15. Chapter Fifteen | Savannah
Chapter fifteen
“I’ve never seen Shane get physically aggressive … did he fly over the cuckoo’s nest?” Vivian asks after I relay the events of this morning at the courthouse. Our girls are upstairs playing Barbies, and my sister is keeping me company while I fold a basket of laundry before I start dinner.
I shrug in response to her question because I’m not actually sure what the correct answer is.
“I don’t know. I feel like Shane has become a stranger to me.
And if we’re going to add even more emotions into the blender of my life, there is a part of me that is sad about that.
I’m sad about how our story ended. I’m sad he let me down and decided he no longer wanted to be my person.
I’m sad that he thinks he can just walk away from our girls and that they aren’t worth him fighting for because damn it, Viv, they are worth everything. ”
I grab another basket of laundry but still can’t find what I’m looking for. My eyebrows scrunch in confusion. Where did it go?
“What’s with the look?” She taps my knee with her hand to get my attention.
“I can’t find the bottoms to the hot pink set I bought last month.
” I dig through my folded laundry in case I just forgot I already folded it.
“I bought the set in three colors—hot pink, navy, and black. I have the other two colors and the bra for the hot pink set, but not the underwear.” I know it’s not upstairs in my closet, nor in my laundry. How did I lose a pair of underwear?
“Is it the same style as that navy and black set?” She nods to the set I already folded .
“Yeah, all three are demi bras and with cheeky bikinis for the bottoms. I only got to wear the pink set once,” I complain.
My sister understands that I like my bra and underwear to match, and without the matching underwear, the bra is useless to me.
It’s still pretty but it would bother me to wear it without the matching underwear.
I know it’s a neurotic thing, but I like how I feel when they match.
“With three little girls, I’m sure it will turn up. I know I have an insane amount of laundry with just one little girl and you have three times that.” Vivian waves her hand away dismissively. “It probably got stuck to a piece of their laundry or something. Just check their drawers.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She could be right, but I don’t think I will find it in the girls’ clothes.
I wash my delicates in a separate load and in garment bags, so I don’t know how I would lose it.
Before I can dwell on it too long, our phones both vibrate at the same time, which usually means the sibling group chat is going off.
Ryan
What did I miss here, Savannah? Why is your attorney crashing our poker game tomorrow night?
Jack
I invited him.
Finn
…Savannah, why did Jack invite your attorney to our poker game?
Liam
I’m good with it. He passed my background check. I was very thorough.
Me
He’s technically not my attorney, his sister Pippa is and they work at the same firm. He just covered for her in court today.
Jack
Honestly, I was glad he was there after Theo told me about Shane’s explosion after court.
Ryan
What did he do?
Finn
WTF happened?
Liam
[secure link of video footage from inside courthouse]
Liam
The sound is a bit muffled so I want additional details of what was all said, but this is enough for me to justify that Shane and I need to have a conversation face to face. I’ll be back in Tennessee by noon tomorrow.
Finn
Did that douchebag put his hands on you, Sav?! Are you okay?
Me
He didn’t put his hands on me, he just… crowded me into the corner and was going to probably touch me. Liam, you do not need to go and talk to him.
Vivian huffs at my comment. “Probably? I just saw the footage, Sav. There’s no probably about it.
It’s like he can’t help himself from making stupid decisions and making his life so much worse, and what an idiot to behave like that in the courthouse where there are cameras and witnesses everywhere.
Scratch that, now that The Cavalry has seen this, all bets are off.
He’s probably going to get his ass kicked for that by one of our brothers.
Probably! That’s like saying I will probably hug my boyfriend when I see him next.
” Vivian quietly giggles at how hilarious she finds herself.
“Do you think it’s a good idea for The Cavalry to ride on over to Shane’s penthouse tonight?
No? I know I don’t want to bail our brothers out tonight, plus it would be all the way in Nashville and that sounds like a lot of work, okay?
So, I’m going with probably to try and keep the peace.
” I raise my eyebrow at her as I justify my peace-making efforts with our brothers.
“Yeah, like Liam would ever end up in a jail cell.” Vivian snickers.
She’s not wrong. We don’t actually know what Liam does, but his company does something with the Department of Defense and he knows people in every law enforcement branch out there—and probably ones I don’t even know exist. His company is called LC )
I throw a balled-up pair of socks at my sister as she laughs. “They need to calm down or you know they will all show up here to make sure you’re okay. And I’ll help fold the laundry if you put on the recent Real Housewives.”
