Chapter 1: Thursday Morning

I'm drinking a Starbucks Venti Americano in the Audi and Chloe is texting someone and the traffic on the 405 isn't moving and I'm going to be late for the Paramount meeting and she's wearing ripped jeans that probably cost two hundred dollars and a Brandy Melville crop top and those white Vans everyone wears and she hasn't said anything to me in maybe twenty minutes.

The radio is playing something. I don't know what it is. She changed it from NPR.

"Who are you texting," I say.

"No one," she says and keeps texting.

I check my phone. There are emails from Marissa and from the William Morris agent whose name I can never remember and from someone at Netflix and I don't open any of them. Chloe is still texting. The traffic moves forward maybe ten feet and stops again.

"Did you eat breakfast," I say.

"I'm not hungry."

"You should eat something."

She doesn't answer. She's looking at her phone and doing something with her thumbs and her hair is pulled back in this messy thing that probably took thirty minutes to look like it took thirty seconds and I think she might be wearing mascara but I'm not sure and I don't know when that started.

We're supposed to talk today. Her mother called last night after Chloe went to bed and said we need to talk to her together and I said about what and she said Derek and I said who the fuck is Derek and she said her boyfriend and I hung up. Then I poured a Macallan 18 and watched the first twenty minutes of a screener for something I'm supposed to see before the weekend and I fell asleep on the couch in my office.

The traffic moves. We pass an accident. Someone's Mercedes is completely destroyed. There are police cars and an ambulance and Chloe looks up from her phone and sees it and then goes back to her phone and I wonder if she saw the body they're covering with a yellow tarp.

"Your mother wants to talk to you," I say.

"Okay," Chloe says.

"Tonight. At the house."

"Okay."

"She's bringing someone."

Chloe looks at me now. "Who."

"I don't know. Some guy. Derek."

She looks back at her phone. "Whatever."

I want to say something. I want to say that I know this is hard and that I know she's angry at both of us and that I'm sorry and that I love her and that I'm trying and I don't know how to do this. I want to say that when she was born I held her in my hands and she was so small and so perfect and I promised myself I would protect her from everything and I failed. I want to say all of this but instead I say, "Did you finish your history paper."

"Yes," she says.

We pull into the circular drive at Oakwood Academy and there are other Audis and Range Rovers and Teslas and parents dropping off children who are dressed like small adults or adults dressed like large children, I can't tell anymore. Chloe opens the door before I've completely stopped.

"Hey," I say.

She turns and looks at me and for just a second she looks like she did when she was eight and I would drop her off and she would turn around before going inside and wave and smile and I would wave back and watch her disappear into the building.

"Yeah," she says.

"Have a good day."

"You too," she says and gets out and closes the door and walks toward the entrance and I watch her and she doesn't turn around.

I sit in the parking lot for five minutes before I drive to Paramount and during those five minutes I finish the Americano and it's cold now and tastes like nothing.