Star Promise (35 page)

I frowned, unsure of what she meant. “What does that mean, Bridge?”

She threw out her arms, frustrated that she couldn’t articulate her grievance properly. “Appoint me,” she repeated.

On a hunch, I filled in the gap with a suggestion that hurt my heart. “Disappoint you?”

She nodded wildly. “Yes. It always makes me sad when you do that.”

I was so crushed that every ounce of breath left my body. I took a step back, slumping onto the couch. Bridget wasn’t in the habit of trying to use words she didn’t understand. She’d been coached, and even though I knew exactly who’d done it, I asked anyway. “Who told you that?”

“Madame Kara,” she said proudly.

“When?”

Her little shoulders lifted. “Sometimes.”

My thoughts turned to the last conversation I’d had with Olivia. “The connection between a mother and daughter is more delicate than you think,” she’d told me. She wasn’t talking about my connection with her. We had no freaking connection. In the most abhorrent of moves, she’d been chipping away at my connection with my daughter.

“Find your bag of letters,” I said weakly. “I’ll put the word in your bag so you can remember it for next time.”

Her little pink satchel of scrabble letters usually held fabulous words that I wanted her to know. Constellation and February had been the latest inclusions, and now I was gearing up to add a hideous word that my vile mother had seen fit to introduce.

Bridget returned to the room a short while later, excitedly rattling her bag of letters. I upended it on the coffee table, picked out the letters and pointed out the word as I choked on the pronunciation.

“I will get it right one day,” she announced.

I kissed her cheek. “Me too, Bridge.”

I knew something was amiss the second we walked through the front door of the studio. It was empty, which was impossible to accept because we were twenty minutes early.

With a firm hold on Bridget’s hand, I marched through to the dance hall, and saw not a soul. My heart started hammering, already knowing we were in deep trouble.

“Where are they?” asked Bridget, clueless.

I unfairly shushed her, needing a minute to think. “Hello!” I called.

When I heard footsteps coming from the reception area, I scooped Bridget off her feet and rushed to find the source.

Erin met me at the doorway. “The concert,” I blurted. “Where is everyone?”

She frowned at me. “At the Stafford Theatre,” she replied. “Broadway and 8
^th
.”

It wasn’t the most opportune time to be checking, but I was determined to know whose mistake it was. I lowered Bridget to her feet and reached for my phone. It was then that I noticed a text from Adam that I’d somehow missed in the commotion of getting Bridget ready.

– It’s at the Stafford Theatre. You have to have her there by 2 p.m. Love you both.

I wanted to cry, and when I checked the time on my phone and saw that it was a quarter to two, I nearly did.

“Are you alright?” asked Erin.

I sniffed. “Perfect,” I lied. “We’re just running a little late.” I picked Bridget up and ran for the door

“We can’t be late,” Bridget insisted. She put her hand to my cheek to ensure she had my full attention. “No one can be late.”

“I’m going to get you there, baby,” I promised. “Don’t worry.”

I stumbled as I stepped out onto the street, forcing Bridget to cling tighter. Adam and Ryan could carry her around for hours on end when the need arose, but I wasn’t that strong. I lowered her to her feet and scanned from left to right in search of a cab.

For once, the universe took pity on me. Not only did a cab drive up, it actually stopped when I waved it down. I bundled Bridget inside, gave the driver curt and precise directions, and told him to hurry.

We arrived at the theatre fifteen minutes late. The backstage area was bedlam, but seeing so many amped-up ballerinas brought me hope. Olivia’s girls weren’t the only ones dancing, which meant there was a chance they hadn’t performed yet.

When Bridget pointed out one of her friends to me, we followed her. The little girl wove through the crowd, leading us straight to Olivia and the rest of her posse.

From what I could tell, all the girls were there, each dressed in gorgeous sage green leotards with matching stiff tutus.

The mistake was mine, and I felt the need to greet Olivia with an apology. “I’m so sorry we’re late.”

She turned to face me, whacking me with a look of pure thunder. “I said no later than two.”

“I know, but there was a mix-up of venues. We’re here now.”

