Chapter 4

BRAD

No, I didn’t expect it. Certainly not that quickly. I absolutely expected her to keep Leah away from me, at least for now. And I thought I could live with that. My reaction when Ingrid told me Leah was mine belied that, for sure. I wouldn’t have been able to live with it. It would have been just one more thing I was faking.

After I stopped crying, I asked her, “Why?”

She smiled and told me, “Because your love for her is so strong I can almost see it. And also—look. That girl is three years old. Her actual father ran off before he even met her. The closest thing she’s had to a father figure in her life, her grandfather, considers her a burden. And, here you are, forced into this marriage, and already acting like an actual father. I’m going to deny her that? No. Understand something—you earned this.”

“Thanks again,” I said.

Look, that was part of it. But, also, her disdain for me—well, the reason for it—had just taken some serious hits. That played a part, I could tell.

We got home, and she went to put Leah to bed, and change out of the wedding dress. I went to change out of my tux. I went down to the living room, poured myself a glass of Jameson, and turned on the TV. She unexpectedly came down in a few minutes.

“Hi. You’re not going to bed?” she asked.

“In a bit,” I grinned. “Now, you get to see one of my little quirks. I can’t go to bed right after coming home. I won’t sleep. I need some wind-down time.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Mind if I join you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why aren’t you going to bed?”

“Same reason,” she smiled, “though it’s fairly unusual for me.” She looked at the TV. “Is that the Cubs? This late?”

“They’re on the West Coast, playing the Dodgers.”

“Ah.” She sat for a minute. “Can I ask you something?” she finally said.

“Sure.”

“Well, I was wondering...” she took a breath. “It almost seemed, during part of the day, that you weren’t, well, faking it.”

“Well, any part of the day that Leah was involved in, I absolutely wasn’t faking it.”

“That I knew,” she laughed. “I meant ... parts that were just us.”

I took a long breath. How much did I want to say? This was a very tenuous thing we had here; I certainly didn’t want to push anything. “It was fun,” I started. “I enjoyed it. I very much enjoyed your company. You’re a good person and fun to be with. This marriage might be fake, but I enjoyed myself today.”

She sat for a minute. Then, she said, very softly, “I enjoyed myself too.” It was shortly after that that she said good night and went up to her room.

Then—the pullback.

It was predictable, honestly. And it wasn’t even as bad as I thought it would be.

Firstly, she didn’t pull back when it came to Leah at all. Not one iota. I basically had complete co-parenting rights to that kid; rights I exercised every time I could.

And she didn’t completely pull herself back from me, either. She definitely pulled back, but not completely. She came to eat with me a few times. A couple of nights she found me in front of the TV and joined me for a bit. She wasn’t hiding.

What she was doing, I think, was regrouping. That wedding day was emotional as hell, even for me, and I didn’t get hit right between the eyes nearly as much as Ingrid did. I completely understood regrouping. I did some of it myself.

Things started to change that weekend. On the Friday of that first week, I got notified by Dad that I needed a working beta build of the new version by a week from the following Monday, so they could bring in 5 of our most important accounts, to show them we were making progress. In other words, I had 9 days to save 5 big accounts. That night, Ingrid came in to eat with me, along with Leah. I told her about this new deadline.

“I just wanted to let you know this,” I said, “because you might not see much of me the next 9 days. I’m going to be in either my home office or my office office late into the night. I will try to emerge for a few minutes every so often for Leah, but I’m going to be stuck otherwise.’