The Puck’s Bunny

Ch.10

EROS

Loud, cheerful laughter fills the evening air. I left the arena without bidding farewell to anyone, which was typical for me. I took the elevator down to the parking garage and settled into the back of my car while Anthony maneuvered through the crosstown traffic. I loosened my tie, closed my eyes, and attempted to relax my jaw, but I couldn't manage it.

Someone was betraying us.Someone I had placed my trust in, someone who had sat in our locker room, sipped my coffee, and smiled at me over team strategies, was handing over strategies of my team to a man intent on dismantling it. And I couldn't identify who it was.

The most troubling aspect was how familiar it felt. The uncertainty. The experience of looking at a face you believed you understood, only to realize there was something hidden behind it that you had never been allowed to see.

Veronica had shown me that lesson. During the final six months of our marriage, she greeted me with a smile across the breakfast table each morning, kissed me goodbye at the door, and engaged in full conversations where every word was a deception. She had been orchestrating her departure for weeks before she actually left. While I slept beside her, unaware, trusting, and foolish, she was mentally packing boxes.

I vowed never to be foolish again.

Anthony arrived at the building at six-forty. I took the private elevator up to the penthouse, entered the foyer, and instantly heard something that made the nail behind my eye dig in deeper. Laughter. Coming from the kitchen.

I come to a halt. No one in this house laughs this loudly. Not like that. A jolt of irritation pierces the silence I rely on every evening. This house is meant to be predictable. Controlled. Serene.

However, as I entered the kitchen, my irritation faded...then vanished completely. Because I froze, completely still. My daughter was laughing. It was a soft sound, hardly more than a giggle. Chloe hadn't laughed in this apartment for over a year. Perhaps even longer. I had stopped keeping track of the months because doing so made me want to punch through the drywall.

Chloe's laughter echoed, accompanied by Claire's lively voice, engaging in some sort of exaggerated storytelling that I couldn't fully decipher. They were gathered around the kitchen island. Chloe stood on a step stool, donned in an apron far too large for her, with the straps rolled up to prevent any tripping hazards. Flour dusted her nose. Flour coated her hands. Flour was scattered across the counter, the floor, the front of Claire's shirt, and somehow, even the ceiling.

Claire was beside her, clutching a mixing bowl, her hair tied back in a knot that was struggling against gravity. She was also laughing, that genuine, carefree kind of laughter that people share when they forget that anyone else is around.

On the counter between them lay a plate of cookies. They were misshapen, unevenly baked, with some the size of golf balls and others as big as my palm. Chocolate chip, by the looks of it. Certainly not on the approved snack list. Definitely not adhering to Rule #1 or any of its subsections concerning refined sugar, processed flour, or unauthorized kitchen activities.

Chloe grabbed a cookie and took a bite, and her face transformed in an incredible way. It scrunched up, her eyes shut tight, her shoulders lifting towards her ears, her entire body folding into a singular point of pure, concentrated joy. She chewed with the reverence of a food critic dining at a five-star establishment, and when she swallowed, she glanced at Claire with an expression that clearly and unmistakably conveyed, more.

"Yeah?" Claire beamed. "Good, right? That’s the brown butter. It’s the secret weapon. Don’t let anyone convince you that regular melted butter is acceptable. It’s not acceptable. It’s lazy."

Chloe reached for another cookie.

"That's your second one, so perhaps we should take it easy before your dad arrives and I end up losing my job."

"Too late."

In unison, they both turned. Chloe's hand halted mid-reach. Claire's smile didn't disappear; it merely adjusted, transforming from genuine happiness to a state of poised alertness, akin to a soldier catching the first faint sound of approaching artillery. I glanced at the flour on the ceiling, then at the cookies. My gaze shifted to my daughter, who had chocolate smeared on her chin and laughter still lingering on her face like the last rays of sunlight fading from a window at twilight.

"What is this?"

Claire set the mixing bowl down. "We made cookies."

"I can see that. I can also see that my kitchen looks like a bakery exploded in it and that my daughter is eating refined sugar an hour before dinner."

"It's one cookie."

"It's two. I heard you tell her to slow down because it was second."

Claire paused. I noticed her jaw tighten, a reaction she tried to conceal but didn't quite succeed. "Okay. It's two cookies. She's five. It's not going to kill her."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is that I left a meal plan. A specific, detailed meal plan designed by a nutritionist who specializes in childhood development. The plan exists for a reason. It doesn't include cookies."

