Page 65 of Enemy Daddy Next Door

My heart is pounding so hard. I’m both relieved that I finally understand and heartbroken to have found this memory.

“It’s just a gate,” Jordan says in her kindest voice. “It has ghosts attached, but the gate can’t hurt you. The ghosts can’t hurt you either.”

I’d like to believe her. But I didn’t even know I was haunted.

The time is up faster than I’d like it to be. Jordan offers for me to come back in an hour after her next session if I need to talk further, however, I think it’s time to go bury myself in bed and never come out.

That feeling changes, though, when I check my phone after my therapy session and there’s a text from Hunter.

I open it hurriedly.

Hope you’re doing well. Can I take you out Thursday night?

I press the phone to my chest. It’s not over. Not yet.

One thing is for sure: I don’t want to be haunted by any more ghosts. Hunter and Jessica will not become ghosts.

18

HUNTER

“You know, the custody portion wasn’t too tricky with my divorce, but I wanted to be sure Aileen wasn’t going to change her mind or do anything…stupid,” Kent explains as he hands me a cup of coffee.

He sits beside me at his kitchen island. Feels a little wrong to be in Amy’s house given the distance I’m trying to impart. But when I reached out to Kent about the situation with Veronica, he invited me over for coffee immediately.

“Amy’s out for the day, so we can talk privately,” he explained clearly.

Given how pressing the situation is on my heart, I was walking out the door before I hung up the phone.

Though Kent is only about a decade older than me, he feels like a father to me sometimes. He makes dad jokes, drinks drip coffee, needs people to explain to him what to do with his phone, and wears reading glasses that he looks over the rims of.

All these little things I never saw in my own father.

“He’s the best of the best,” Kent explains and then sips his coffee.

“I need the best of the best,” I say. After going through my entire legal team, I realized I had no one involved in family law and my divorce lawyer retired and moved to Palm Springs.

Kent smiles softly. I can see the echo of Amy’s smile in his. “I really don’t think you have anything to worry about, Hunter.”

“Don’t courts always favor mothers?”

His eyes roll to the side. “Present mothers, sure.”

I chew on my lower lip. “What if I’m not seen as a present father?”

“Oh, please. Why? Because you work? Someone has to work to take care of your daughter.”

“Not every father runs a Fortune Five Hundred company…” Women are often indicted for working and having a family. Men not as often. However, single fathers come with a different level of scrutiny. I feel it constantly. With the Ricks group, I’m too soft. With the playgroups, I’m too disconnected. It’s a rock and a hard place.

“Hunter, she’s an addict.”

I start to bring the cup of coffee to my lips, but the idea of drinking it makes my stomach turn. I haven’t been able to eat since Veronica’s unpleasant return. Now I can’t drink coffee? This is worse than I thought. “I don’t know. She seemed pretty clean.”

“Once an addict, always an addict. Now, don’t get me wrong, people can grow and change. It doesn’t make them a bad person,” Kent explains. “Of course not. But the addictive behavior will always be there. No one is going to grant her custody. Visitation, maybe, but –”

“I don’t want that either.” Perhaps that is harsh to most people. Why would I keep my daughter from her mother?

Well, I’ve seen a future with someone who has acted more like a mother than Jessica’s flesh and blood. Amy Solace would be mother enough. I know it.

---