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He used to be able to snap out of sound sleep – as sound as it ever got – at nothing but a suggestion, but now he can't seem to manage to fight his way into consciousness. Maybe it's a dream, the baby's crying. The baby... crying. Why is. Baby. Crying. Crying. He flings a hand out toward Nate's side of the bed.
"Baby's crying," he mumbles, but even as he does, his fingers slide over cool, empty sheets. Nate is in Boston overnight, another settlement hearing with the erstwhile Mrs. Last time Brad and Maddy had tagged along, and that had turned into a goat-rodeo of biblical proportion, Kelly deciding to sharpen her claws on Brad and Brad losing his temper in a way that he very nearly regretted and that whole clusterfuck was the reason, in fact, that Nate was in Boston alone this time.
And the baby is still crying.
He stumbles down the hall; she is sitting up in the middle of her bed, sobbing her little head off, pale hair sticking up in every direction. When she sees him, she freezes.
"Daddy!?" she demands, hiccuping.
Brad rubs his eyes again, steps into the room with his arms out. "No, just me. What's the matter?"
Maddy lets out a scream that raises every hair on Brad's body. "No! Daddy! Daddy!"
She's three and a half, he reminds himself. Her ability to process logic systems is a long way off. He cannot reason with her.
"Daddy's in Boston, Mads." He sits on the edge of the bed. "C'mere."
"No!" she screeches, and dives off the bed.
He looks at his watch. Zero two fifty. It's going to be a long night.
At 0614 Brad's sitting on the floor of Maddy's bedroom, dozing against the wall and half-dreaming that he's sitting in a Ranger grave; she's snoring under her bed with a nest of blankets, ass in the air and thumb in her mouth. Brad's cell phone vibrates on the floor next to him.
He presses it to his ear on reflex. "Colbert."
"Oh boy," Nate says. "You sound like shit."
"You said she never threw tantrums. I was sold a bill of goods."
"She doesn't throw tantrums, Brad." Nate has the gall to sound amused. Brad rubs his eyes.
"I don't know what the last three hours were, then, but they involved kicking and screaming and demands for unobtainable objects, which is to my understanding—"
"She was asking for me?" Nate interrupts.
"Yeah. She woke up crying, and she would not let me." Brad stops, unsure of how to finish the sentence. Comfort her? Calm her down? He's not even sure what it is that he'd hoped to achieve when he got out of bed, except making the crying stop.
"It takes time," Nate says. It's a gentle, fond voice. "She's still getting used to you."
It's been two months. Brad hasn't ever met a challenge that he couldn't overcome in far less time than the generous frame of eight goddamn weeks, especially with the application of finances, force or both. In the beginning he threw money at the problem, outfitting his spare room into an appropriate habitat, filled with books and smart toys and one of those rugged kids' laptops that can be dropped and drooled on without suffering any ill effects. He took her to Sea World, and to the zoo, both more than once, because she'd fallen in love with the pandas and the penguins alike. It was easy.
It was too easy; about three weeks after Maddy arrived, all the goodwill in which Brad had been investing evaporated when he asked her to pick up her toys before dinner. She didn't pout, she didn't say no, she didn't have a fit. She just made a face and walked away from him, like a teenager in a chubby little midget body, and Brad stood stunned for almost five minutes wondering what the fuck had just happened.
"Your kid hates me," Brad says into the phone. Under the bed, Maddy snuffles, stretches and yawns.
"No, she doesn't," Nate answers. "Listen, this isn't just a good morning call. Flight's delayed, so don't bother coming to the airport, Louis will bring me home."
Louis is Nate's bodyguard. Maddy adores him. She calls him Lulu and he, an otherwise unsmiling giant with fists like sledgehammers, calls her Mad Dog. They like to growl at each other.
"I'll just take her to preschool, then," Brad says, getting to his feet. His back hurts. He's fucking tired. Maddy's poking her head out from under the bed, staring at him and making wordless gimme hands at the phone. He sighs. "Somebody's awake."
He can hear Nate's smile. "Put her on?"
She lets him settle her on his lap while she babbles at her father, and in moments like this, Brad believes the happy family bullshit that Nate keeps saying is just around the corner. Once she adjusts. Once they get settled. He finger combs her hair, breathes in that weirdly sweet sweaty baby smell that she still carries. Moments like this are pretty fucking good.
"I'm done," Maddy announces, and gives the phone back. She slides to the floor, dragging her blanket back out from under the bed and heading for the door, beaming around the thumb in her mouth like nothing ever happened.