The Lateral

Chapter 8

C alandra had texted again, and I shook my head as I looked over at my phone and saw what she’d asked. This was the third time she’d sent the question—it was different wording, but the essence was the same. “Yes. Absolutely. Positively!” I quickly answered. She, her mom, and her son were invited here, there was no doubt.

Another text immediately came back to me, and it was another question she’d asked before: “He’ll be there?”

I shook my head again. “It’s Jake’s house!! So yeah,” I typed. “Where else would he be?”

She didn’t respond to that. Instead she wrote, “I’m puking,” which I hoped wasn’t true, since they were on the way here in her mom’s purple truck, and it would have been a shame to damage that cute vehicle. As I knew from experience, it was really hard to get the smell of vomit out of your upholstery. Years before, I had been sick when I’d had to sleep in my own car outside of Grand Junction. A few days later, when I’d felt well enough to get up, I’d cleaned away the nasty remains but the smell had lingered until I’d scrapped that car (due to the engine giving up the ghost, not because of the puke odor).

I knew that Calandra was nervous about coming; it was obvious from the thirty-six texts she’d sent to me with questions, worries, and generalized freak-outs. But it was really, really important that she was here, because she, her mom Petrise, and her son Dreyden were the only guests. This was Meadow’s thirteenth birthday and Jake had very kindly offered to throw a party at his house, since mine was small for entertainment purposes. The thing was, we didn’t have very many invitees. I knew him, Calandra and her family, a few other people from the club who would not have been interested (and who I didn’t want to ask, anyway), and…

Crickets chirped because that was it, I had no one else. Meadow didn’t either, not one friend that she wanted to celebrate with. When I thought of that, I started to cry—never in front of her, but it had been close a few times. “I hate everyone at that school,” she’d explained to me, and I did, too.

But the good thing, the very good thing, was that Jake and the animals were at his house, and those friends made Meadow want to be here even if no party guests came at all.She had been talking about him and his menagerie pretty constantly since we’d visited the weekend prior, and we’d come again a few times since. She’d also gone to the school library to look for books about animal care and I’d seen her searching for information on her phone, too, about cows, pigs, and all the others.

“There’s a farm club at my school,” she’d mentioned one morning, and then had looked at me from beneath her eyelashes, waiting for my response.

I’d been checking out the window for the bus’s arrival. “Do you have your water bottle? A farm club sounds fun. Do they raise their own animals? Where’s your left shoe?”

“I think they do,” she’d answered, waving the bottle at me before putting it in her bag, and then checking under the couch for her missing footwear. “You know what would be cool? If Jake came. He could talk to the farm people and also to the Woodsmen Appreciation Club,” she’d said.

“Here it is! Why was your shoe in the oven? He’d probably do it,” I agreed. “Remember when we were at the community center? He was there to do a Q and A for Assistive Arms.”

“It’s Helping Hands ,” she’d sighed, but she had put on the shoe and her coat. “Do you really think he would come to my school?”

“You could ask him. He’s such a nice person,” I’d said, and she had nodded hard. “Gadzooks!” I’d exclaimed next. “There’s the bus. Run!”

Calandra, however, had seemed less convinced about Jake and his niceness when I’d invited her to celebrate with us. “He’s seriously throwing a birthday party for Meadow?” she’d asked, her eyebrows high and her face the picture of shock. “Jake Koval? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Jake Koval.” I held my hand over my head, getting on my tiptoes to reflect how tall he was, and then I held my palms far apart to show his width. “Jake Koval, on the offensive line of the Woodsmen.” Next I put my fingers over my arm, squeezing an imaginary (and enormous) biceps, and I circled them around my thigh to demonstrate the girth of his.

“Damn, Ember! I know who he is!” she’d told me, laughing as she shook her head. “But he doesn’t seem like the type to hold a tween party.”

“She’ll be a real teenager, not a tween anymore,” I’d answered wistfully, but then Travis the owner was coming out of his office and barking at us to hurry our asses up, and we hadn’t had time to talk more.

