Page 32 of Spoil
“Mhm.”
“Well, one afternoon I realized I’d left my phone there, so I knocked on the door and guess who answered. Daniel. Apparently, he owns the club and was there for some sort of celebration with just a few people?”
“And?”
My smile widens. “And he wants a second chance at a relationship. He wants to get to know Danny...” I hesitate to tell her this next part, but I need a friend to tell me if I’m being ridiculous about the money or not. Cara’s made millions with her software, but she’s also completely neutral about money. It doesn’t mean anything to her. One dollar or a million, it's the same to her. So she’s the perfect person to tell me if I’m uncomfortable because of my upbringing - and, honestly, our current financial predicament.
“He gave me a check for half a million dollars, Cara,” I whisper into the phone, as if the universe is going to hear it and snatch the check away from someone who clearly doesn’t deserve it.
She’s silent, but I can hear her keyboard clacking.
“That makes sense,” she says finally.
“What do you mean!?” I whisper-shout, turning so my back is towards the front of the house.
“Daniel King. Net worth...”
“Stop! I don’t want to know what his net worth is!”
“... are you being weird about money again, Nell?”
I groan. Because am I?
“I don’t know, Cara! I’ve never seen that many zeros on a check in my life. It’s more than I ever thought I’d see in my entire lifetime, and he just handed it to me like it was a newspaper! It feels icky. Why is he giving it to me? Because I birthed his offspring? Am I a Clydesdale now? A surrogate?” And then a worse thought occurs to me. “... a charity case?”
Cara’s quiet for a long, uncomfortable time as I know she’s working through her thoughts.
“What would have happened if you had found him when you went back to the ski school?”
“What?”
“If he had been there,” she says, like she’s struggling to have patience with me. I probably would be too if I were in her shoes. “Alright. I’ll tell you what would have happened. You would have told him you were pregnant. He would have married you. Or at least dated you and been there to help raise Danny. He at least would have paid child support, but I think it would have been more than that. This article says he looked for you for years. The email address for this article is still active.”
I nod. He’d told me that, but I hadn’t had time to wrap my head around what that meant.
I hear the keyboard typing more before heavy silence. Knowing my best friend, there’s something uncomfortable she wants to tell me, but is hesitating because she knows she can be blunt.
“Tell me.”
“Have you been to his house yet?”
“No.”
More silence.
“Take the money, girl. You deserve it. Take the man too. Life is too short. What would your dad have wanted you to do?”
It feels like an ice-cold hand plunges through my gut to grip my stomach tightly.
Because, I don’t know what he would have wanted. His dying wish was for me to keep the family together. But he would have wanted me to be happy, too, right? If he knew about Daniel? Wouldn’t he want his granddaughter to be with her father?
I think about my dad and my relationship as being so special, because we were each other’s only family for most of my life. Would he want Danny to miss out on that? Where does that leave me? I can’t leave Gen and my sisters. They can’t take care of all the cooking and cleaning.
They’re adults,a small voice in the back of my head reminds me. Yeah, but they have other priorities.Priorities that are not this family.
Great. Now I’m talking to myself.
I remember I’m still on the phone with Cara.
