Chapter 20

20

Tripp

We're on day five of the cold that will not end, and I'm fucking exhausted.

Mom's been over every day to force me to take a nap so I don't get sick from wearing myself down too. Beck and Sarah drop by with enough food to feed an army.

Or Beck for two meals.

I don't make them bathe in hand sanitizer or wear face masks, even though I want to, and they probably know it, because they drop the food and run after assuring me they've washed their hands and walk in using the hand sanitizer without being asked.

James and Emma are both sniffling, coughing, and hacking, but their fevers have both subsided, and they're each eating more, bickering more, and clearly on their way back to full health.

Whereas I'm going to need a few more weeks to recover from the emotional toll of my kids being sick.

And the other emotions that got caught in my throat when Lila had fresh chicken noodle soup from a local sandwich shop delivered yesterday.

I never expected her to think of sending us soup, but not only did the delivery guy tell me Lila placed the order herself, but I still can't get over that she didn't just order a case of cans online.

Is it wrong to miss my boss? Because I think I miss my boss, and not at all in a way I should ever miss my boss.

"This is supposed to get easier," I say to Levi when he calls to check in on all of us Tuesday night. I'm sick and tired of chicken noodle soup—Lila's soup excepted. And I'm tired of saying the words drink your water . And of the accidents that come with over-hydrating my kids.

I'd been thinking Emma might be ready for potty training.

Maybe we'll wait a few years.

Actually, I think I'm still wearing an accident. From yesterday. Have I showered this week? I've scrubbed down with hand sanitizer and washed my hands so much they're almost raw, but have I showered?

"Nine days out of ten, it's better," he replies. "Isn't it?"

I grumble an answer and squat to pick up more stuffed animals that need to go through the wash. Again.

Emma's a freaking snot factory, and she's spread it all over everything. We're going to have to move into Mom's house while this entire place is sanitized once she quits producing green goo out her nose, which thankfully is just yellow today.

"Lila giving you any shit about not being at work?" he asks.

My mom brought by my work laptop, and I've kept up with the most important emails, but not much else. "She's tied up with some shit with Wellington's estate and her publishing thing. Which means I'm now a week behind on finding new coaches, but Herrera took the VP job. Starts Monday. Should help me pick up the slack."

And that's all I've done.

When my kids have been sleeping and I haven't, I haven't done much work at all.

Nope.

I've either been emailing Lila, thinking about Lila, or doing research on Lila. It's a remarkably good distraction from worrying that my kids are going to regress any minute and require hospitalization and IVs for fluids and antibiotics and having their lungs pumped.

Yeah.

Distractions are good. At this point, distractions are healthy . I can't live in fear forever.

I could call Davis and ask for tips from the internet master who knows things that I don't want to know, but I don't want him to know I'm trying to learn more about her.

He'll think I'm asking for reasons I don't want them to think I'm asking for.

Which means I probably shouldn't be googling her either, but here we are.

And I have more questions than answers, plus some guilt for looking into the ulterior motives of a woman who sent me and my kids fresh soup.

She's not on social media. There's nothing about her on the Wellington website. And the only thing I can find about her by doing a reverse image search of the one picture I have of her lists her as a top graduate of a private college not far from where my in-laws live.

It's bland and it doesn't fit the woman I know at all.

Googling her name gives me hundreds of results for a suffragette from the early twentieth century, but very little about the Lila Valentine who works for Dalton Wellington and inherited a baseball team.

Beversdorf's obituary references that he became her guardian when her parents disappeared on their way to a vacation and were never found.

And that's it.

There has to be more though.

Doesn't there?

"Earth to Tripp. Dude. Sleep is your friend."

I shake my head to clear it and realize I've finished picking up all the stuffed animals and am now just standing in the middle of my living room, staring at the empty fireplace between my couches while my brother waits on the other end of the phone. "Sorry. Distracted."

"You need help, man."

"They're only young once."

"I meant with your whole life."

"Thanks. Appreciate the vote of confidence."

