Page 77 of The Layover

Raul checked his phone, and frowned.

“What’s wrong?” I couldn’t handle anything else going off. Seriously.

“Email from Carly,” Raul said. “She’s gone.”

I laughed. It wasn’t a funny joke, but as a joke, it was better than focusing on the terror of losing our daughter, even for just a few hours.

“Where did she go?” Eloise asked.

Raul scrubbed his face. “Home.”

Fuck me. He was serious.

“No.” Eloise’s wail was heart-rending.

Raul crouched in front of her. “Carly didn’t live here. You knew that.” His voice was kind, but that didn’t stop me from hating that he had to say it.

“She didn’t even say goodbye.” Eloise pouted.

I ruffled her hair. “I know. Sometimes that happens. I’m sorry.”

Raul shot me a look that said he very much disagreed with my approach to this, but I wasn’t happy with his either. I held my tongue though. With the events of the last few days, there was no reason to add another stressor to our lives by starting an argument.

We pushed through work, making sure one of us was watching Eloise every second. Each new arrival or loud sound made us jump, and given we were on a construction site, that meant we spent most of the day on high alert. We managed to simultaneously work and be overprotective fathers, but by the time we got home, we were drained.

Dinner was quiet, as was most of the evening. We put Eloise in bed, and retired to the living room.

“Are you going to say it?” Raul asked in a low, cool voice.

I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Say what?”

“Whatever you’ve been holding back all day.”

Ah. That. “You could’ve been more kind when you told Eloise that Carly was gone.” The smart move would be to leave things at that, but I was emotionally exhausted. “But you were just waiting for Carly to leave, weren’t you?”

The clench of Raul’s jaw said I’d pushed too hard, but I needed this out of the way. “No. I didn’t want her gone,” he said.

“Then how are you treating this, her leaving, what happened with her, like it’s nothing?”

“Because I don’t have a choice. We don’t have a choice. This was always going to be the way things ended, whether it happened today or a few weeks from now.” Raul’s voice never rose in volume, but the frustration cutting through his words matched my own.

“Do you really not want her in our lives? Do you not see—”

“Of course I want Carly back,” Raul hissed. “I did see how good she was with Eloise. How incredible she was with us. But she’s a grown woman who has control of her own life, and that life isn’t here. A month with us doesn’t change that. Is she going to leave her family behind, her entire world, and move halfway around the globe, for a fling? Would you expect me to do that if she wanted us to move there?”

As long as it was me, Raul, and Eloise, that was all I wanted. I knew Raul’s family meant something to him though. “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect it. But I would at least ask you to consider if there was a middle ground.”

He sighed. “I… I get it. She’s gone. I don’t want her gone. But we don’t always get what we want.”

I tugged Raul close, and wrapped my arms around him as we sank onto the couch together. Fighting with him wouldn’t change Carly’s mind, and it was making me feel like shit. Why couldn’t I have an answer for how to make this right?

The next few days, we were no more willing to leave Eloise alone. We’d probably have to let her go back to school, when the time arrived, but how were we supposed to hand her over to anyone?

The weekend gave us time to spend time together, and just appreciate each other’s company. I refused to let myself linger on thoughts like Carly is missing out.

Monday, we left Eloise with her Nonna, tried not to make too big a show about walking away, and headed to the worksite.

I wouldn’t have let Eloise out of our sight, but interviews started today for kitchen staff, and I wasn’t going to have her around dozens of strangers.

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