Getting Caught in the Rain

Harry gets the call a week later. It’s a Saturday morning. Olivia is having a playdate with a friend from school, Emma. Olivia often brags about how popular she is at school, and so far she hasn’t been wrong. The few times Harry picks her up at the end of the day, there’s always girls hugging her good-bye and giggling with her as they come outside the building. It makes Harry smile to know that Olivia is so well-liked.

She climbs into his bed around nine o’clock and whispers, “Pancakes pancakes pancakes pancakes” until he relents and gets out of bed. He makes blueberry pancakes, Olivia’s favorite, along with some milk for her and coffee for him.

As they eat, she tells him about all of the fun things she and Emma are going to do, and then she tells him all the fun things she and him are going to do when she gets home. “I don’t know if we’ll do all of that,” Harry says when Olivia begins to enthusiastically elaborate how they’re going to fight crime, “but how about . . . I take you out to dinner . . . and then we can buy some candy and watch a movie tonight?”

Olivia’s answering smile is so bright and blinding it nearly stuns him. “Okay!” she agrees happily. They finish breakfast before getting dressed and brushing their teeth side-by-side, and then Olivia demands, “Braid my hair.”

Harry raises an eyebrow, and she adds, “Pretty please?”

“Very good. Of course I’ll braid your hair.” Having an older sister has taught him many tricks and tips about girls he wouldn’t have otherwise known, including how to French and fishtail braid. Olivia is just like him in the way that she loves having her hair touched.

So they sit cross-legged on his bed and he braids her hair slowly. It’s the only real time Olivia is still and pliant, and he knows her eyes are blissfully closed right now. Sometimes Harry wishes his daughter had inherited his curly hair, but most of the time he’s glad it’s long and straight like her mother’s. Cara always complains that Olivia is practically Harry’s doppelganger; it’s only fair if she got at least one of her traits squeezed in.

When he’s finished, Olivia feels her fishtail braid and smiles happily. Then she climbs into his lap, facing him and gazing up into his face. “Hi,” she says in sing-song.

Of course Harry loves her all the time, but his favorite Olivia is this one, the one that’s happy and bright and affectionate. He grins back at her. “Hey, you.”

She leans over and plays with the sleeve of his navy blue t-shirt, tracing her little fingers up and down his arm. “I like your tattoos.”

“Do you?”

“Uh-huh. I like yours and Uncle Louis’ and Uncle Zayn’s and Uncle Liam’s.” She pauses. “Uncle Niall doesn’t have any tattoos, but you have lots.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I like yours the best,” Olivia says, almost to herself. “I like the ship the best.” Just for good measure, she leans over and kisses it, and Harry smiles.

“C’mon, sunshine. Let’s finish getting ready so I can take you to Emma’s.” Olivia squeals with delight and springs off of her lap, running to get her shoes. Harry gets up too and follows behind her, grabbing his sneakers from where they’re sitting against hers by the front hall. He helps her tie the laces before picking up his keys and helping her into her jacket. “Ready?” She nods vigorously, so they leave the apartment, locking the door behind them. She holds his hand as they walk out the building to the car, bouncing excitedly in her car seat as they drive off.

They pull up to Emma’s house and Olivia practically streaks out of the car and bangs on the door. Emma answers it and the two girls greet each other with a squeal. Harry chats with Emma’s mother for a while, and they make plans to schedule another playdate soon. “We’ll just be going to the park,” she tells him. “I’ve made a picnic lunch and everything.”

“That sounds great,” he says with a grin. “I’ll be back around, say, three?”

“Sounds perfect,” Emma’s mother nods. “Olivia, come say good-bye to Daddy!”

Olivia comes bounding over and leaps into his arms. “You’ll come back for me?”

“Of course,” Harry promises. “I always do. Have a good time, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Harry thanks Emma’s mother one more time and waves to the girls before exiting the house and getting into his car. He drives home, realizing that now he’s got about four hours to kill before he has to go get her again.

He gets home and stands in the doorway for a moment, taking in the silence, before he decides he might as well be productive. He plugs in his phone and turns on some music before doing a few loads of laundry, vacuuming, and emptying the dishwasher. By the time he’s done, it’s only twelve-thirty.

He’s just sat down with some lunch when the phone rings. It’s Cara. “Hey,” he says easily. “What’s up?”

“Hey. Not much.” Her voice is quiet.

“You just missed Olivia. I dropped her off at a friend’s house a few hours ago.”

“I wasn’t looking for Olivia.”

“Oh . . .” Harry furrows his eyebrows. “Then . . . what’s going on?”

“I gotta talk to you about something.” She sounds different. Almost guilty.

“Okay. What?”

There’s a long pause. And then she says, “I got offered a new contract.”

“You did? That’s great,” Harry says. “Better deal?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” There’s still something she’s not telling him, so he presses, “And?”

“It’s in Milan,” Cara mumbles finally.

“What?”

“It’s in Milan,” she says, louder.