But Calandra had texted me the next morning, and she’d sent a bunch of links to various Woodsmen gossip sites and videos. Apparently, Jake had a bit of a reputation. “So, my friend and I saw a few of the players at Roy’s Tavern, and Koval was there. He wouldn’t even look at us but my friend offered to buy him a drink. She was so sweet to him, and he totally ignored her. He’s a dick and he hates all women,” a girl said breathlessly, licking her glossy lips, but I didn’t think that was true. All women? What about me and Meadow? He didn’t hate us.

There were also items about a disagreement he’d had with another teammate, Noah Boone, when that guy had been promoted to being a starter, but it sounded to me as if the Boone guy had deserved it. He wasn’t trying hard enough! Jake had sparked him into action, and it had worked out, hadn’t it? Noah Boone was now a great player and I’d heard Jake talk about him like they were friends. Meadow had questioned him closely about the entire team, in fact, so all this gossip about him not getting along with them? I shook my head. Bullcrap. I couldn’t believe any of that about someone so nice, which was what I wrote back to Calandra. She didn’t argue but I could tell from her silence that she also didn’t believe me.

That was ok, because she’d meet him today and see for herself. At the moment, he and Meadow were out in the barn, which was where they both liked to be, and I was finishing the decorations. I blew up the last balloon and then had to bend over, coughing. This was getting ridiculous! I was so out of shape that balloons were now a struggle? I was going to start exercising, for real. Starting next week, I’d break a serious sweat.

While I sat trying to catch my breath, the doorbell rang, a pretty chiming sound. I hurried to the front of the house, smiling and expecting to see Calandra waiting on the porch.

“Uh, hi,” a huge man greeted me. He wasn’t as tall as Jake, but he was even wider…and I got the feeling that we had already met.But this happened a lot. I’d seen so many different faces at so many different clubs over the years that strangers sometimes seemed familiar to me.

“I’m here for Jake,” he said. “Jake Koval.”

“He’s in the barn. Can I help you with something?” I asked. I was really thinking that I knew this guy. Had I danced for him in particular? He wasn’t a regular at B-Dzld, was he? I tilted my head, trying to figure it out.

“We’re here for a birthday party.” He stared back at me and seemed equally confused, and I hoped that he didn’t recognize me from the club. That would have been very embarrassing for him and especially for Meadow. She still liked to pretend that I wasn’t naked on a catwalk almost every night.

Then he said, “Are you…who are you?” And he also looked at me with his head tilted.

“It’s my niece’s birthday,” I said, deciding to leave out the word “grand” in order to avoid confusion.

He smiled. “Oh, ok. That makes more sense,” he answered. “I’m Freddy, a friend of Jake’s. I didn’t even know he was doing the mentoring thing but it’s awesome. He’s a great guy.”

“He’s great,” I agreed, but now I was also confused by what he meant about mentoring. “I’m Ember.” We shook hands.

He gestured at the SUV parked in the driveway. “I’m going to help my wife get our kids out of the car and then we’ll be back.”

“Bring them right in,” I offered. “I need to run to the barn and get Jake. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.” I knew we had enough cake, since he had ordered a huge one from a bakery, and thank goodness for that since extra guests had shown up.

The man’s eyes widened a little. “You’re inviting us…ok,” he said. “We’ll come right in.”

I, however, went out, through the back door and over the snow-covered deck to path that led to the barn. I heard Jake and Meadow talking (about football, of course) as I entered.

“Hey,” I greeted them, and then pointed at a bale of it. “Get it?” By now, I had learned that it wasn’t straw and that horses had hair, not fur, and hooves instead of paws.

Meadow rolled her eyes at my joke but a tiny smile curved Jake’s lips. “Can we help you?” he asked.

“Your friend Freddy is here.”

“Already? Damn, it’s later than I thought. We better clean up,” he told Meadow. “The guests are arriving.”