Levi's sigh is so heavy I feel briefly like he's sitting on my head and pushing me into the ground. "You're human, idiot. Quit acting like what you'd want in a president of operations and start acting like an owner. Hire people to do the shit like we planned. If Lila doesn't like it, fuck her. Wait. Don't actually fuck her. But tell her to get over it. If she wants the team to succeed, you need more than the two of you fighting over the best way to do it. And if she doesn't like what it costs, then maybe she'll see the light and sell. Preferably before that mascot poll of hers goes live."

That plan to meet Wellington?

Not going so well.

Davis tells me it's like trying to spot an alien on Mars while looking through backwards binoculars pointed at the sun.

"Daddy! Daddy, Emma said my cow is ugwy!" James wails.

"Put that little guy on," my brother orders. "Let Uncle Levi handle this one."

I don't have it in me to argue, and I wouldn't even if I did. "James, come talk to Uncle Levi."

My four-year-old thunders down the stairs like an elephant carrying seventeen tons of toys on its back. "Unka Wevi!"

I scrub my phone with an antibacterial wipe before handing it to James. "I'm going to start the laundry. Do not put my phone down. Bring it back to me when you're done, okay?"

"Hold on, switch us to video," Levi says.

I get them set up, start a load of laundry, and head to the toy room to check on Emma. One day, the room will swallow her whole, but today, she's burrowing under a pile of dress-up dresses and baby dolls and stuffed unicorns and singing a song about James's cow being ugly.

In two-year-old speak, but I get the gist of it.

"Emma. Not nice."

She bursts into tears.

"Cows are our friends," I remind her. "They're pretty in their own way."

Swear to god, I even saw some new neighbors walking a cow earlier today, along with a pack of dogs.

Life's weird sometimes, but at least I know why my kid is singing about cows.

Two hours later, they're both in bed, humidifiers running, windows locked, white noise makers on, and I'm crossing my fingers that tonight will be the night they both sleep through the night.

I can't find my phone, which wouldn't be a problem if I could find my car keys. After losing one set permanently earlier this year, I put an app-controlled tracker on my key ring that works in reverse when I lose my phone, so losing both is a nightmare of new proportions.

It's probably a sign I'm not supposed to drive or call anyone the rest of the night, so I sneak down to the kitchen for a half glass of wine and that steak Beck and Sarah left yesterday.

I step out onto the deck to fire up the grill and come face to face with a balding guy in his late fifties or early sixties. He's stretched out on my Adirondack chair, hands casually tucked over his gut, one loafer dangling from the foot crossed over his knee, looking for all the world like this is where he's always lived.

"Mr. Wilson. We need to talk."

I have no phone.

No keys.

Nearest alarm emergency button at least twenty feet away.

If not for the ambient light from the kitchen spilling through the deck door, I wouldn't be able to see him at all. Chills race from my neck to my tailbone, and my grip tightens on the raw steak plate.

"Not going to hurt you," he says, icy blue eyes boring into mine. "Or your children. Yet. But we need to discuss your little habit of trying to dig up dirt on my favorite niece."

I could throw the steak at him, but I don't know what he's packing, and I'm pissed that he got past the cameras without me getting a phone call.

Except my phone's fucking missing.

I probably got the phone call and didn't know it.

"Who are you?" If I don't answer the phone, the security company will send someone out.

Is my front door locked?

Is he alone?

Fuck .

He spreads his hands like he's harmless. "I'm a friend."

"You're a bad liar."

"I didn't say I was your friend. I said I was a friend. I have friends. You don't want to meet them, but I have them."

He'd look like an out-of-shape grandpa if he were anywhere other than unexpected and unwelcome on my back porch.

"What do you want?"

"I told you. Quit digging up dirt on my favorite niece."

This fucker's related to Lila?

No wonder she doesn't share much. I wouldn't talk about him either. Except Beversdorf was supposedly her only living relative, so who is this? "Think you've got the wrong house." And I think the cops can get here anytime now.

"Don't worry. I bypassed your security system. They don't know I'm here."

Fucking damn it.

My blood pressure doesn't need this.

"Leave," I growl.

I don't know who he is, but he's too close to my kids. He might only be on the deck, but he's in my sanctuary. He's crossed a line. He needs to go. Now .

"Temper, temper, Mr. Wilson." He clucks his tongue.

