I sit beside Kim, still holding her hand. “I don’t know whether to be angry or scared or both.”
“I’m going with both.”
“I talked to him, and he’s really a fifteen-year-old boy, not a forty-year-old man or something. So he’s probably not trying to kidnap her.”
“Probably not, right?” Kim puts her head in her hands.
I wrap my arm around her. “This is hell on your OCD, yeah?”
She stiffens slightly, then nods. “I’m not totally sure what’s real, you know? Is Ivy in mortal peril? Is it possible we’ll never find her? Because my mind thinks these are really likely outcomes, but logically, probably not, right?”
I kneel down in front of Kim. “No,” I tell her. “Probably not. Probably Ivy is off somewhere kissing this boy, and that’s it.Then she’s going to come back, and we’re going to have to figure out what to do with her.”
Kim wraps her arms around my neck, holding on tight. “That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” I don’t love this prospect, but it’s certainly better than other options. “And I have no idea what we’re going to do or say to get through to her. I really don’t.” I halfway want to kill her myself for being so reckless, for defying us so openly.
But god, if anything happens to her . . .
The door opens, and the security guard brings in a police officer. For the next hour, we give reports to the police, and then are ushered into the security office alongside a man dressed like the clown fromITand a girl only a bit older than Ivy who looks like she’s been crying. We’re given a private waiting room at the back and are left on our own again, unable to do anything but worry.
We check our phones again and again, in case she finds some way to text us, but there’s nothing—just the numerous texts from our agents and publicists about Claire’s interview. Which is definitely something we’re going to need to address, but neither of us can focus on it now.
My daughter has been gone for almost two hours now, somewhere in or around the convention center. I don’t think this kid is going to kidnap her, but god, I don’tknow, do I? He could be working with someone else who has darker intentions. Or Ivy herself might have decided to run away, thinking that’ll be all fun and games and kisses with cute boys and not realizing she’s making herself vulnerable for people who want to—
“We shouldn’t have brought her to the convention,” Kim says. “We should have sent her home to the ranch with Helene.”
I shake my head. “We decided taking everything away from her would just make it worse.”
“Look at what’s happened!” Kim says. “Can it get worse than this?”
Yes, unfortunately. And I really don’t want it to. “You’re probably right.”
I collapse onto an uncomfortable couch while Kim paces the length of the small waiting room, back and forth, back and forth. I wish I knew what to say to make her feel better, but the truth is, I’m not even sure what to say to myself. I haven’t felt so out of control since the divorce, like I have no idea what to do as a husband, as a father.
Oh, god. And I’m not even Kim’s husband. I’m not, and I have to figure out how to stop thinking like I am, because, as she insisted, we’re justdating. After what I did to her, I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to trust me like that again.
She probably shouldn’t, and—
The waiting room door opens, and the officer who took our report stands there, a radio in his hand. “Two officers found your daughter at an ice cream place a few blocks away,” he tells us. “They’re bringing her back now.”
My heart just about falls out of my chest. Kim sinks onto the couch next to me, hugging her arms around herself, and I reach up to rub her shoulders.
“Thank you,” I say to him.
The officer nods. “Wait here. It’ll only be a few minutes.”
He closes the door again, and I wrap my arms around Kim from behind. “She’s okay.”
“She is, right? If she was having ice cream, then nothing terrible happened to her.”
“Sound logic,” I say. “But it means we have to figure out how we’re going to handle this.”
I’m hoping Kim is going to have some lengthy and well thought-out Kim-plan about exactly what we should do to turn Ivy back into our daughter who cares what we think and respects rules.
But instead we just stare at each other in silence.
“We have to punish her,” Kim says finally. “Because this behavior has to stop.”