She nodded and ran toward the house, but he stopped to put away their rakes first. No, those were pitchforks. I’d also learned that. “What guests?” I wondered. “Do you expect more people besides that Freddy and his family?”

“The other day, Meadow said she didn’t have anyone to invite to her party,” he told me. “She didn’t want to ask anyone in her class, and you only had the one woman. She said it was all right if I invited some of my friends.”

“Some of your friends? Oh!” My exclamation had been so loud that I’d startled Fort, the Belgian horse. “I’m sorry,” I soothed him. “Excuse me for yelling. I was just surprised because I realized how I knew that Freddy guy.”

“Freddy Uchida,” Jake stated. “He’s our center.”

“The one who throws the ball to the quarterback,” I clarified, and he told me that the ball was snapped, not thrown. “Ok, the guy who is in the middle of the Woodsmen offensive line.”

“That’s him. Boone’s coming with his wife and kid, Audrey and Alice. Morin’s out of town visiting his brother-in-law, but Seyram will be here. Seyram Adiang.”

“I know who all those people are,” I said, proud of myself.

“A few others, too.”

“How many others?” I asked, feeling slightly anxious. Did we have enough food?

It turned out that we did not, because the house soon filled with football players and their families. But fortunately, Kayden Matthews (the quarterback/ball thrower) arrived with at least thirty pizzas along with his wife Kylie, their baby, and a dog. They also brought Jamison, the receptionist from the community center. Kellen Karma showed up as well with his wife Caitlyn and with a pot that was big enough for a family of four to live in.

“It’s soup. It’s pescatarian,” he informed me, and I nodded, not knowing what else to say. “I’ll put it on the stove.”

“We brought spoons and bowls, too,” his gorgeous wife added. The two of them together could have been on the cover of an old romance novel, and I stared in appreciation for a moment before I realized that I needed to thank them and everyone else, too. I had been in such a confused state since these people had started to arrive that I didn’t know if I’d done it yet. Noah Boone and his wife, Audrey, had brought a giant cooler full of ice cream, and I remembered to say it to them.

“You’re welcome.Glad to meet you, Ember,” Noah said, smiling. He carefully took his little girl from Audrey’s arms—the baby and his wife looked like they could have been twins, but with a very large age gap. “We’ve been asking Koval about you but we haven’t heard shi…” He looked down at his daughter and seemed to rethink his word choices. “We hadn’t heard enough,” he completed the sentence, and Audrey smiled.

“We’re very glad to meet you,” she confirmed. “Jake is so reticent that it’s hard to know what’s happening in his life.”

I didn’t know what was happening, either. That was clear because I hadn’t been aware that he’d invited a houseful of people, and I could have warned Calandra and Petrise, her mom. I really should have, because Calandra almost turned around and ran when I opened the front door for them and she saw the rest of the guests.

Her mother took her arm and shook her head. “This is our one and only chance to party with the Woodsmen, and we’re going for it,” she announced. “Let’s meet some football players!”

Calandra calmed down, but it took a while. I was busy with the many guests and making sure that Meadow was ok, so I tried to get Jake to go deal with her in my place. He mumbled an excuse about the barn instead but fortunately, the wide receiver’s wife stepped in. Caitlyn pulled Calandra aside to talk about babies and pregnancy, since she and her husband were expecting. They settled down together and my friend was fine up until the last guest arrived and Jake welcomed him inside.

“That’s Adiang!” Calandra said, her voice louder than the rest of the crowd, and then she looked like she wanted to die from embarrassment. But Kylie’s dog barked and Jake’s joined in, and everyone laughed when Seyram Adiang said that was the way he liked to make an entrance. The moment passed.

“How did you and Jake meet?” Noah Boone asked me later, as I prepped more food in the kitchen. He wasn’t the only one who had been curious; nearly everyone here had been questioning me pretty closely when they discovered that we didn’t know each other from the Helping Hands mentoring program. Jamison, the receptionist there, had made that clear—but he had kept back how we’d been booted from the building, and I was grateful for that.