"The plan doesn't also include joy, Mr. Asante, and your daughter could use some."

The kitchen fell silent. Even the refrigerator seemed to hold its breath. Chloe's hand had dropped from the cookie to her side, and she was looking between us with those wide brown eyes, tracking the tension like animals sense an approaching storm.

I should have stopped. I knew I should have stopped. Chloe was right there, absorbing every word, every tone, every shift in the emotional temperature. But the meeting was still grinding in my skull, and the leak was still gnawing at my trust, and the sight of my carefully structured world being cheerfully dismantled by a woman with flour on her shirt and no apparent respect for boundaries struck me in a place I wasn't prepared to defend.

"Miss Dawson. I hired you to follow instructions, not to redecorate my kitchen and undermine the dietary guidelines I put in place for my daughter's well-being."

Claire remained unyielding. She didn't retreat. She didn't avert her gaze or soften her tone or do any of the things that everyone else in my life did when I spoke like that.

"You brought me on to look after your daughter," she stated. "And that's precisely what I'm doing. She's been grinning all afternoon. She laughed, Mr. Asante. When was the last time you heard her laugh?"

Her words struck me like a blow. She held my gaze. The air between us buzzed with an emotion I couldn't name, a mix of anger, recognition, and the unsettling realization that this woman understood me better than anyone had in years. I was torn between wanting to express my gratitude and the impulse to dismiss her immediately.

Chloe let out a small sound. Not a word, but a whimper, so faint that it resembled the noise a child makes when the adults around her have forgotten she is there.

We both glanced down simultaneously. Chloe had stepped off the stool and stood between us, her hands dusted with flour clenched tightly at her sides, her face twisted into a look I recognized all too well, having seen it in the mirror every morning for the first six months after Veronica left. It was the look of someone witnessing two people they depend on being torn apart in real time.

The anger drained from me so quickly that it created a vacuum.

"Hey," I said, kneeling down. "Hey, sugar. It's alright. No one is angry."

Chloe gazed at me. She glanced at Claire. Then, she extended her left hand to Claire and her right hand to me, holding on tightly.

Claire's eyes locked with mine over Chloe's hand. The defiance had vanished. The struggle was over. What remained was something pure and sincere, painfully simple: we both cared for this child, and we had just caused her pain by neglecting her presence.

"I apologize," Claire spoke softly. Not to me, but to Chloe. She knelt down and gently wiped the flour from Chloe's nose with her thumb. "We weren't arguing. Sometimes adults just raise their voices. But everything is fine. I assure you."

Chloe's hold on our hands grew firmer. She seemed unconvinced. Children rarely believe you when you say everything is fine, because they are the truest judges of whether things are genuinely okay, and at this moment, in this flour-dusted kitchen with the tension still humming in the air, nothing was.

I rose to my feet. "Clean the kitchen," I instructed Claire, though my tone had lost its sharpness. It had been worn down to something flat and weary. "I'll take Chloe to bed."

"It's only six-forty-five. Her bedtime isn't until-"

"I know her bedtime," I said as I lifted Chloe, positioning her against my hip, feeling her head lean against my shoulder like a child who has given in to exhaustion. "We're going to read for a bit. The kitchen has to be tidy before I head back down."

Claire nodded in agreement. She didn't contest it. She didn't insist. She simply remained there in the messy kitchen, flour dusting her hair and a look in her eyes that I chose not to scrutinize.

I took Chloe upstairs.

I spent an hour reading to her. Not the usual, structured twenty minutes dictated by the guidelines. A whole hour, perched on her bed with her nestled in my lap, we navigated through three picture books and a chapter of Dr. Seuss's 'Horton Hears a Who,' which she had never shown any interest in before but now seemed eager for, pointing at the book every time I attempted to pause. So, I continued. I attempted the voices. Not very well. Not like Claire, who apparently performed them with the full dramatic flair of a Broadway understudy. But I gave it my best shot, and Chloe remained in my lap, and that was sufficient.

By eight o'clock, she was battling sleep, her eyelids heavy, her body resting against my chest. I tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and performed the usual checks. Nightlight. Monitor. Window. Door ajar by six inches. Then, I retreated to my office and sat in the dark for forty minutes.

Claire Dawson confronted me in my own kitchen. No one spoke to me like that. No one.