“I’m going to dance soon,” announced Bridget, maintaining her hold on my hand while she excitedly bounced on the spot.

I expected Olivia to point her in the direction of her costume and tell her to get dressed. There was no way I could’ve imagined it playing out any differently, which is why her next move paralysed me.

“I said two,” she repeated before dropping her line of sight to Bridget. “There will be no dancing for you, Bridget. You can blame your mother for that. All she had to do was get you here on time.”

“Please Olivia,” I begged. “Don’t do this to her.”

I could feel Bridget’s hand trembling in mine.

“You should’ve brought your daddy,” she continued. “He’s obviously the reliable one.” Olivia glowered at me, and I knew in that instant she had no heart whatsoever. “Bridget will not be participating on stage. Feel free to watch from the audience if you’d like. There are probably some seats at the back.”

The finality of her words hit Bridget like a freight train. She burst into tears. I wasn’t faring much better, but it had little to do with her not dancing. My devastation came from the realisation that Olivia probably never had any intention of letting Bridget dance. Every single thing she’d put us through over the past few weeks had been designed to punish me, and me alone.

“Why are you doing this?” My voice was pathetically small, giving my daughter no confidence that I could remedy the situation.

“Leave, Charli,” she said simply. “While your daughter still has a little bit of respect for you.”

Using the last bit of strength I possessed, I picked Bridget up. She felt like a ragdoll in my arms, just as broken as I was. “Adam was right all along,” I told her. “You are a hateful bitch.”

Olivia smirked and pointed at the door. “Run along, darling,” she mocked. “We have a dance to perform.”

The cool air that hit my face as we pushed through the front door and exited onto the street was heavenly. I tilted my face to the sky, trying to soothe the burn in my cheeks. I couldn’t ever remember feeling that level of rage before, and I wasn’t the only one having trouble holding it together.

Bridget stopped crying once I got her outside. Devastation had given way to anger, and it took me less than a minute to work out that it was directed at me.

“You made me late.” Her voice was small, but wild. “I said no one can be late.”

“I know,” I replied. “I’m so sorry.”

To Bridget, my apology was baseless and empty. She turned around and stomped her little boots on the pavement as she stormed off. “I’m not talking to you ever again for nine weeks!”

She was too much like me to be able to follow through with dishing out the silent treatment, but enough like Adam to find a way around it. She continued her rant in French. Most of it escaped me, but a few familiar words jumped out. I grabbed her hand, pulling her to a stop.

“You listen to me, Bridget Décarie,” I growled. “You can be as disappointed as you like, but if you call me a marshmallow head one more time there’s going to be serious trouble.”

Her pout could’ve cut glass, but she didn’t speak again. It was a relief for the first few minutes, but showing will I didn’t know she possessed, Bridget didn’t utter another word to me for the rest of the afternoon.

My brother likes to think of himself as the ultimate alpha male, but he’s not. Our father is. Dad commands attention and respect from everyone he deals with, and because he’s charming and articulate, he gets it.

We spent seven hours glued to chairs in the boardroom as we tried our hardest to reel in a deal that was going south for no other reason than a clash of egos. For once, the ego wasn’t Dad’s. The deal had been mine from the beginning, and surprisingly, he took a back seat and let me handle it. After hours of renegotiation and a few alterations to the original contracts, a new deal was struck. The merger would go ahead as planned, and for now, both parties were happy.

It should’ve been the end of my working day, but my negotiation skills were in demand. Unable to check them earlier, I spent the cab ride home catching up on the million text messages Charli had sent me that afternoon. I hadn’t really anticipated the concert going off without a hitch, but I wasn’t expecting Olivia to sink as low as refusing to let Bridget participate.

It was her most vicious move to date. It destroyed Bridget, and judging by the play-by-play text updates her mama gave me, all blame was lumped squarely on Charli’s shoulders.

I arrived home to World War Three. It wasn’t playing out with weapons and screaming. Our apartment was deathly quiet, which was worse. Charli was in the kitchen, looking miserable and fed up. Bridget was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“In her room,” she muttered. “She won’t come out and she won’t talk to me.” She slid a plate of cheese and crackers across the counter. “Can you please take this in to her? She’s not eaten all day.”