I go up on the balls of my feet, ready to toss him over the balcony. I'm riding the high of living on vitamin C, zinc, and elderberry since Emma's first sneeze, along with all of the heightened awareness that comes from paranoia, and I don't think anyone would blink at finding an intruder's body in my backyard.

He studies me, and his face breaks out in a grin. "Son, you missed your calling. The Company could've used that spark."

He's probably armed, but I still stalk toward him. Don't usually lift as much as he looks like he weighs, but I'm not too worried about handling him tonight.

" Stop ," a familiar, yet out-of-place, voice yells.

His nose twitches and his gaze slides to the stairs down to the yard. Someone's pounding up them.

If I'm going to toss him, I have to do it fast and clean.

"Uncle Guido, I'm going to freaking kill you," Lila pants, and suddenly she's flinging herself between me and him, grabbing him by the collar, and pulling him out of the chair. "Out. Out . Do you want dead fish in your Christmas stocking? Or maybe arsenic in your Thanksgiving stuffing? What the hell is wrong with you? Get. Go . And do not call me again ."

"Lila," he says, and that calm down, honey, there there tone makes my jaw clench so tight and my fist go back before I can stop it.

But I can't swing, because Lila's between us, jerking the old man around like he's light as a feather. " I told you to go back to New York . That's it. I'm done. I'm calling your ex-wife."

"Whoa—"

"You crossed the line. And now you have to pay the consequences."

"Lila, baby girl, you don't?—"

"We're done, Uncle Guido. Done ."

"And who's going to help you with you know what ?" he growls.

The two of them stop at the edge of my deck, stare-down going to a level eleven. Levi and Davis had a level eleven stare-down on the bus once, back in the day, and Davis ended up with an eye infection over not blinking for so long. Wore an eye patch to a concert. Fans went nuts, and he used it the rest of that tour.

That's how I know about eye infections.

From my boy band days, which never involved a guy who looks like he belongs in the mob showing up on my doorstep.

I shake my head. What the fuck am I doing?

Because it's not calling the damn cops .

"Don't, Tripp," Lila says.

I haven't even moved, and I have to pause to make sure she's talking to me and not threatening Uncle Guido with the subtle hint that he shouldn't trip and fall down the stairs.

Uncle Guido.

Who the fuck has an actual Uncle Guido?

She murmurs something too softly for me to hear, but whatever it is, it sends the old man clattering down the steps with a string of curse words that I better not hear my kids repeating.

"Gimme your phone," I order.

Naturally, she plants herself at the top stair, blocking me from following the fucker, and also refusing to hand over her phone at the same time. "He's harmless."

"He bypassed my security and came here to tell me to leave you alone. You wanna explain that?" My heart is going to pound out of my chest.

And my kids.

My kids.

Jesus.

I spin on my heel and race through the house, up the stairs, and burst into Emma's room.

She's snoring softly in her crib, unaware of anything in the world beyond whatever's making her eyelashes flutter like that. I triple-check that her window is locked, then dash into James's room.

He, too, is snoring softly in his toddler bed—a firetruck bed—and he's clutching a truck in one hand. His window's locked too.

And I'm not sleeping a wink tonight.

Or possibly for the rest of my life.

I check the playroom. My bedroom. All the windows. The door to the third floor. The attic access. And then I plant myself at the top of the stairs.

I should hit that emergency panic button on the alarm panel in my bedroom.

The fact that I don't suggests there's something wrong with me.

Lila peeks up at me from around the banister at the bottom. "He's gone."

"He needs to be behind fuc—behind bars. What the he—heck are you doing here?"

"Interviewing team manager candidates. I flew in this morning after Denise emailed to tell me you'd called in sick again."

And I thought my blood pressure couldn't go any higher.

"Who. The fuck —" I whisper it as softly as I can, because god knows what my kids absorb in their sleep, even if they've already heard that word a hundred times courtesy of their uncles "—was that?"

She opens her mouth.

Goes red as a pickled beet.

And closes it again.

My phone buzzes two inches to my right, and I realize James propped it between the railings in the banister.

Awesome.

And I've missed seventy-three texts from the guys, all about the news covering three different manager prospects seen going into Fireballs headquarters this afternoon and the Fireballs mascot poll finalists leaking to the press before official nominations are closed.

