Chapter 2 - The House We Should Never Have Entered
Claire arrived forty minutes later wearing navy hospital scrubs and carrying the lunch bag she had taken to her twelve-hour nursing shift that morning.
She found Julian packing suitcases.
Nat sat on their bed in the guest suite clutching the stuffed brown dog he had slept with since he was two.
“What happened?”
Julian closed the bedroom door before explaining.
Claire’s face changed before he finished.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Julian noticed.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“I knew Evelyn had said things.”
“What things?”
Claire sat beside Nat.
“She called him difficult. She said you were overcompensating because he wasn’t biologically yours.”
Julian stared at her.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I told you she was making comments.”
“You told me you two weren’t getting along.”
“Because every time I said your father was getting too involved, you told me we only had to survive a few more weeks.”
That part was true.
A pipe had burst in Julian and Claire’s Evanston house in March. Water had soaked the first floor and mold remediation had turned a six-week repair into something closer to four months.
Walter offered them two rooms in his mansion.
Julian had accepted because it saved them nearly twelve thousand dollars in temporary housing.
It also made his commute to Mercer Residential Group shorter.
Claire had hated the arrangement from the beginning.
Julian had called her ungrateful once.
Remembering that now made him sick.
“I want Nat checked,” Claire said.
“He’s not hurt.”
“I know. I want his pediatrician to document that he’s okay. And I want him talking to somebody.”
Walter’s cane struck the hallway floor outside.
Julian opened the door.
His father stood there with Evelyn.
“You’re not leaving like this,” Walter said.
“We’re leaving exactly like this.”
“You assaulted me.”
Julian’s eyes flicked toward the mark on Walter’s cheek.
He regretted hitting him.
He did not regret stopping him.
“Call an attorney if you want.”
Walter’s mouth tightened.
“You work for me.”
“Not tonight.”
“You have a compensation review next month. A partnership decision after that. You really want to burn down your career because a child got disciplined?”
Nat heard him.
Julian saw it in the way the boy’s shoulders folded inward.
He stepped into the hallway and closed the bedroom door behind him.
“Do not call what happened discipline again.”
Walter lowered his voice.
“You’re thirty-six years old and about to inherit responsibility for a company that supports eighty-seven employees. Start thinking like it.”
“I am.”
Julian opened the door again.
“That’s why I’m taking my family out of here.”
They checked into an extended-stay hotel near Glenview that night.
Nat slept between Julian and Claire.
At 2:13 a.m., Julian woke because Nat was crying quietly.
Julian whispered, “Bad dream?”
Nat shook his head.
“Grandpa said you’d send me away if I made your life too hard.”
Julian looked across the dark room at Claire.
She was awake.
Neither of them spoke.
Nat continued.
“He said that’s why you keep leaving.”
Something cold settled inside Julian.
May you like
Walter had not merely been insulting Nat.
He had been teaching the boy to interpret Julian’s work schedule as abandonment.