I picked up the plate. “I’ll talk her round,” I said gently. “I’ll make her understand.”

She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s fixable this time.”

“Bridget’s four, Charlotte,” I reminded her. “Everything is fixable.”

When we returned to New York and moved back into Gabrielle’s apartment, we allocated the bigger bedroom to Bridget. The kid had more possessions than Charli and I put together, and putting it all into one room was the only hope we had of containing the clutter.

I inched open the door and took a good look around, searching for my wayward daughter. If I hadn’t spotted two little feet poking out from under the bed, I might never have found her.

“Hello,” I called. “Is anybody in here?”

“Nobody is in here,” came a muffled reply.

I closed the door, shifted a piled of girls and sat on the floor beside her bed. “That’s too bad,” I lamented. “I brought snacks. I guess I’ll have to eat them by myself.”

It wasn’t enough to coax her out, but when I set the plate down a little hand made a grab for a cracker.

“I’m very sorry that things didn’t work out for you today, Bridge.”

“We were late,” she said simply.

It was important that I choose my words carefully. The point I wanted to get across was that Olivia was responsible for every ounce of disappointment she’d endured that day, not her mother.

“Baby, it wouldn’t have mattered either way,” I told her. “Olivia wasn’t planning to let you dance today anyway.”

Bridget was quiet for a long moment, and I worried that I’d been too truthful. Exposing her to a little more of the world wasn’t supposed to include the introduction of hateful, twisted people.

“Why not?” she asked finally.

I censored my reply as best I could, giving her only the basics. Not everyone is nice. It was that simple – but a crushing piece of enlightenment to serve a small child nonetheless.

“Madame Kara is not a nice lady.”

“Does she hate me?” She sounded worried by the prospect.

I shifted the plate of crackers aside and lay on the floor, needing to see her eyes. “She doesn’t hate you,” I assured her. “Olivia just doesn’t realise how special you are.”

“Malibu hates me,” she retorted.

The conversation was now getting complicated. Malibu’s problem with Bridget was that she
did
realise how special she was. I reached under the bed, sweeping her hair off her forehead. “No one hates you.”

“Squirrels hate me.”

“And what do you do about that, Bridge?”

“Oh, I stay away from them.” Her face contorted into a grimace. “I say ‘you’re mean dudes, get out of here’.”

I tried not to laugh, but failed. “Do you wish you were friends with the squirrels?”

“No,” she drawled, as if it was a stupid question. “I hate them too. They’re bad.”

My daughter was born into wealth and privilege. There was nothing I couldn’t buy for her and no place I couldn’t take her, but all the money in the world counted for nothing when it came to protecting her from disappointment and hurt inflicted by others – even squirrels. All I could do was shelter her from it. I stared at the ceiling as I asked my next question. “So it’s a good idea to stay away if you’re not friends, right?”

“Yes it is.”

I looked across at her again, silently willing her to understand the reasoning behind what I was about to tell her. “You’re not going back to ballet any more.”

“I know.”

“Are you mad?”

“No.” She sounded strong but looked devastated.

“I don’t want you to be mad at your mom,” I whispered. “She tried very hard for you today.”

“Okay,” she whispered back.

“And it’d be really nice if you apologised to her.”

“I will,” she assured me. “I will say ‘sorry for being a mean dude’.”

“That’s all she needs to hear from you.” I reached out and held her hand. “In English, Bridget, or it doesn’t count.”

Adam and I lay awake talking for hours that night. He was worried about me, and made me promise a hundred times to stay away from Olivia for good.

“Just let it go now,” he urged. “She got what she wanted.”

It wasn’t until the moment she stomped on Bridget’s concert plans that I wised up to what it was she did actually want from me. For some reason, Olivia’s main objective had been to hurt me, and she’d cruelly carried it out via my daughter.

For Adam, it was reason enough to stay away, but I wasn’t satisfied. I lied when I told him I’d let it go, and when I told him I had a meeting with a buyer the next morning, I was lying then too.