Harry absorbs that. “Milan as in . . . Milan, Italy?”

“Yeah.”

“Cara, that’s like, sixteen hours away from here. How are we gonna commute? We can’t afford a plane every time either, well, maybe you can, but I can’t. And besides, that’s just too much on her. What are we gonna do?”

“That’s what I wanna talk about,” she answers. “Maybe . . . look, I was thinking maybe we should get a custody change.”

Harry literally fish-mouths, even though she can’t see him over the phone. “You what?”

“Harry.”

“Why the fuck do you want to get a custody change, Cara? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You just said it yourself, Harry. When I move to Milan, it’s just going to be a huge hassle for all of us. It’s a four hour flight both there and back, and a sixteen hour drive. I don’t want to have to put any of us through that.”

“We could figure something out.”

“No, we couldn’t. I think it’s best if Olivia just stays with you from now on. Like, full time.”

“You don’t mean that,” Harry says slowly. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

“I don’t want to do it, but it’s for her. I want her to be happy.”

“You’re her mother! She’s happy when she’s with you!” Harry snaps, trying his hardest not to tear his hair out. There is no fucking way Cara is trying to give up seeing Olivia just so she can go fucking model in fucking Milan.

“Harry, are you serious? She’s miserable when she’s with me. I thought you knew that.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that when she’s with me, I have to drag her along to my shows and to my meetings and I have to make her sit there for hours on end with no one to talk to or play with. She hardly gets to spend time with me. I don’t know her teacher’s name, I don’t know her best friend’s name, shit, Harry, I don’t know anything. I can’t keep hurting her like that.”

“That’s why you need to spend more time with her,” he insists. “Not the other way around.”

“Every single night I can hear her crying because she wants to be with you. She begs me to call you all the time just to hear you, and when she’s not, she’s telling me how much she misses you. Face it, H. You’re the only one she ever wants.” Cara’s voice is flat.

“But – but –” Harry desperately tries to think of something to say, but Cara interrupts again.

“Don’t think it doesn’t hurt me to do this, because it does. But it’s for her. I just want Olivia to be happy.”

He feels himself deflate. “I’m gonna have to file an order and get the judge to approve it. We’ll both need to sign it.”

“Okay. Mail it to me and I’ll get it back to you soon.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Two weeks.”

Harry nods. “Okay. Two weeks.” He pauses. “How am I gonna tell her? When am I gonna tell her?”

“Tonight. Do it tonight. Write the order and mail it to me and then do it tonight.”

“God, Cara. You say it like it’s so easy.”

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it? You get to stay with her,” Cara says tightly.

“You don’t have to take the goddamn job,” Harry spits, because now she’s just being unfair. “You could stay with your current one. Or, God forbid, you could grow up and get a real profession like me and come back home and actually get to know your child.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” Cara hisses. “Don’t you dare insult me and what I do. I’m older than you, if I remember correctly.”

“Right, and maybe you should start acting like it, too! Look at us. Which one of us has a real job?”

“Which one of us helps pay your rent? Which one of us buys Olivia clothes every Christmas and birthday? Which one of us supports this whole family financially?” Yes, Harry’s got a job as a lawyer, and he brings in a good amount of money, but as Cara’s career grew, she began to get paid a lot more.

“It wasn’t always like that, though, in case you ‘remember correctly’,” he says, mocking her. And this is also true. When Cara first began modelling professionally and Harry was still in school and attempting to raise Olivia at the same time, she didn’t make much income, and God knows Harry was struggling to hold down two jobs, go to class, and raise a baby all at once. Times were definitely tough.

“That’s not important anymore. What’s important is that I make much more than I used to and it helps way more than if you were doing it all alone.”

“What happens when you get older, huh? When your bust-waist-hips ratio gets off balance? What are you gonna do then? You won’t be able to try and have a relationship with Olivia, that’s for sure.”

“I barely have one with her now!” Cara shouts.

Before he can answer, she snaps, “Just mail me the stupid order. And tell her tonight.” Then she hangs up without another word.

Harry sits there, shocked and fuming. How dare Cara say those things? He knows Olivia loves her mother, of course she does. And he knows it’s not fair that they don’t see each other often, but that was Cara’s choice.

Another thing that’s a little worrying is the fact that Olivia misses him all the time. Since school started, Olivia hasn’t been spending as much time with him as she used to, but they’re still together a lot. He’s read articles about children becoming too dependent on their parents and having a borderline unhealthy bond with them, but it never occurred that it would be happening to him.

But the more he thinks about it, the more he tells himself not to worry. Olivia doesn’t cry when he leaves her anymore, and she’s with Caroline and the other boys almost as much as she’s with him. He’s the only stable parent in her life, so it makes sense that they’d have a strong bond. He gulps when he realizes that now, he really truly is the only parent in her life, at least for now.

He thinks about telling her when he goes to pick her up, but as soon as Emma’s mother opens the door and Olivia comes out and takes his hand and skips to the car and chatters on and on while he buckles her into her car seat he knows he won’t.

