I didn’t see an egghead with books on every surface and glasses off kilter while she breastfed our baby.
I didn’t see a smarty pants professor with chalk-stained fingers holding an entire room rapt with her lectures on earthworms.
I certainly didn’t see a femme fatale strutting across a hotel lobby in the Baby Conception Caper.
But that’s what I saw now.
Only she couldn’t see it. She could only see the reasons we didn’t work.
“Hey, J.”
I switched off my headphones. Theo stood before me in warm-up gear.
“Hey there.” We fist bumped while I switched off the treadmill. “You here to work out?”
“Just a light skate with the vets.”
“Franky calls them the Three Wise Men.” Damn. Just saying her name was a stab to my heart.
Theo looked like he wanted to say more than what he eventually came up with. I hadn’t told him anything but he knew me well and had a sixth sense about these things. “Want to join us?”
“I sure do. Let’s skate.”
The workout was good. As much as I enjoyed sweating while running, nothing got my juices flowing like a vigorous skate with my fellow pros.
Thirty minutes in, I grabbed my water from the bench just as Bren skated over and stopped before me. We hadn’t spoken much in the last few months, and I wondered what his daughter had told him about us. Or if she had mentioned me at all. Maybe I was surplus to requirements once my donation was delivered.
Some masochistic part of me couldn’t resist bringing her up.
“Have you talked to Franky?”
“Have I talked to my daughter?” With his Scottish burr, it came out as “dotter.”
I swallowed, realizing too late I had not thought this through.
“We had an argument in Boston a few days ago. I just wanted to know if she’s okay. I mean, I’m guessing she’s fine or I would have heard about it, but …”
Theo, Remy, and Vadim had skated over as that sentence petered out.
“Everything okay here?” Theo asked, carefully, like he was expecting trouble. Maybe he knew St. James better and could tell when the guy was about to kick someone’s ass.
“Is it?” Bren asked me, his eyes as cold as the ice beneath our feet. “Or have you been upsetting my daughter while she’s in a precarious position health wise?”
So Franky hadn’t told her dad about our falling out. Apparently, that was my spectacular achievement.
“I thought we were on the same page about raising the kid, how that would look, where it would happen. But it seems not.”
Bren chugged down some water. Made me wait.
“Sounds like this is between the two of you.”
If she hadn’t told them we fought, then maybe they didn’t know the details. Telling tales out of school wasn’t really my bag, but he needed to know.
“She’s applying for a job at Harvard. Leaving Chicago and everyone she knows.”
Leaving me.
Bren remained stoic. For Christ’s sake, didn’t he care that Franky might be a thousand miles away on a permanent basis?
