Max finished his dinner, and Abbey tried to keep conversation upbeat, but she was still flustered over Nick’s absence. “Do you mind if I go find out why Nick didn’t come to dinner?” she asked Max. He nodded. “Let’s go upstairs and you can build with your Legos in our room.” They cleaned up their dishes and went upstairs.
She smiled as she left the room where Max was. Once Max was out of sight, she walked down to Nick’s office and opened the door without knocking.
“Did you not see my text?” she asked sadly without even a hello.
Nick wasn’t looking at her. His desk was scattered with more papers. He was hunched over them all, a pencil in his hand, scribbling madly between bouts of punching buttons on his computer. She walked to the edge of the desk to face him, and he finally looked up at her.
“Did you see my text?” she asked again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice ragged. “No, I didn’t.”
She leaned down in front of his face. “Look at me, please,” she said.
He looked up.
“I get it. You feel you need to make this sale. This job is important to you.” She leaned closer to ensure that she had his attention. “But it isn’t all of you. You are so much more than this job, and you’re denying all the other parts of who you are. You aren’t aware of what you’re doing. You’ve been alone for so long, you’ve forgotten how to be with people. We were waiting. For you.”
His face softened slightly, but he looked defensive.
“You promised Max you would eat with him. Can you even fathom what I felt for my son when you didn’t show up after you said you would?”
His gaze dropped back down to his desk. He took in a deep breath and let it out.
“You promised,” she said. “You promised Max you’d come to dinner. He saved you a chair between us. And you didn’t show. You can’t do that.” She walked back to the other side of the desk. She could feel the lump in her throat—protectiveness of Max making her feel vulnerable—and she worried she was going to cry.
Nick rubbed his eyes, his remorse clear. He stood up and walked around the desk to face her. He reached out and hesitantly touched her arms. He moved his hands up until they were almost near her shoulders and he held on to her tenderly. She looked into his blue eyes. She had to look up to see him, and she thought about how gentle he was, despite his imposing physique.
“I should’ve been there,” he said. “I’ll find a way to make it better. Maybe I can get him a present—a teddy bear or something.”
“You don’t need to buy him things. He doesn’t want a teddy bear. He wanted to eat dinner with you. The best thing you can do for him is to simply apologize.”
“I know I don’t need to buy him things. It would be a token of my regret for not being there for him.”
“You can’t fix the problem with money. You have to fix the problem.” She kept her voice calm. She had to make him see. “What does that teach him? That he can do whatever he wants to people as long as he buys them something to say he’s sorry? That’s not how I’m raising my child. You should’ve come to dinner, and you didn’t. Now, it’s up to you to make that better.”
* * *
Max was already asleep when Abbey went to check on him. He’d been waiting for her to come tuck him in, and she’d been busy cleaning up the kitchen even though Nick had assured her that the staff would take care of it. That was probably true, but it was her mess, so she cleaned up herself. She expected him to still be awake, but the day’s events must have been exhausting for him.
When she’d finished checking on Max, Abbey hurried to the bedroom to work on taping the rest of it off. She could feel how tired she was, but it didn’t matter. She had to get it finished. Without another thought, she pulled a long piece of tape from the roll and got started.
* * *
Abbey looked at her watch. Eleven o’clock. She rubbed her eyes, her fingers sticky from the adhesive of the tape. The whole room was supposed to be painted by now and drying so she could put it back together and decorate it tomorrow. She tried not to think about it as she lined the cans of paint on a drop cloth that Richard had found for her. She opened the paint and inserted a wooden paint stirrer. As she swirled the paint around, it looked slightly different than the original color she’d chosen, but wet paint sometimes did look different, so she continued to stir.
When it was mixed pretty well, she dumped it into the paint tray and dragged her roller back and forth in the gray mixture. Even on a long pole, given her height, the roller couldn’t reach the ceiling, so she had to teeter on the ladder to get up to the top. She left a few inches between the crown molding and the wall so she wouldn’t bump the woodwork with her roller. She’d have to go back and paint that with a brush, but even at the top of the ladder, she had no idea how she’d ever reach it. She rubbed an itch on her forehead with her wrist but still managed to get paint on herself. With a sigh, she kept rolling.