Park Avenue Player by Vi Keeland
Chapter 18
Hollis
“Are you and Elodie mad at each other?” Hailey asked.
Mad wouldn’t exactly be the right word. Maybe pissed off, infatuated, displeased, obsessed, angry, captivated—though none of the things I felt about my damn nanny were appropriate to share with my niece.
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you barely said two words to each other this week, and when she made me dinner, she only made enough for me and didn’t leave you anything to eat.”
Oh, yeah, that.
I shook my head and held up a hand to get the waitress’s attention so I could order more coffee. “We’re just busy, and it’s not Elodie’s job to cook dinner for me.”
My niece squinted. She was street smart, even at her age. She knew bullshit when she heard it. But I wasn’t about to explain the disaster I’d gotten myself into to an eleven year old.
“You know what I think happened?” she asked.
“No. But I’m guessing you’re about to enlighten me.”
“I think she likes you, and you were a jerk to her.”
My fork had been halfway to my mouth, and I froze. Seeing my reaction, my niece grinned from ear to ear. Son of a bitch.
Luckily, the waitress walked over and interrupted our heart to heart.
“I’ll take another coffee, please.” I looked at Hailey. “Would you like more chocolate milk?”
She nodded to the waitress. “Yes, please.”
I’d definitely noticed the addition of the word please to Hailey’s vocabulary the last few weeks. I wished I could say it was my doing, but it wasn’t. Elodie had been making good headway with her. Even this morning, Hailey had set an alarm to wake up early and then gotten herself ready for me to take her to sign up for some hip-hop lessons she wanted to take. A few weeks ago, her idea of an alarm was me yelling at her to get out of bed seven times.
Hailey finished off her chocolate chip pancakes in silence. I was relieved she’d seemed to drop the discussion on Elodie.
“Do they…let kids visit their parents when they’re in prison?”
Shit. Can we go back to talking about Elodie?
“I believe they do, yes. I think it depends on the reason the person is in prison. But I don’t know all the rules.”
She took the straw out of her almost-empty chocolate milk glass and lifted it to her mouth, tilting her head back to drink the last few drops. “So is my father allowed to have visitors?”
“I’m not sure.”
Her eyes had been looking anywhere but at mine. She took a deep breath and met my gaze. “Can you find out and take me to visit him if it’s allowed? Please?”
I didn’t know the right answer here. Should I take an eleven year old to a prison? Or would that scar her for life? Although maybe it would be worse to keep her from the only parent she had known for that long—even if he was a total loser. This was a decision I should definitely run by Elodie.
“Your dad is in Ohio, so it’s not like it’s a simple trip. Can you give me a day or two to look into it and think about it? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure that’s the best environment for you to see your father in.”
Hailey frowned. “I’ve seen him in worse. How do you think he found his way home when he was high? Sometimes I’d have to get him from those abandoned buildings where all the people sleep on dirty mattresses on the floor.”
Jesus Christ. I knew my half-brother struggled with drugs and stole cars, but I didn’t realize his daughter had to scoop him out of crack dens.
I nodded. “Give me a day or two. Okay?”
“Okay.”
***
Monday night Elodie was readying to make her now-usual rapid departure when I walked in. She pulled her purse to her shoulder, said goodnight to Hailey, and started for the door.
“Ummm, Elodie? Can I speak with you a moment, please?”
She stopped and turned back to face me. The corners of her mouth curved down.
I nodded toward the front door. “I’ll walk you out.” I looked over at Hailey. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Why don’t you get started on your homework?”
Her brows drew together. “Uhhh…because it’s summer, and I don’t have any?”
I shook my head. “Just go watch TV for a few minutes then.”
Elodie walked ahead of me to the door. Her ass swayed back and forth in a pair of tight jeans. This woman—she was Eve, and that ass was my shiny apple.
Once we got to the hall, she folded her arms across her chest and waited for me to speak.
I cleared my throat. “Hailey asked me if I could take her to visit her father in prison. I wanted to get your opinion on how I should handle that.”
The stern mask she’d been wearing for the last week and a half slipped down. “Oh. Wow. That’s a tough one.”
I nodded. “I hate the thought of bringing her to a prison, of her having to see him in that environment. But, as she’s reminded me, she’s seen her father in worse conditions. And the bottom line is, he is her father. The way he dumped her here and disappeared like he did—I have to wonder if she wants to see for herself that he’s okay.”
Elodie looked down at her feet, seemingly lost in thought. When she looked up, I realized it was the first time she’d made eye contact with me in more than a week. “I don’t think I ever told you about my father.”