I looked over at Meadow, who was playing with the Matthews’ dog and laughing at something that Jamison was now telling her. That kid looked like he’d grown a few inches since we’d met him at the community center and it felt to me like so much time had passed for us, too.

“We had a problem with Jake’s truck,” I said carefully. That wasn’t totally a lie, but it was far as I wanted to go with the truth. I didn’t want to embarrass Meadow at her own party, not when she was having so much fun and getting along with everyone.

“That vehicle is his pride and joy,” Noah told me. “He loves that thing like I love my wife.”

Audrey Boone turned to stare at him.

“Not that much, pixie,” he said, and kissed her. I liked her a lot, and I’d already gotten some interesting information from her about college and how to get there. I was asking for Meadow, of course, since she had potential for things like that.

“I’m glad to see Jake enjoying himself,” she commented now, and both of them nodded.

“Why wouldn’t he be enjoying himself?” I asked.

“We were worried after his break-up,” Noah explained, and his wife shot him another look. He didn’t seem to catch that one, because he continued, “He was with one of Audrey’s friends for a while, but it didn’t work out. She moved away for a job and she’s seeing someone new.”

“Oh,” I said. Poor Jake. That woman had left him?

“I think it was for the best,” Audrey said quickly. “He and Araceli had fun, but it was a mutual decision to end things. Right, Noah?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t sound very certain, though. “He was pretty unhappy about it, in his way. In the way that he wasn’t saying it, but he was feeling it,” he explained to me.

“Well, they were together for a while,” she said, now nudging him. “Araceli was upset, too, but they both knew it was the right thing to end it,” she told me.

“I’ve been trying to introduce him to more women, but you know Jake,” Noah Boone said, and now Audrey elbowed him hard along with her glare. “I’m not doing that anymore,” he quickly assured me.

I didn’t understand their conflict and I didn’t want to get into married-people problems, but I did have a question. “What did you mean when you said ‘you know Jake?’” I asked.

“Well, you know how he gets around women,” Boone answered. “He turns red, he doesn’t speak—”

“Jake?” I asked disbelievingly. “Jake Koval?” I held my hand above my head. “Tall guy, ponytail? Woodsmen player? That’s who you’re talking about?”

“He wasn’t like that with you?” Audrey asked, and I shook my head, because he certainly wasn’t.

“He’s not shy, not at all. We have a great time together and he speaks plenty,” I assured them.

For some reason, it made them both very happy. Audrey told me that she was glad to hear it, and that Jake was wonderful. “He’s so good with the baby,” she mentioned, smiling at her daughter.

“Yeah, he needs to have a few himself,” her husband agreed. “He sees what he’s missing.” But then that baby started to cry, very loudly, and Audrey had to feed her. All of them went off together and I stood staring, wondering how they’d been so wrong about Jake and thinking back to the first time I’d met him. He hadn’t been anything like shy and speechless when he’d pounded on my door; he’d been furious and very vocal. But maybe he was only tongue-tied around women that he was interested in romantically. The Boones must have witnessed him acting weirdly with the woman he’d loved and who had, apparently, dumped him and then ran off with someone else.

That girl must have been out of her mind, I decided. Who was better than Jake Koval? Either she was crazy or, as I’d witnessed plenty in my own family, she was just really good at self-sabotage. She had made a poor decision but now she’d have to live with the consequences, because Jake seemed too strong-minded to enter into the rubber band relationships that I’d seen my mom and other relatives have. They were constantly and painfully snapping back to the wrong people, and they never cut the elastic loops that held them together. But he wasn’t like that, and also unlike the people in my family, I bet that the Boones were right and he would be a good parent. He took care of his animals so well! Now, because of his thoughtless ex, fatherhood was delayed for him while he found someone new. Next time, I hoped it would be someone who would appreciate him.

