Page 79 of Eleanor & Grey

Lorelai also wasn’t afraid to hold full-blown conversations with her mother. They happened every single day. Sometimes I’d walk in on her having talks with her mom like she was right there beside her. She also put a placement at the dining room table for Nicole on Mondays, because Mondays was always spaghetti day. Spaghetti had been Nicole’s favorite meal.

I loved that about her little heart, how she kept her mom close to her.

We had that in common—our daily conversations with our mothers.

Then there was Karla, my new best friend in a Go away, Eleanor kind of way. I couldn’t even learn about her based on her room, because she didn’t have anything in there other than the computer that sat on her desk. The walls were empty, and the shelves didn’t hold anything on them. The only spark of personality was the Do Not Enter tape plastered all over her closet door, with signs written in sharpie warning STAY AWAY.

In a way, that summed her up completely.

Lastly, there was Greyson, though I hardly saw him.

He was never really around long enough for me to read him. I only had my past memories of who he used to be to go by, and truthfully, I hardly saw those sides of him come through. Even when they did, they were so few and far between. It was as if he tried so hard to not show any emotion, and when it slipped out, he was quick to pull it back in.

Not only did he keep his distance from me, he kept it from the girls. Even when he was around, it was as if he wasn’t truly there. He seemed so checked out from reality, I was surprised he was able to even complete his daily work tasks. Yet, that seemed to be the one thing he excelled at doing. Greyson was a professional workaholic, and he took that role seriously.

If he wasn’t on the phone talking business, there was a very good chance he wasn’t talking at all.

He and Karla were so similar in many ways, so cold and distant, but the difference was that Karla was mean while Greyson was not. He was just insanely lost.

Whenever Lorelai and I had dinner in the dining room, I swore Greyson and Karla went out of their way to avoid coming anywhere near us. They simply grabbed their food and went to their own personal spaces.

Like father, like daughter.

I didn’t think too much on it. They wanted their space, so I gave it to them. Most of my focus went toward Lorelai.

She was the blessing at the end of hard days. There wasn’t anything that could keep that young girl from laughing. In a house full of darkness, she was the light that flooded each room.

Each evening after dinner, Lorelai and I would pretend we were dragons flying into a new world where our only job was to make people realize that dragons were friendly creatures. It involved a lot of jumping up and down and roaring, of course, something we both were fans of.

One night as the two of us played in Lorelai’s room, our volumes reached a new height as we laughed and laughed at Lorelai’s new, deep guttural roar. Tears rolled down her cheeks from laughing so hard, and every time she tried to catch her breath, she laughed harder.

Those were my favorite moments with children—the wild ones.

As the two of us lost ourselves, we were interrupted by a loud bang on the bedroom door. We all looked up to see Greyson standing in the doorway with a stern look on his face. The laughter faded away as we all noticed the seriousness in his eyes.

“Hi, Daddy,” Lorelai said, her voice lower than before.

“What’s with all the noise?” he scolded, his brows knitted together.

I cleared my throat and smoothed out my clothing. “Oh, sorry. We didn’t know you were home. We were just having a great round of—”

“A word, Eleanor,” he hissed, cutting me off. “In my office.”

I stood taller, chills racing over me.

“What?”

“I would like a word with you in my office,” he repeated, not waiting for me to reply before he walked away. I took a deep breath before turning toward Lorelai. Her eyes were widened and she appeared shaken by her father’s aggressive arrival.

“Is he mad because we were loud?” she asked, her voice quivering. Her shoulders slouched forward, and I could see the worry in her eyes. It was as though she’d let her father down in some way.

The shame of it all was that if anyone was letting someone down, it was her father who wasn’t showing up for his daughters.

“No, honey. Your father and I had a meeting scheduled, I just forgot about it.” I pulled her into a hug, and she hugged me back tightly. I savored the sweet embrace. “Now go get ready for bed, alright? I’ll come check on you soon.”

She nodded and hurried off to pick out her pajamas. I headed to Greyson’s office, where the door was wide open.

“No offense, but did you really need to barge in with such a tone? You scared Lorelai half to death,” I stated as I walked in. He was pacing the length of the room, clasping his fingers together as his chest repeatedly rose and fell heavily.

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