When I’d interviewed her, she’d said something about a shitty childhood—it was her justification as to why she was the right person for the job. But we’d never discussed anything in detail.
“You’ve mentioned you had a difficult time growing up, like Hailey.”
She nodded and stood a little taller. “Both of my parents are alcoholics. Raging alcoholics. Or were raging alcoholics. Well, technically, I think my mother is still a raging alcoholic—I’m not sure. We aren’t that close, and I don’t really want to know. But I guess that’s irrelevant to the story. Anyway, my dad was a cop, and most of his friends were cops that drank too much, too. Birds of a feather and all.”
She shrugged. “He would think nothing of drinking all afternoon at a friend’s barbecue and then driving us home. I knew right from wrong, but I guess I also figured he was a cop—so that made it okay for him to break the law. The day before my twelfth birthday, we were on our way home from one of those summer barbecues, and my dad was swerving all over the road. He’d had way too much to drink and ended up wrapping our car around a tree. My mom suffered a broken leg and a few broken ribs. I was sitting behind her in the back seat and somehow walked away with nothing more than a few scratches and bruises. But my father didn’t have his seat belt on. He went through the windshield and was thrown over a hundred feet. He broke his neck and was instantly paralyzed.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. He was in the hospital for a long time. They actually arrested him and arraigned him there. My mom wanted me to visit him with her, but I was too mad at what he’d done—what they’d both done. Not to mention that I was mortified at school because it was all over the news: disgraced police officer drives drunk and almost kills his family.”
“Did you visit him?”
Elodie shook her head. “Nope. I was stubborn.” She smirked. “I know you’ll have a hard time believing that.”
I smiled. “Yeah. Seems totally out of character now. Because you’re so easy going.”
“Anyway, paraplegics are at risk for a lot of health problems related to being immobile. Thrombosis is one of them. One night, he apparently had some swelling in his arm. The next morning he was dead from a blood clot.”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “And you’d not visited him in the hospital.”
“He was there for five weeks, and I never went.”
“Do you regret it?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure why, but I do. I wish I’d gone even once. Maybe it would’ve helped to have my last memory of my father be him sober and suffering the consequences of his actions. I don’t know. But I’ve always regretted it.”
“I guess I have my answer then.”
Elodie leaned forward and pushed the button to call the elevator. When it arrived, she stepped inside and looked at me sadly. The doors started to close, and I just couldn’t let her go without saying something.
I stuck my hand out and stopped them from sliding shut. “I’m sorry about the mess I made between us. I was wrong to take your underwear. And I was wrong to speak to you the way I did last week when you walked in on my date. You didn’t deserve that.”
She nodded. “Thank you. And I’m sorry I kept the game going and then got mad and ruined your date.”
I reached out my hand as a peace offering. “Friends?”
She hesitated, but eventually put her little hand in mine. “Sure.”
“Thank you.” I nodded and released my hold on the elevator doors.
This time, Elodie stopped them from closing. “Hey, Hollis?”
Our eyes met.
“You know what I’m not sorry about?”
“What’s that?”
“The photo you left on my phone. It’s come in handy.” She let go of the elevator doors and stepped back, flashing me the wickedest grin right before they closed. She wiggled her fingers. “’Night, Hollsy.”
***
The next morning, Hailey was up early again. Apparently, she and Elodie were spending the day doing a photography tour of graffiti around the city. She sat at the kitchen island, eating a bowl of cereal.
I set my empty coffee mug in the sink. “So I thought about what you asked me. I’ll take you to visit your dad if you want.”
Hailey grinned. “Elodie gave you permission, huh?”
The little shit. “Have you ever heard the saying Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?”
“I have. But Elodie feeds me most nights, remember?”
I grabbed my wallet and cell phone from the dining room table. “Don’t be a smartass, Hailey. You know what I mean.”
She jumped down off the stool she was sitting on and walked over to me. Pushing up on her tippy toes, she surprised the shit out of me by kissing my cheek.
“Thank you, Uncle Hollis.”
I nodded. “You’re welcome.”
She went back to her bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. “So when can we go?”
“I’ll need to make flight arrangements. But visiting hours on the weekends are all day. So we’ll probably fly down on Friday night and come back Saturday after the visit.”
“Can Elodie come?”
“Elodie doesn’t work on weekends.”
“But if I ask her to come and she agrees, is it okay?”
It was a bad idea for me to be spending any time outside of what I had to with Elodie. Though, I had to admit, she had a special connection with Hailey and would know better than me how to handle things if she got upset.
I sighed. “If you want her to come and she’s able to, yes, we can take Elodie.”
“Dope.”
Yeah, I am. You can say that again.