"Never mind," I tell Lila. "I'm calling Pakorski. You're done . You're just fucking done."

"My mom was a CIA agent," she whispers.

I stop with my thumb hovering over Pakorski's number, and it randomly occurs to me that I don't know what I did with the steak I took out onto the back deck.

Why the hell am I thinking about steak when Lila's talking about her mom being in the CIA?

"Talk. More."

"I was born in Prague and grew up mostly in Germany. We came back to the States every other year or so, and when I was twelve, they brought me for an extended stay. We went to a ball game, and then she and my dad left for a vacation. And never came back. The CIA thinks someone blew her cover. Uncle Guido—he's the only family friend I have left. He gets…overprotective. And he…knows people. And things. But he's harmless. At least when it comes to actually hurting people. I think. He's just…bored and feels responsible for me."

If I thought I was in panic mode, I've got nothing on Lila.

Her voice is getting high, her face has gone from red to pale as death, her eyes are so wide she might've seen a ghost, and her chest is rising and falling like she's on the train to Hyperventilation Town.

She sinks to the bottom stair and sticks her head between her knees. "I've never told anyone that. Uncle Guido says—he says it's not safe for people to know when you're related to spies, and paranoia dies hard."

Forget the steak and wine.

I need vodka.

Straight vodka.

And I don't even like vodka.

"He won't hurt your kids." Her voice is so small, it's like she's someone else. And as her words permeate the lingering panic racking my body, I realize something I never thought I'd acknowledge.

I'm a fucking mess.

But I'm not the only one.

My phone buzzes again.

It's Levi's former bodyguard. The one I hired to watch Lila.

Everything okay in there, boss?

I shove up from the top of the stairs and step into my bedroom to make a couple phone calls. Lila's security detail didn't see Uncle Guido , but they'll search the grounds and keep an eye on things. And my remote security company does a full reset of the system for me. That's weird. Looks like there was a glitch , they tell me.

And now I need to look at getting an in-person security team for myself and my kids when I can't even find a fucking nanny.

All while I process Lila's story.

Google won't tell me anything new.

But it does explain how little I can find on her.

When my knees finally feel more like chunky peanut butter than runny jelly, I leave my room again. The door was cracked so I could see my kids' doors.

Lila's still at the bottom of the stairs, head down on her knees while she hugs them.

Her curly red hair's tumbling like a curtain, shielding her face.

No doubt, she heard every word of every conversation I had while I was in my bedroom.

I stop at the bottom stair and sit down next to her. Never gave much thought to how narrow the stairs are until now, with my thigh touching her elbow.

"Talk. More."

I wait for the don't forget who's the boss here, Mr. Wilson , but instead, I get the small voice again.

"I thought Mom worked at a bank. Dad was an artist. His head was always off in the clouds, which probably made it easier for Mom to keep her cover. But Mom—she was constantly telling me things about blending in and not standing out and how to listen to people and really judge what they were saying. I remember her tucking me into bed one night, and she said, people lie sometimes, Lila. Trust your gut, and don't ever apologize for not wanting to let someone close enough to know you. That's how you stay safe . And Uncle Guido repeated it all the time through my teenage years. And…longer."

My pulse is racing again, and there's a tinny taste in my mouth, but it's not adrenaline this time.

Not fear adrenaline.

It's heartbreak adrenaline.

She said it herself.

Trust your gut.

My gut doesn't know what to believe, but that voice—her voice is breaking me.

And the very first thing I did when I met her was to lie about who I was.

No wonder she's high-strung.

"When they were formally declared missing a few days after they left, the courts appointed Uncle Al as my guardian. But he didn't know anything about taking care of a pre-teen girl, so he shipped me off to boarding school."

I know about boarding school, but knowing why has me unable to do much more than stare at her.

The smiling, confident woman who wasn't fazed at all by having a drink thrown on her the night we met looks like a lost little girl.

She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I know. Why would you believe me? The CIA can falsify anything."

"Why were you in the ceiling?"

"Uncle Al left me a letter." She shifts, leaning into me, and I want to wrap my arms around her, but I also don't know if she has any germs on her—yes, I need help—and I'm still struggling to catch up with everything.