“Are you getting ready to cut the cake?” Calandra asked me. “Is that why you’re waving around a big knife? Shouldn’t Meadow blow out the candles first?”

“Yes, of course,” I snarled. I was waving my hands because I’d become unaccountably angry as I’d thought about the woman that Jake had been seeing, the dumb, confused one who had left him. “You know, some people make the worst choices!”

“Did you pick a bad flavor or something?” She looked in the box at the huge cake. “It looks delicious and it’s so cute how you asked for horse decorations.”

“Jake did that. He got the cake,” I said.

“Jake Koval?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yes, Jake Koval!” I burst out. “The guy of majestic proportions!” I motioned the knife in the air high above me. “The man with legs like a redwood, which is the state tree of California where—”

“Did you call me?” Jake asked, coming around to my side of the kitchen island. “Watch yourself with that knife.” He took it from my grip. “Want me to do the cutting?”

“We have to sing first,” I said, and we got busy lighting thirteen candles while Calandra gathered everyone in the dining room.

Meadow almost started to cry when she saw the cake. I watched her swallow and blink hard, and then she smiled and blew out all the little flames. I hoped she’d made a good wish, and I hoped it would come true for her. Christal hadn’t been in touch today, although I’d broken my vow never to talk to her again. I’d texted several times with reminders that it was her daughter’s birthday and I’d begged her to write back with a message I could share with Meadow. That hadn’t happened, but right now, I also didn’t think that it was on Meadow’s mind. Everyone clapped and Seyram Adiang whistled through his fingers loud enough to break glass. I looked at Jake and he was clapping too, but he was watching me. I wiped all the tears from my face and smiled, because I wanted him to see how much I appreciated his generosity.

We cut the cake, served it with the Boones’ ice cream, and then? There were presents. All these people who didn’t even know Meadow had brought stuff for her to open. I’d stretched to get anything, with the recent bills from the TV service and with having more nights off than I wanted. Travis, my boss, was still angry at how I hadn’t come in after Meadow’s school suspension, and he wasn’t scheduling me as much as I needed. “You’re not the draw I thought you’d be,” he’d said, when I tried to talk to him about it. “You’re not getting anyone into the private rooms, and why should I pay you if you don’t want to work?”

Anyway, it seemed like these other people were making up any gaps that my gifts should have filled. First, Audrey and Noah Boone gave her a huge set of books, ones that Audrey promised were amazing. “They were my favorites,” she said. “I hope you like them.”

“Thank you,” Meadow said politely, and she really did seem interested.

“That’s so nice that you picked something special to you,” I added, and Audrey smiled back at me.

Caitlyn and Kellen Karma had given her clothes, and those were very exciting. Meadow’s face lit up when she saw a lot of pink inside the gift bag. She also got tons of Woodsmen gear, some makeup, a football, gift cards, and my present, boots for the barn.

She hugged those to her chest. “Thanks, Ember.”

“You’re welcome,” I tried to say, but I was still just about crying at how happy she was. This day was such a win that I couldn’t even believe it.

“Here,” Jake said, and handed over a small box. “That’s from me.”

“Is it a horse?” Meadow guessed, and he grinned. She slid away the ribbon and removed the paper, and then took off the lid. “Oh,” she sighed. “Look!”

“That’s beautiful,” Calandra told her as she leaned over to see. “It’s a necklace that spells her name,” she let the rest of us know. Both of them carefully extracted it from the velvet backing and Meadow held up her hair so that Calandra could fasten the clasp. “Meadow” was written in script between delicate silver chains.

“Thank you,” she said to Jake. “This is exactly what I wanted! I love it.”

He shrugged. “I thought I heard you say something about a name necklace.” I knew that he had, because she had told us that her mother would buy it for her. Christal hadn’t come through, but Jake had stepped in.

“It’s so pretty!” Caitlyn Karma told them. “I love personalized stuff. It means someone is really thinking about you.” She laughed when her husband took out his phone and appeared to type in a note. “I already know that you do,” she said to him. He seemed a little standoffish, but it was obvious to me and everyone else how he felt about her.

