His reply is frustrated. “I haven’t heard from them, Hendricks.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll call you back,” I say, and hang up.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I run through the list of things she could be wanting, of why she could behereoutside Max’s school. There’s only one thing I can come up with, like I said to Arthur, and it’s Max.
It’s every fear I’ve had since he was born come to life.
I’m nothing but a ball of anxiety and nausea. The pressure building inside me is giving me a splitting headache, and I can’t decide whether I’m going to be sick. I do know, however, that sitting in the car watching Sienna isn’t going to make any of it go away.
Better get this over with. Face the dragon.
I open the car door, get out, and close the door without slamming it. I don’t want to alert her or startle her only for her to run off before I reach her.
Sienna’s staring straight ahead as I walk out of the school gates. I expect her to sense movement and look up at some point, but she’s in a trance. I get closer and spot a manila envelope in her hand, the type they use for legal documents.
Legal documents, legal documents.Fuck.
For what has to be the thousandth time today, I take a deep breath.
Not until I’m crossing the road directly in front of her does she register that she’s not alone. There’s not a flicker of surprise on her face either. She’s been waitingfor me. She knew I’d come here.
Immediately, I flare up, feeling like I’ve been caught in a trap. “Sienna? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Hello to you too.” She smiles, and I’m stalled briefly. In my years of hating her, I’d forgotten how pretty she is. Her nose, the same one Max inherited, squashes up as her smile gets wider. Faint creases I don’t remember her having fan around her eyes.
It makes me angrier and more suspicious. “Answer my question.”
“I came to see you.”
“Why? Why here? Why now and not at the offices like you requested?” I snarl. “I waited for two hours, Sienna, and I haven’t heard from you since. What game is this, because I’m not fucking playing. Tell me what you want.”
“It’s not a game,” she replies, and looks genuinely repentant that I’m taken aback for a second. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready to see you, but you should have been told earlier I wasn’t coming. I didn’t realize my solicitors hadn’t informed you.”
“Solicitors I fucking pay for.”
She nods. “Yes. You’re right.”
I don’t know what’s going on here, but the Sienna in front of me isn’t the Sienna I know. The one I’m used to is abrasive, bristly, gearing for a fight over anything and everything.
The best word I can use to describe her mood today is passive, and I honestly don’t know how to take it. It’s making me fucking edgy, that’s for sure.
She’s a barn cat playing with her food before she devours it in one bite, and it takes all my patience notto shake the answer out of her. “Sienna, I’m asking you one more time. What are you doing here?”
She runs her fingers along the edges of the manila envelope, turning it over in her hand, her gaze fixed once more on the school. I wonder if she knows that Max’s classroom is visible from where we are. Or if she’d know which child was Max if she could see them all lined up.
“I tried, you know.”
“Tried what?”
“To be a mother. Towantto be a mother, a good one.”
I don’t know what to say. Not a single memory I have would prove this, only the exact opposite. Even throughout her pregnancy, she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, and it only got worse once Max was born.
“Did you?”
The glare she shoots my way is exactly the woman I remember.