Vivian
Clarifying that she is not *literally* drowning. She is sassy, safe, and smiling next to me. All’s well over here!
Finn
I’m still on my way.
Ryan
Meet you there.
“Look at what you did!” I accuse my sister, but really, I knew they would come as soon as they heard something happened. I’m just surprised that —
Ding-dong.
I narrow my eyes at my sister as she shrugs.
Opening my security camera, I see the last person I should be surprised to see at my door.
He may not be in the group sibling chat, but news in a small town spreads faster than the internet, especially when it’s juicy gossip like a man yelling at his soon-to-be ex-wife in public, and sometimes, the loudest clucking hens are my own brothers.
Of course, Murphy Callahan would drop whatever he was doing wherever he was when he heard about today’s events.
I get up to go unlock the door. “It’s Daddy,” I call over my shoulder.
As soon as I open the front door, Daddy wraps me up in a bear hug. “Hey darling girl, how are you?”
“Who called you?” I level him with a glare.
He puts on his best innocent face—but it falls flat. “What? No one called me.”
I hum. “Okay, who sent you a text?”
Daddy laughs. “Bingo, you always knew how to ask the right questions. Honestly, Sav, it was all of them. I heard you had a tough day and wanted to pop by.” He follows me into the family room as little feet stampede down the stairs.
“Papa!” Lucy attacks him with her version of a bear hug. She’s been the one with the hardest questions since everything happened, but at six years old, she doesn’t have a social filter and I kind of love that she isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions—of Shane or myself.
“Do you want to come play a game with us? You can pick!” Emily pleads. She always wants to be doing something fun and is the first to ask what we’re doing next, even if we are still in the middle of an activity.
“Oooo, let’s play Uno! I don’t want to play Scrabble because I can’t make up words like you guys can. It’s cheating because I can’t read yet,” Vivian’s daughter Eloise declares.
My daughter Olivia slides into the recliner and opens her book back up.
She’s been the quietest one since Shane officially moved out, but as the oldest, she’s also the most aware of what’s going on, and what this means in the future of things.
I need to have a one-on-one date with her to pull some of those feelings out.
Shane was supposed to take them to dinner the week after he moved out, but he rescheduled.
His assistant later cancelled that dinner all together, and except for a few phone calls with the girls, they haven’t seen their dad in person in weeks.
I get mad at what Shane is doing to our family and to me personally, but when I see the hurt he has caused our girls?
I want to push him right off a dock into a crocodile infested swamp while he wears a vest of chicken cutlets. Chomp, chomp, asshole.
“Did someone say Uno?” I hear the beep of the front door closing and look up to see Finn and Ryan coming in.
Our security system has custom codes that I can give to people that I want to have access.
It also allows me to program the time or day the codes can access the house, like for the cleaning company or a repairman, but of course, my family’s code allows them access whenever they want.
Daddy just insists on ringing the doorbell out of habit.
Ryan sets a stack of pizzas on the coffee table before coming over and pulling me off the couch and into a hug. I love that my brothers just handled dinner for our crew and removed a task off my to-do list for the day.
“You good?” he quietly asks me.
“I’m good. I promise, Ryan.” We’re all close as a sibling group, but with our December birthdays, Ryan is just twenty-five days shy of being my Irish twin.
Our parents were pretty busy and actually came close multiple times to having Irish twins.
Jack may be the oldest at forty-one, but Liam is only thirteen months younger than him.
I turned thirty-nine a few months ago and Finn will be thirty-seven next month, making him a mere fourteen months younger than Ryan.
I guess Mama figured out she needed a bit of a break though after Finn because Vivian came along three and a half years later.
I honestly still don’t know how she did it all.
Finn throws Eloise over his shoulder as she squeals with delight.
“I will dominate anyone in Uno, but first, I require pepperoni pizza!” Finn declares in a voice that sounds oddly like he is trying to do a Hulk impersonation.
I quickly pack up the rest of my laundry and move it out of the way while Vivian gets a stack of plates and napkins.
Soon enough, we’re in a massive game of Uno, with two extension packs added, and chaos ensues in my family room.
But amidst the noise and the mess, a sense of peace wraps around me like a snug blanket.
Whatever happens with the divorce, what co-parenting with my ex looks like moving forward, or even what my dating life could look like one day, so long as I have these people by my side and covering my back, everything is going to be okay.
They won’t allow for anything less.