It was also obvious to me, but I hoped not to anyone else, that I was going to cry and I wouldn’t be able to stop it this time. “We need more napkins,” I mumbled in a shaky voice, and I hurried toward the kitchen. I went into the pantry, the little room where Jake kept food, and tried to get myself back under control.

“Ember?” He knocked on the door with his usual force and I quickly opened it. “What are you doing in here?”

“I got overwhelmed,” I explained.

“With sadness?”

I shook my head. “It’s so amazing that these people came today and sang to her and brought presents. I was already on some kind of emotional cliff and then when you gave her that necklace…” My breath caught. “That was so nice,” I choked out. “That was the best thing.”

He seemed very uncomfortable. “I didn’t think her mom was going to remember.”

“She didn’t even remember that thirteen years ago, she gave birth to a wonderful daughter. I hope your present means that you can see how Meadow’s not just a hellion who swears at me. She is a great girl, but there’s a lot she has to fight through to show it.”

“I do see. Anybody who’s so good to my animals is ok with me.” That made me cry more, and he looked concerned. “Are you going to come out of the pantry?”

I looked up at the ceiling and used all my mental powers to force calmness. I cleared my throat, which made me cough, and then I shook back my hair and brushed my fingertips over my cheeks. “Do I look like I was crying?” I asked.

“You mean, are your eyes swollen and is your nose red?”

“I’ll take another minute in here,” I decided, and I purposefully thought about my car payment and the rent that was due soon. The familiar anxiety of bills brought me back from the crying cliff.

It felt like it was much too soon, but the party had to end sometime; there were too many babies and kids to make a big night of it. Eventually, everyone said goodbye and couple by couple, family by family, they went out to Jake’s long driveway.

Calandra, her mother, and Dreyden were the last to go after they’d helped us clean up. He had his head on his mom’s shoulder and was sucking his thumb, and I leaned to kiss his little foot. “Thank you for coming,” I told them.

“Anytime you want us to hang with the Woodsmen, we’re in,” Petrise said, laughing.

Calandra also had a huge smile. She held up her phone and waggled it.

“What does it say?” I asked, trying to read the screen. People always chose text sizes that were way too small.

“I’m showing you that I have Seyram Adiang’s number,” she said, and then laughed out loud when my jaw dropped. “We’ll see,” she called over her shoulder as they went to her mom’s truck.

Meadow had school the next day so we also had to go, but she spoke to Jake again before we left. “Thank you for my necklace.” She covered it with her palm as she said the words and she smiled, too. “Thank you for the party.”

I waited for him to answer that he wasn’t doing anything else or that he didn’t care, brushing it off like it was nothing as he had about coming to the coffee shop and dropping by to see me a few times. But instead, he smiled back at her. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I hope you had fun.”

She swore up and down that she did, and added that she’d come over after school tomorrow if he needed help. “If it’s ok,” she said as she looked at me.

I nodded, so glad that she had thought to ask and more importantly, that they were friends. “It’s great. Thank you, Jake,” I echoed, and we pretty much drifted on a cloud of happiness out to the car.

“This was the best day,” she announced, and I told her that was true. It was a total win. We talked the whole way home about the football players, their wives and kids, and especially about Calandra and Seyram.

“He seems like he’d be nice to her,” she mentioned.

“Do you think so?” I asked, and Meadow nodded. “I really hope it. Her last boyfriend was…ugh. But at least she got Dreyden out of the deal.” I glanced at her and opened my mouth.

“No, I don’t need the lecture about babies having babies, not again,” she said before I got a chance to speak, but she shook her head and smiled instead of getting mad at me. As we slowed to turn into our driveway, she sat up and looked intently through the windshield. “What was that? Did you see it?”

“What?”

“Like a little flame…there!”