But a moment later, she's pulling up a picture on her phone.

Sure enough, it's a letter.

I scan it quickly, realizing that if this is the legacy her family would leave her, this insane letter written by a guy who didn't know the first thing about taking care of a teenage girl, then it's a wonder she's made it this far in life, much less succeeded so much.

"I don't have much of my parents." She takes her phone back and tucks it into her pocket. "The CIA cleaned out our house in Germany, looking for clues. Uncle Guido snuck me a few things at boarding school, but even most of our candid family photos were confiscated in case they had clues in the backgrounds about if Mom was a double agent or if there were known spies from other countries that might've been spying on them. So when Uncle Al's letter said that he used to climb around in the ceiling with her, burying their treasures up there…I just wanted to find something ."

My tongue is thick, and my emotions are a train wreck. "Do your friends know?"

She blinks quickly and shakes her head. "Not about the CIA. You know what it's like to be betrayed?"

"Ironic question, don't you think?"

This time, her glance at me is full of spice. "Me not telling you my life history when we met isn't betrayal . You hadn't earned it. You still haven't. I'm not telling you for you . I'm telling you for Uncle Guido."

"How do you know he's who he says he is?"

"Because I trust my gut. And because he's done more for me than any other person in this world."

"All selflessly, I'm sure."

"No one's perfect. Your friends have never done things that make you irrationally angry and disappointed in them?"

"My friends aren't spies."

"You can look me straight in the eye and tell me you don't believe Davis Remington is capable of being a spy?"

My turn to do that open-jaw, close-jaw, contemplate things I don't want to contemplate thing. And it ends the only way it can, with me looking away in complete silence, because all of us from the neighborhood sometimes ask the same thing.

"I know he's been trying to hack his way into learning all of my secrets."

I glower at her, because I don't want to think about the fact that she's probably right. At least about the extracurricular hacking. "Leave my friends out of this."

Her eyes pinch shut. "You have normal friends, Tripp. I have Uncle Guido."

"And Parker and Knox."

"Whom I've known for less than two years, because I never keep friends long enough for them to really dig into who my parents were, and everyone always wants to know, especially this time of the year with the holidays coming when everything's all about family , and it's not freaking safe to say that your mom was a spy who disappeared." She looks down again, but I don't know if she's looking at the toys that have magically re-appeared all over the room, or if she's disappearing into her own head. "I know, okay? I know I shouldn't have been such a pain in the ass about you telling me you were Levi when my own friends don't even know all of the truth. I'll be the pot and the kettle, okay? You can be the plate. Nobody ever hates the plate."

She climbs to her feet like she's discovering them for the first time.

I know that feeling.

When your entire world has shifted and you know that you've had this body for years, but you suddenly can't remember how to use it.

When you're totally alone, because no one else can possibly understand this empty void that's lurking in your chest, and you don't want to be the burden on them, but you don't know how you can put one foot in front of the other to do what needs to be done either, because moving boulders requires help, except no one else understands how big that boulder is.

"Did you ever find out what happened to them?"

She shakes her head. "Every once in a while I hear through unofficial channels that there might be a lead, but it never pans out. I'll probably never know."

I'm standing in the middle of a bridge.

I can go to my right, the safe route, and ask her to leave my house. Call Pakorski. Get her completely out of my life for good, and secure the Fireballs, which is all I really wanted in the first place. The only future I've been able to see since Jessie died.

Or I can veer left, where there are potholes and danger signs, and trust that if I leap over that gaping hole between the bridge and the land on the other side, that she'll toss me a rope, and we can work together to climb the mountains and put out the fires and ford the raging rivers together.

I rise too, and she turns to lift her face to me. "I'm sorry for?—"

"Your loss," I finish for her.

I wrap one arm around her waist, stroke her hair with my other hand, and pull her into my body.

If nothing else, this woman knows loss.

She knows heartbreak.

And she knows coming out on the other side.

There aren't a lot of people in my life who understand that.

Her breath shudders out of her, and all the stiffness in her seeps away as she slips her arms around my back and squeezes.

Hard.

While her head settles against my chest, right over my pounding heart.

I don't know where we go from here.

But I know my entire view of Lila Valentine has just shifted, and my world will never be the same.