Chapter 8
David
Not literally. But close enough. I’m standing on the courthouse steps with my briefcase in one hand and my phone in the other, watching notification after notification cascade down my screen like a controlled demolition. My blood goes cold.
I open Marta’s text first. Read it. Read it again.
Then I play Nora’s first voicemail, already walking toward the parking garage, legs moving fast.
“David, it’s Nora. Marta called—the school. She has a family emergency and can’t do pickup today. I’m going to keep Michaela with me here until I reach you. Please call me back as soon as you get this.”
I play the second one. Her voice is clipped now, the patience thinning.
“David, it’s Nora again. I still have Michaela with me. I haven’t been able to reach anyone on the approved list. Please call me the moment you get this.”
I open her text.
Nora:
Marta called with a family emergency. I haven’t been able to reach you, Caleb, or your mother for an approved pickup contact. I’m taking Michaela to my house so I can feed her and she can wait in comfort. Please contact me as soon as you get this.
Holy fuck. There are three adults besides me on Michaela’s pickup list. It’s supposed to provide maximum coverage, a redundancy for a redundancy.
But today, it proved to be nothing more than a house of cards.
One was taken off the table and the whole thing just came crashing down.
Now my daughter has been stranded for hours and her school principal—a woman who could lose her job for exactly this kind of decision—stepped in because I was unreachable.
Because Marta was in Milwaukee. My mother was in surgery.
Caleb was in depositions. Every safety net in Michaela’s life had a hole at the exact same moment, and the only person who caught her was a woman I’ve been trying to keep at arm’s length.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
I hit call. She answers on the first ring.
“David.”
“I just got out of court. Is she OK?”
“She’s fine. She’s been fine the whole time. We’re at my house.”
I’m already in my car, key in the ignition. “I’m leaving the courthouse now. Twenty minutes, maybe less.”
“Take your time. She’s eaten, she’s done her homework. And she’s currently engaged in what appears to be a legal proceeding involving my dog.”
Despite everything—the guilt, the panic, the sick feeling of having failed at the one thing I cannot fail at—something in my chest loosens by half a degree.
“A legal proceeding.”
“Archie is on trial for the theft of a tennis ball. Michaela is serving as both prosecutor and defense counsel. I’ve been appointed jury.”
“What’s the verdict looking like?”
“Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. She’s arguing that the ball was abandoned property and therefore fair game under maritime salvage law, which she says applies to all retrievers because they are, and I quote, ‘basically boats with legs.’”
I exhale. Something that’s almost a laugh. “That’s . . . not how maritime law works.”
“I mentioned that. She overruled me.”
“She does that.”
A beat of silence. Not empty. Full. The kind that holds everything neither of us is saying.
“Thank you,” I say. “Nora. I mean it.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I gave her five marshmallows in her hot chocolate. You can deduct that from my credibility as a responsible adult.”
“The limit is three.”
“She claimed the limit is five. I said two, but she negotiated me to four and then I caved on the fifth because she cited precedent.”
I stop at a red light. Press my thumb against the bridge of my nose. “She cited precedent.”
“Apparently Grandma v. Kingsley Household, 2023, established a clear standard for marshmallow allocation that supersedes all prior rulings.”
“I’m going to have a word with my mother about creating binding agreements with my daughter.”
“Too late. The precedent is set. You’ll need to appeal.”
The light turns green. I drive.
“I’ll be there in fifteen,” I tell her.
“We’ll be here.”
We. Her and Michaela. In her house. Waiting for me. Like it’s the most natural arrangement in the world.
I have spent seven years training myself not to want this—to not know a woman’s door this well.
To not picture my daughter inside someone else’s house and feel anything other than logistical.
Tonight, the training has gone silent. Either it failed when I wasn’t paying attention, or it took one look at Nora and decided to make an exception, and I don’t know which is the worse betrayal of myself.
I hang up and drive too fast, running through the arithmetic of my own failure. By the time I pull up in front of Nora’s house, I’ve composed and discarded twelve versions of an apology.
None of them feel big enough. Because the math is simple and damning: every time I reach for something I want, someone else pays the price.
Caleb paid it when I was the son who followed the rules and made him the son who didn’t.
Michaela pays it every time my choices create instability.
And now Nora is paying it—her job, her reputation, her evening—because I couldn’t keep my hands off her and then couldn’t keep my phone on.
