Page 47 of Chasing the Horizon

“I just want to go to bed,” Victor said. “My head is killing me.”

“Dad, please. Tell me what’s going on?” Valerie rasped as they walked outside, looking for a car. She wanted to give him the chance to explain himself. Alex was hovering behind them, doing his best to pretend not to listen. “Dad, please, don’t do this to us. Don’t do this to me. We’re supposed to be partners.”

At this, Victor turned on his heel and glared at her. It was a look far darker than any he’d ever lent her and one that completely stopped her in her tracks.

“Don’t you understand? I can’t talk to you about any of that. I can’t do it, Valerie, okay? You wouldn’t understand. None of you would understand. So please. Drop it. Immediately.”

He spoke to her like she was a little girl.

Victor waved his arm almost violently, and finally, a cab yanked to the corner.

Valerie felt as though she’d been slapped. She watched as her father slid into the back seat of the cab, telling the driver where he was headed. When he looked over at Valerie, Valerie’s head swam with fear and resentment and anger.What makes him think he can talk to me like that? What makes him think that I’ll just forgive him over and over again? He can’t walk out on us and not explain himself. I’m not a child. I’m supposed to be welcoming a baby into a brand-new world, a world without this kind of behavior, a world of more love and compassion and understanding.

What was wrong with him?

Valerie closed the door behind her father, telling him, “We’ll get our own car.”

Once inside another cab by themselves, Valerie burst into tears. Alex did his best to calm her down, but all she couldsay, over and over, was that she didn’t know why she’d allowed herself to trust her father again. “I should have known,” she said. “He’s Victor Sutton forever. Victor Sutton always comes first.”

When they reached the hotel, they paid the driver and went to the elevator, grateful not to run into any Suttons on their way. Maybe they hadn’t listened to the interview on the radio after all. Maybe Esme, Bethany, Rebecca, and the rest of them had gone out shopping and left the literary mumbo-jumbo to the rest of them. Maybe that meant they could leave this in the past. But Valerie wouldn’t be able to.

Valerie half believed she would never see her father again. She half believed they’d go their separate ways after this.

Maybe we could stop the book in its tracks. Maybe we could take that horrible interview as a sign that we couldn’t recover from the past.

She needed to protect her baby. She needed to protect herself.

Valerie and Alex returned to their hotel room and got in their pajamas and lay in bed. Valerie’s heart was pounding really hard, so much so that she tried to focus on her breathing and still her mind. Nothing was working. Alex eventually turned on the television, and they watched a few reruns ofFriendsand tried to calm down a little bit.

Valerie thought,What a disastrous weekend.

Alex fell in and out of sleep and eventually convinced her to order room service, which they ate sitting against pillows in bed: a grilled cheese and a club sandwich and potato chips.

It was immediately after Valerie took a big, cheesy bite that she received a phone call from Julia Copperfield, the publisher.

“Hey!” Julia’s voice was brighter than Valerie had imagined. “I don’t know if you’re aware of what’s going on online?”

Valerie slid her hand over her baby bump. “What? What’s happening?”

Was everyone making fun of her father? Was everyone making fun of her?

“Well, obviously a lot of people heard Victor’s little speech,” Julia said, “and the thing is, it’s really resonating with people. Someone uploaded it to TikTok and then Instagram and other social media sites, and it’s going viral like crazy. We had thousands of pre-orders for the book in just the past hour. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before, not with one of my books, anyway.”

Valerie was out of bed and staring through space with surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah. They’re so impressed with how candid he was and how open he was to admit his faults,” Julia continued. “They’re grateful that he can grow and change, or admit that he hasn’t been able to grow and change as much as his books suggest he could have. Anyway, it’s all really good news.” Julia paused. “I hope you’re doing okay. That sounded really intense.”

Valerie walked to the window and looked out at a Manhattan blanketed with snow with a stone-gray clouded sky above it. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. My dad disappeared last night and showed up to give that speech.”

She was surprised that she was so forthcoming with Julia, but she didn’t know what else to say.

She didn’t add,And he pushed me away. He’s always pushing everyone away. He hasn’t learned anything, and he maybe never will.

Julia was quiet for a moment. “Did anything happen yesterday? Anything that might have triggered something?”

Immediately, Valerie thought of the baby shower, of Catherine and Max and her father and mother saving the day. Although it didn’t make full sense, she felt a piece of the puzzle click.

But to Julia, she said no, nothing, and tried to get off the phone as quickly as she could. Julia begged for new pages. She wanted to get the book out to the public as soon as possible. She even wanted the Valerie and Victor team to write a second one, maybe one more geared toward parent-children relationships rather than their family's history. Valerie said they’d think about it and hung up.

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