the private school was sent the day after Linda filed for custody. She is un-fucking-believable.