Book 5 - Page 142 (1/2)

As my stepfather had loved her—inordinately.

“I’ve tried calling Stanton,” I said, “but I just get his voice mail.”

“Me, too.” Cary rubbed at his unshaven jaw. “I hope he’s okay, but I realize he’s probably not.”

“I think it might be a while before any of us are okay.”

We settled into comfortable silence for a moment. Then Cary spoke. “I was talking to your dad this morning, before we headed to the airport, about his plans to move to New York.”

My nose wrinkled. “I would love to have him near, but I can’t help thinking how bizarre it would be if he worked for Gideon.”

He nodded slowly. “You have a point.”

“What do you think?”

He s.h.i.+fted his body to face me. “Well, just the pregnancy part of having a kid has changed my life, right? So, multiply that by twenty-four years in your case, and I’d say a loving parent would do just about anything to make things better for their child.”

Yep, something had definitely s.h.i.+fted for Cary. Sometimes, you just needed a hard jolt to b.u.mp you in the right direction. For Cary, that was the thought of being a father. For me, it had been meeting Gideon. And for Gideon, it had been the possibility of losing me.

“Anyway,” Cary went on, “he was saying that Gideon offered him a housing allowance and he was thinking he’d like to stay in the apartment with me.”

“Wow. Okay.” There was a lot to process there. One, my dad was obviously taking the idea of working for Gideon in New York seriously. Two, my best friend was thinking about living separately from me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “I’d been worried Dad would have a hard time using that room after him and my mom … you know.”

I didn’t think I could stay in the penthouse if I didn’t have Gideon. Too much had happened between us there. I didn’t know if I could handle remembering what I no longer had.

“Yeah, I’d wondered about that, too.” Cary reached out and touched my shoulder, a simple comforting touch. “But you know, memories are all that Victor has ever really had of Monica.”

I nodded. My dad had to have wondered more than once over the years if the love had always been one-sided. After that afternoon with my mom, maybe he realized that wasn’t true. That’d be a good memory to hold on to.

“So you’re thinking about staying there,” I said. “Mom told me she’d offered you that option.”