As promised, he and the boys take her out for their Saturday night dinner and then they go to Redbox and pick out a movie before they go home and watch it. Olivia, of course, has no idea that he’s worried about her, too busy happily focusing on the movie. He looks at her, curled up under his arm, and feels his awful pang in his gut because he knows telling her she won’t be seeing Cara for a while is going to make her sad, and that’s not what he wants at all.

Possibly the worst thing about being a parent is that it practically kills him whenever Olivia is anything less than happy. Granted, it’s not often, but when it happens, it’s like someone is punching him in the stomach, over and over. When Olivia cries, she does this awful thing where she folds in on herself, making herself smaller as her little body shakes with sobs.

And the thing is, he just loves her so much, so, so much, and he wants nothing more than to take all of her pain and carry it himself, and before she was born he never really knew how it felt. Having a baby helped him figure out how to love someone more than he loves himself.

As he tucks her in, he says, “Baby, can I talk to you for a second before you go to sleep?”

“Okay,” she agrees, sitting up, and he kneels beside her bed, chewing his lip.

“So, Mum got offered a new contract recently,” he says. “That means she’s going to move from the company she’s working for now to a new one.”

“Why?”

“Because they offered her more money, and that means we can pay off more of our bills and buy more nice things for your birthday and Christmas.”

“Well that’s nice, isn’t it?”

“The thing is, the new company is in Milan.” When she doesn’t say anything, Harry asks, “Do you know where Milan is?”

“Italy?” Olivia says.

Harry’s momentarily distracted. “Yes . . . how’d you know that?” He has to admit, he’s impressed.

“Mrs. Campbell has a map in her room,” Olivia says. “Does this mean I have to go to Milan now?”

“That’s the thing,” Harry says slowly. “Because Milan is so far away and we don’t want to tire you out or waste any money . . . Mum was thinking we should get a custody change. Do you know what that is?”

Olivia’s eyes get wide and panicked. “Am I going to have to live with Mum full time now?”

“Uh, no. Actually, we were thinking the other way around. You would stay with me full time, and whenever Mum can visit is when you’d see her. Unless you don’t want that, of course,” he adds hastily.

Olivia chews her lip. “I don’t wanna not see Mummy,” she says, and Harry’s heart sinks. Of course Olivia would want to stay with Cara, why wouldn’t she? She’s her mother, and Harry was dumb for believing she’d pick anyone else.

But then she says, “But I don’t wanna leave you, either.” She looks so little and sad, and Harry feels even worse.

“I’m sorry, babe. You know I don’t want to make you choose between us, and Mummy doesn’t want that, either. She just wants you to be happy, and she figured you’d be happier staying in one place.” He grabs her a tissue and gives it to her to wipe her nose.

“Besides, you’ve got all your friends here, don’t you? Like Emma?” Olivia nods. “And you’ve got Mrs. Campbell and everyone at school, and you’ve got Uncle Louis, and Uncle Niall, and Uncle Li, and Uncle Zayn . . .”

“And Caroline,” Olivia adds. “And Grandma and Robin and Auntie Gemma and Grandpa.”

“Right,” Harry agrees. “So, that’s that? You’ll stay with me?”

There’s a pause as Olivia considers it, but then she nods. “Yes.”

Harry feels a little dazed. He won’t have to sleep at Niall and Josh’s because the house is so empty when Olivia’s not there to fill it. He won’t have to deal with listening to her sad “I love you”s on the phone. Olivia’s staying. For real.

He feels a smile threatening to split his face in two. Olivia is smiling too, albeit looking a little confused, but that’s okay. He has no idea why he felt bad for Cara few hours ago. “Okay,” he says finally. “Good. I’m glad.”

“I’ll miss Mummy though,” Olivia says thoughtfully.

“She’ll visit,” Harry promises. He’s definitely holding Cara to that. “But you have me. You know that? You’ll always have me.” Harry had googled ‘how to break it to your child that you’re getting a custody change’ and the results had been fairly helpful. They informed him that he had to assure and remind Olivia that just because Cara wasn’t going to be as involved in her life, it didn’t mean Harry wasn’t.

Olivia furrows her eyebrows at him. “Yes, of course.”

Harry smiles again and kisses her all over her face, making her shriek and try to squirm away. “I love you, you know that too?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Oh, you know everything, do you?”

“Just about,” Olivia shrugs. “Uncle Niall says I’m the smartest, most beautiful girl in the entire universe and anyone who disagrees is a piece of poo.”

Harry silently thanks Niall for remembering to censor his words around his four-year-old. He snorts. “He’s absolutely right. Time for lights out, okay?”

“Okay.” She settles back in bed and he tucks her in.

“I love you. Again. To infinity and beyond.” Harry will perhaps never get tired of saying that.

“I love you too,” Olivia answers sleepily. Harry shuts her door and goes into his own room, sitting on his bed and pulling out his phone. He sends Cara a single text:

She’s staying.