Page 36 of Chasing the Horizon

“Totally. Me too,” he lied.

Esme couldn’t tell he was lying. She moved on to the next painting, leaving Victor feeling bereft. Whose idea had it beento come to the art museum in the first place? Had it really been his? The girls were off shopping, and the older kids were hanging with the younger kids at an arcade with a bowling alley and skating rink. Everyone was accounted for and presumably happy. But Victor? Did Victor even know how to be happy?

His phone rang, and everyone yanked around to glare at him. What kind of person didn’t turn off their phone? What kind of person entered an art gallery only to interrupt everyone’s intense introspection?

It was Valerie calling. Victor answered it without thinking and hurried out of the gallery and down the hall. He felt Esme hot on his heels. He felt her worry.

“Val, hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

Valerie sounded tentative and very quiet. “Dad, I know this is crazy. But I was wondering if you could come to Greenwich Village?”

Victor’s ears rang.

Valerie said, “I need you.”

Victor said he’d be there right away.

Victor waited to explain to Esme what he knew during the cab ride over. Esme looked breathless and beautiful, her cheeks red from the bright cold outside.

“She said something is going on with the pregnant mother,” Victor said. “She didn’t explain anything else.”

“Wow.” Esme furrowed her brow. “She called you.”

Victor’s heart hammered with the realization that his daughter trusted him.

It felt like the sun coming up and warming his shoulders.

The stop-and-start traffic of a Saturday in Manhattan made both Esme and Victor wish they’d taken the subway. They were nervous and agitated when they pulled up to the Greenwich Village brownstone. Victor took a deep breath at the door, and Esme followed his lead.

He thought,Right now, Esme and I are a team.

It was a beautiful realization.

It took three seconds for someone to open the door after he knocked. Standing before him was a woman he’d never seen before, a woman in her sixties or seventies, maybe, with very good skin and hair to her shoulders. Her eyes were rimmed red with tears. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“We’re Valerie’s parents,” Victor said.

“Who?”

Victor and Esme glanced at one another nervously.

“She’s the event planner for the baby shower,” Esme explained.

“Oh.” The woman took a step back, her face still marred with confusion.

Victor realized Esme’s instincts had been correct. The people at the party didn’t know the event planner’s name. She was hired help. She was supposed to blend into her surroundings.

Victor and Esme entered a baby shower unlike any they’d ever seen. In the living room were fifteen women between the ages of thirty and seventy, arguing about something they couldn’t understand. From upstairs came the sounds of a woman saying, “Honey, you need to come out of there! You’re making a fool of yourself!”

Victor’s senses spiked. If he had to guess, he’d say the woman upstairs was the pregnant woman’s mother. She was trying to reason with her daughter—but she was doing it in the cruelest way possible. She did it in a way that suggested her daughter was only worth something if she behaved correctly.

Victor and Esme exchanged another glance that seemed to translate a million paragraphs to one another in a language uniquely their own.

“I’m going upstairs,” Victor said.

“I’m staying down here,” Esme muttered. “I’m going to kick these women into shape.”

Privately, they low-fived and separated.

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