September 12, Saturday
"YOU COULD try withholding their allowance," I suggested to Warren. "Until they start picking up after themselves."
He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one dealing with the fallout when Lily throws a fit about it."
"I'm just trying to help."
"Help would be coming back where you belong."
I counted to five, then pressed on. "The kids mentioned you haven't been around much. That you're rarely home before midnight."
His jaw tightened. "Since you're so curious—things haven't exactly been smooth at the dealership.
Sales are down, I've got a manager out on leave, and I'm covering shifts I shouldn't have to cover at my level.
So yeah, I've been putting in hours." He leaned toward the camera.
"Which, by the way, makes this a spectacularly bad time for you to be vacationing at a hotel for six months. "
"I understand that's hard."
He scoffed. "No, you don't. You don't know what it's like to have to work for a living."
"I've been working the whole time, Warren. I just wasn't getting a paycheck."
He rolled his eyes. "Do we have to do this?"
"No." I inhaled, then made myself ask the next question. "How are things going with Heidi?"
Warren scoffed. "That's not something I discuss with you.
" His tone had an edge to it I hadn't heard directed my way in a while, not since the early days after the papers were signed.
Then something shifted in his expression, suspicion replacing irritation.
"Wait—did you say something to Elaine? She's been scarce all week.
Barely returning my texts about the kids' schedule. "
I felt my stomach drop. "I said something I shouldn't have, to her, on a call last weekend. I've been meaning to fix it."
"Jesus, Isabel." He dragged a hand down his face. "Can you make this any harder on me and the kids?"
"I'll call her."
"Great. Wonderful plan." His phone buzzed somewhere off-screen, and he glanced at it, exhaling hard. "It's the dealership. I have to take this."
"Warren—"
"Don't worry about it." He was already standing, already reaching to end the call. "You've got more important things to focus on. Go play Law and Order. I'll handle the actual family."
The screen went black.
I sat in the small conference room for a long moment and let his words work their way under my skin.
Go play Law and Order.
I'd heard some version of that phrase from him more than once now, tossed off carelessly, and every time I told myself it was just Warren being Warren, reaching for whatever would sting the most in the moment.
But sitting there alone, I acknowledged there was some sliver of truth buried in his contempt.
Some part of me had wanted this assignment not for any real sense of civic purpose, but because it let me disappear into something that looked important from the outside while everything at home quietly came apart without me.
Warren wasn't entirely wrong.