Page 60 of Enemy Daddy Next Door

I cringe again at the nickname.

Veronica pulls her purse over her shoulder. “My lawyer will be in touch with you.”

“Your lawyer…” I say with a dry laugh.

“Yes, my lawyer.”

When we split, she had nothing except alimony. And the prenup stipulated enough to protect me from being fleeced out of house and home. However, if she’s hiring a lawyer, she’s gotten the best of the best. That’s the only way they can compete with my legal team.

Something tells me she’s got more money than just my alimony coming in. This guy…I wonder who he is. And I wonder what kind of money he makes. And if he makes it honestly.

“It’s my right as her mother to get to know her.”

“And it’s my right as her father and sole custodial guardian to protect her from people I see as dangerous to her young mind. You understand that, right? Since you’re so keen on what’s ‘best’ for her?” I reply.

Veronica straightens up. For once she doesn’t have a sharp comeback. We were together long enough that I know all of her tells. Her cheek twitching, her eyes rolling to the side. I’ve scathed her.

“You didn’t want to be a mother,” I tell her. That’s as much as she told me when she walked out only a month after Jess was born. “You said you –”

“I was all screwed up. You know that.”

This whole thing was screwed up from start to finish. I met Veronica on my travels. She was just a backpacker traveling Southeast Asia and I was a billionaire looking for some company. She was gorgeous and witty; I was lonely and…I ignored all the signs we weren’t meant to be. Then it was too late.

I shouldn’t say that. I don’t regret Jessica’s birth. I don’t regret being her father.

This whole time, though, I know Veronica has.

So, why is she back? Why could she possibly want a relationship with Jess now?

“I look forward to seeing you in court, then,” I say and then step into the front hall. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” I open the front door and gesture toward the outside.

Veronica strides slowly toward me and then glances out the door. “We could have done this amicably.”

“No, you know we never could have done that.” It has two meanings. The first being that things between us are broken. Irreparably so. The second…I’m not convinced she ever wanted to cooperate with me. There’s a story here. And I don’t know all of it. “And Veronica?”

“Hm?”

“You better not be on anything. Or near anything. Or near anyone who is on anything. Because if I get even a whiff of it, so help me god…” I don’t know what the end of that sentence is. If she came near my daughter – my daughter – with even a speck of a contact high, I’d lose it. I’d really lose it.

Veronica’s body tenses. “I told you, I’m clean.”

“For some reason, I don’t trust you.”

She laughs in an empty way. “You used to.”

I hold my tongue. I don’t think I ever really did.

“Be seeing you.”

Hopefully not.

I watch her leave through the door and go out to her car. A respectable blue sedan. Economy type of car. I wait until her car has pulled out of the driveway and she speeds off down the street. I wonder how she got my address. How she got in through the gate. So many questions. No answers.

I stand there for a long time looking out at my front yard. The August heat seeps into the house and the air conditioner kicks on angrily.

The ground I stand on feels unsteady. I’m standing on a Faultline, waiting for the earth to split apart and swallow me whole.

There’s no way I’m going to lose Jessica. No fucking way.

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