I feel like the world’s biggest piece of shit. This woman keeps giving. I keep taking, and offering very little in return. That isn’t who I am, and I hate that I keep losing control.
My father would call this a failure of discipline. He wouldn’t be wrong.
Her porch light is on. Warm yellow against the blue-gray dusk. The house looks exactly the way I remember it from that night, and the memory hits low and hard enough that I have to sit in the car for a second and will my dick to behave.
“She isn’t ours to take,” I tell the growing bulge in my pants.
It doesn’t listen.
Once I have my libido under control, I kill the engine and get out of the car. Before I can knock, the front door opens.
Nora stands there in a cream sweater and dark slacks, one hand still on the knob, like she saw me through the window and spared me the extra formality. Her hair is loose again, and the sight catches me somewhere low and stupid and deeply inconvenient.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” My voice is rougher than I want it to be. “I’m sorry.”
She steps back to let me in. “Come inside before the neighbors overhear and dub you ‘apology dude.’”
I huff a laugh as I step inside. They wouldn’t be wrong. I’m constantly apologizing to Nora lately.
The house smells like tomato soup and something sweet—vanilla, maybe, or melted marshmallow—and underneath it, the clean warm scent that is just her house. It hits me with immediate, dangerous familiarity. I make a mental note to stay out of her kitchen.
A bark sounds from somewhere deeper in the house, followed by Michaela’s laughter down the hall.
I follow the sound and find her on the floor with Nora’s golden retriever—Archimedes, all sixty-something pounds of him—locked in a tug-of-war over a knotted rope toy.
Michaela has both hands wrapped around one end, feet braced against the hardwood, leaning back with her entire body weight.
Archie has the other end clamped in his jaw, tail going like a propeller, ears back, absolutely delighted by the contest. He’s clearly letting her win by degrees, releasing tension in small increments so she thinks she’s gaining ground.
“I’m winning!” Michaela announces to no one, sliding forward as Archie gives a playful tug. “Archimedes, you have to concede! The evidence is overwhelming!”
Archie shakes the rope sideways and Michaela shrieks—pure joy—and tumbles onto her back. Archie immediately drops the rope, lumbers over, and licks her face while she giggles with the kind of helpless, full-body surrender that makes my throat close.
Nora stands a few feet away, arms folded loosely, watching the two of them like she’s trying not to smile too hard.
And there it is again—that treacherous, impossible thing in my chest. Relief so intense it borders on pain.
Michaela spots me first. “Daddy!”
She scrambles off the floor and launches herself at me hard enough that I have to brace to catch her. I do, of course. Automatically. One arm under her, one hand at the back of her head, pulling her close while she wraps herself around me like a very small, opinionated koala.
“Hey, monster.” I bury my face in her hair for one second longer than necessary. “You OK?”
“I’m fine,” she says into my shoulder, which in eight-and-a-half-year-old means I was not fine at all but have recovered enough to be dramatic about it later. Then she pulls back just enough to look at me sternly. “Your phone was off.”
I wince. “I know.”
“That’s bad emergency protocol.”
“It is.”
“I had to invoke alternate authority structures.”
I glance at Nora over Michaela’s head. She’s losing a fight with a laugh.
“Did you,” I say gravely.
“Yes. Nora made soup.”
“Traitor,” I murmur to the ceiling.
“It was good soup,” Michaela informs me. “Also hot chocolate. Also a legal hearing.”
“I heard.”
“She was a very weak jury,” Michaela says, scandalized. “She was swayed by Archimedes’ face.”
“That’s a common judicial failing,” I tell her.
Archie presses his damp nose against my wrist as if to confirm the weak-jury allegation, then leans his full golden weight into my leg like we’re old colleagues.
“I’m outnumbered,” I say.
“You are,” Michaela says cheerfully, still clinging to me. “Miss Nora and I have formed a temporary alliance.”
Miss Nora.
Not Nora. Not Principal Harrison. Something in between. Something domestic enough to make me acutely aware of where I am. Which means all I’m doing right now is fighting my mind so I don’t start picturing the inappropriate things I’d like to do with “Miss Nora” inside her very cozy home.
I set Michaela down but keep a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I was unreachable. My phone was off in court and then—”
“And then you forgot to be a person,” she says.