“I’d say we leave her at the ranch with a full-time nanny when we go back to film, but that’s closer to this boy and therefore more dangerous.”
“Plus,” Kim adds, “I’m never letting her out of my sight again.”
I nod. “She’s going to need to be supervised. And not allowed to leave the hotel.That means we’ll need someone else with her, because it’s not fair to punish Luke, too.”
“Maybe we could have somebody watch her on set. It would feel less like a punishment, and I’d be able to know where she is all the time.”
I’m quiet for a long moment. If Kim’s OCD fills her with fear of what could happen to the kids when she isn’t watching, is it better for her to let them go and see that it doesn’t happen, or better to keep them near, so she doesn’t have to worry?
“Do you think that’s what you need?” I ask.
Kim throws up her hands. “I need our lives to not be falling apart around us, but that’s not happening, is it?”
I’m quiet for a moment, and Kim squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” she says. “God, I’m sorry. I suck at this.”
Shesucks at this? “I think we established that we both suck at this. And we’re working on it.”
“We are, right?” She keeps asking that question, needing me to confirm to her over and over that things will be okay. And that’s where I went wrong before. I didn’t step up. I didn’t fight for us. I let the building burn down around us.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, we’re working on it, and we’re going to be okay and so is Ivy.”
Kim looks at once like she doubts this and like it’s the thing she needed to hear most in the world.
So at least I’m doing half of this right.
The door opens again, and Ivy is standing there with an officer behind her. “We’ll give you a few minutes,” the officer says. “Take your time.”
Ivy stares right at Kim and me with a scowl on her face, I presume because her ice cream date got interrupted by the police. If she thinks we’re going to apologize for that, she’s wrong.
“Oh, my god, Ivy,” Kim says, standing up and grabbing Ivy by the shoulders.This serves both as a hug and to pull her into the room so that the officer can close the door behind her. Kim finishes hugging Ivy—who isn’t hugging her back—and then grabs Ivy by both her shoulders and looks her in the eye. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Ivy says. “I was just getting ice cream. I left the text messages on Marguerite’s phone so you’d know I didn’t get, like, kidnapped or anything. You didn’t have to call the police.”
Kim’s face hardens. “We absolutely did have to call the police when you ran off in a big city filled with people you don’t know. How were we supposed to know you were okay?”
Ivy shrugs and shoulders Kim off. Kim retreats to the couch beside me, while Ivy sinks into a swiveling office chair. “You don’t even think I can be gone for an hour. Other kids my age get to babysit, and I’m not even allowed to go down the block with someone my age.”
My throat tightens. “Ivy,” I say in a warning tone, “this isn’t about you not getting the freedom you want. It’s about you running off at a crowded event to see someone we’ve specifically told you not to see. We were worried sick about you.” I don’t mention the interrupted panel. I’m afraid that, like Luke, Ivy will feel more guilty about that than she does about worrying us, and I hate that my kids don’t think they can reach their parents when they need them.
“Besides,” Kim says, “you do get to babysit Luke.”
Ivy rolls her eyes. “Yeah. At theranch. It’s not even that what I did was so dangerous. It’s just because I’mIvy Pless.”
She says her name with disdain, and I once again want to shake her. “No. It’s because you’re a twelve-year-old who ran away from her parents. It might be more dangerous because of who you are, but in this case, the consequences could have been the same either way.”
Ivy looks down at her shoes, and I realize she’s no longer wearing her Violet costume. She must have changed before meeting Christopher, and is now in shorts and a plain lavender t-shirt.
I can’t exactly blame her for that, but it also means she wasn’t wearing her mask.
“Whatever,” she says. “I’m not going to see him anymore, okay? Doesn’t that make you happy?”
Nothing about this situation makes me happy, but I’m also suspicious that she’s willing to give up now. “Why is that?” I ask.
Ivy stares at me, clearly startled. “Why is what?”
“Why aren’t you going to see him again?”
“Because you won’t let me. Duh.”