I had spotted it too, a small orange light that glowed briefly near our front step. “It’s someone smoking in the dark,” I stated. That orange flash had come from a cigarette as a person took a drag.

“Who is it?”

Instead of pulling straight in, I angled the car so that my brights shone on our house, and on the person standing in front of it. We both saw her, but our reactions were different.

“Mom!” Meadow said joyfully as my stomach sank to my shoes. “She remembered!”

“No, don’t get out of the car!” I ordered, but it was too late. She was already running to the house and calling out again to her mother. I got out too and went after her.

“Mom, I’m so glad you’re here!” she said, and almost knocked Christal over with her hug. “Thanks for coming on my birthday.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Christal answered, the words clipped and rushed. “I would have been here. I would have been here all the time. All the time!”

“I know,” Meadow said, but she had already lost her happy grin.

“You know I should have been here. Don’t you? You know that I didn’t give you up, don’t you?” her mom continued, spewing out the sentences. “You know that. You know that I didn’t do anything wrong and that they made up lies. You know that. It’s lies. It’s lies!”

“Ok,” Meadow said. She looked back at me. “Mom, it’s ok. I know that you didn’t mean for bad stuff to happen.”

“We can’t do this now,” I told Christal. “Tomorrow you can call the social worker and talk to her about arranging visitation.” She hadn’t done any of the things that she was supposed to have accomplished in the reunification plan and had acted like it didn’t even exist. I was sure that the answer she would get would be negative, but they could be the ones to give it to her.

Christal started yelling, but she wasn’t responding to my suggestion. She wasn’t saying that she was happy to see her daughter or wishing her a happy birthday, either. “Fuck you, Ember!” she hollered instead, and she repeated it several times.

Oh, grits. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you even know where we lived?” Meadow turned to look at me again and in the beams of light from the car, I saw guilt on her face.

“You’re trying to keep her away from me!” Christal shouted.

“No, I didn’t make that decision.” I stealthily reached into my pocket for my phone, but it was in my purse. My purse was in the car, and double grits. “I didn’t take her.”

“She’s here though, isn’t she? Lying bitch.”

“Mom, it’s ok,” Meadow said. I caught the nerves in her voice. “Do you want me to tell you about my birthday party? There was chocolate cake. We brought leftovers home and you can have a piece.”

Her mother didn’t seem to hear her. I thought that Christal was on something different now, something speeding her up. Her shadow, projected onto the side of our house in the headlights, lurched and shook.

“We can work together and fix this,” I said placatingly. I took a few steps back and toward the phone in my car, but I also didn’t want to leave Meadow unprotected. Maybe Christal wouldn’t hurt her daughter, but I wasn’t sure about that.

“Thirteen years ago you stole her from me! You ruined my life, you whore!”

“I was nine years old!” I said back, although arguing was pointless. I never should have responded and I stopped, but she kept screaming at me, saying a lot of things I’d heard from her before. I thought I was better, smarter, prettier, but I was trash, just like everyone else in our family. I was ugly, I was stupid, I was nothing, I was jealous of her boyfriend and that was why I’d caused all those problems.

“He—” I bit my lip. I couldn’t say that in front of Meadow and it really wasn’t any use to fight. “That was a long time ago,” I said. “Can’t we get over it?”

“You ruined my fucking life!”

We weren’t getting over it tonight, anyway. “Meadow, go inside,” I said. “Go in the house.” Lock the door, I wanted to tell her, except I didn’t want to push Christal over the edge into full-blown hysteria. I tried to think it hard enough that she would understand me, but at first she didn’t even move.

Then she nodded. “I better go. I have school tomorrow,” she said to her mother. “I love you, Mom.”

Christal turned her head briefly to look at her before she refocused on me, but I watched Meadow go into the house, and I thought I heard the bolt slide over. That might have been my imagination because I’d wanted to hear it so much.

“Chris,” I said, but that was when she charged at me. I went for the car, for the safety of its locking doors and toward my purse with the phone, but I didn’t quite make it there.