Chapter 41 Not Quite Ready
~Caden~
The calls started again the following morning while I was at work.
I declined and turned back to the documents in front of me.
"Again?" Lauren asked.
"Yeah. I have a call out to our family law attorney to discuss it. Really hoping it's something we can stop, but I don't know if we can until we have the next hearing in the custody process later this week."
Lauren and I had been going over this contract all morning and she had seen how frequent the calls came through.
We'd found a sort of peace, Lauren, and me. Even so, I wasn't all that surprised she had come in that morning and told me she is planning to take a break from working. She talked with her husband, and they are going to spend a year touring the US in an RV starting this Fall.
Honestly, it's probably for the best at this point. She agreed to stay while I find someone to replace her and agreed to train them. It's rare for someone to be willing to do that and I appreciated her offer. The mere thought of having to recruit and train someone at this stage felt exhausting.
My phone rang again. Decline.
Then again an hour after that. Decline.
Sitting at the table for breakfast the next morning, I was listening to Macy's story about a book report she had to write. She was complaining about how much effort it was to have to flip screens from her e-book to the paper she had to write—on her computer.
I looked at her and laughed, telling her about the 'olden days' when we did things with pencil and paper. She looked absolutely horrified. Getting up, she put her dishes in the sink and went to grab her stuff for school.
My phone rang again. Looking down, I saw it was from the correctional facility—again. I was done.
"I'm calling David again. I can't figure out why he hasn't called me back." I told Felicity over breakfast, after declining the call.
"Good," Felicity said simply. "This can't continue."
I stepped into my home office and dialed David's number.
"Caden," David answered, then coughed.
"You good?"
"Yeah, somehow I came down with a righteous cold and was down for the count yesterday."
"Oh man. I'm sorry. I wondered why you hadn't called me back."
"Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. Checked out for a bit. When the fever hit yesterday, everything pretty much flew out of my mind."
I sat down behind my desk, leaning my head on the back of my chair. "That's awful. Are you back to work now?"
"Yeah, but taking it a bit easy—working from home for a couple days. Everything okay?"
I sighed and told him about everything going on. "Jessica's been calling constantly from prison. Multiple times a day. We're not taking the calls."
"How many calls are we talking about?"
“Nine to me already, a few more to Felicity. It’s disruptive, and honestly it feels like harassment.”
David was quiet for a moment. "In custody cases involving incarcerated parents, courts can impose communication restrictions, especially when there are pending criminal charges. We could petition for supervised communication only, or request no direct contact until the custody hearing."
"What would you recommend?"
"Before we file anything, we need to know what Macy wants. This is about her relationship with her mother, and she's old enough now that the court will want to know her wishes."
He was right. Any decision about Jessica's contact had to start with Macy.
"Do you have any thoughts about what I should tell her? Like what options she could have? I guess I'm not really familiar with what could be allowed given the circumstances."
"Well, you've got a few. First up, she could have supervised phone calls through the court system.
Another option is to keep communication to letters that go through a supervisor.
She could also choose no contact for now.
But Caden – this decision has to be hers.
Don't lead her toward any particular answer.
The judge will ask her, and you want her answer to be completely her own. "
"Completely get that and already planned to keep my own thoughts to myself. I'll talk to her and let you know what she decides."
After I hung up, I went back out and caught Felicity's eye. Macy was in the living room with Lucas and Zoe, building what appeared to be a Lego city.
"How did it go?" Felicity asked quietly.
I relayed the conversation with David to her.
"That's a huge decision for her."
I replied, "Because it is. But she deserves to make this choice herself."
"Macy," I called. "Can we talk to you about something?"
She looked up from her construction project, immediately alert to the serious tone in my voice. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," Felicity assured her quickly. When she came over to the kitchen, Felicity continued, "but your dad wants to talk about something. Come sit sweetheart."
We all gathered at the table, and I began, "Macy, your mom has been trying to call us from where she is now."
Macy's face went carefully blank.
"Oh," she said quietly.
"We haven't been taking the calls," I continued gently. "But we wanted to ask you what you want to do. Do you want to talk to her? If you do, we can arrange for that to happen safely. If you don't, that's okay too."
The silence stretched for what felt like an eternity.
"I don't know," Macy said finally. "I mean... I think about her. But also..." She shrugged, a gesture that seemed too heavy for an eleven-year-old.
"It's okay not to know," Felicity said softly. "This is a big decision, and there's no right or wrong answer."
"Can I think about it?" Macy asked. "Maybe talk to Dr. Chen about it first?"
"Of course," I said, relief flooding through me. "That sounds like a really smart idea. You have an appointment tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah. Can I tell you what I decide after that?"
"Absolutely. Take all the time you need."
The next afternoon, I picked Macy up from her therapy appointment. Dr. Chen asked if she could speak with Felicity and me for a few minutes.
"Macy and I had a good conversation about the situation with her mother," Dr. Chen said once we were settled in her office. "She's processing this very thoughtfully."
"What did she decide?" Felicity asked.
"She asked me to tell you that she's not ready to talk to her mom right now. She said she needs more time to feel... and I'm quoting here... 'better inside' before she has that conversation."
I felt a mixture of pride and heartbreak. Pride that my daughter was learning to recognize and articulate her emotional needs. Heartbreak that she had to navigate something so complex at her age.
"But," Dr. Chen continued, "she also wanted you to know that she might want to talk to her mom eventually. She said if her mom is getting help and getting better, maybe someday she'd be open to it."
"Wow," said Felicity. "That feels like a really mature perspective for someone so young."
"You're not wrong, but it's also completely age-appropriate. Children often need time and psychological safety before they're ready to engage with a parent who's caused them trauma. The fact that Macy is setting her own boundaries is actually a very healthy sign."
Dr. Chen turned to address both of us directly.
"I'd recommend supporting her decision completely and I'll be writing a letter for her to that effect. The best thing you can do is support her decision. Let her know the door is always open when she’s ready—that if she changes her mind – whether that's next week or next year – you'll help her figure out what that looks like safely. "
That evening, after I'd updated David on Macy's decision and he'd agreed to file for no direct contact during the custody proceedings, Felicity and I finally had a chance to decompress.
"You know what I realized today?" she said, curled up next to me on the couch.
"What's that?"
"Six months ago, if Jessica had been calling like this, you would have answered. You would have tried to manage her emotions, tried to fix whatever crisis she was having."
I thought about that. She was right. The old me would have felt responsible for Jessica's desperation, would have taken those calls out of some misguided sense of obligation or guilt.
"And now?" I asked.
"Now you put Macy first. You asked her what she wanted before making any decisions about her own mother. That's huge growth."
She was right about that too. The calls still bothered me, but not because I felt compelled to answer them. They bothered me because they represented a threat to the peace we'd built, the healing that was happening.
"Speaking of putting our family first," I said, "are you ready for tomorrow?"
Tomorrow was our first therapy session together. We'd talked about it, scheduled it, rescheduled it once because of work conflicts, but somehow it had felt abstract until now.
"I think so," Felicity said. "Are you nervous?"
"A little. But also... eager? Does that make sense?"
"It does. I feel the same way."
We'd been doing so well, communicating better than we had in years, working as a team through all the crisis and chaos. But we both knew that real change required ongoing work, not just good intentions during emergency situations.
"What do you want to get out of it?" she asked.
I considered the question seriously. "I want to make sure I have tools to keep myself from slipping back into old patterns when things get less crisis-mode. I want to learn how to be a better partner during normal, boring Tuesday kind of life, not just during emergencies. What about you?"
"I want to learn how to ask for what I need instead of hoping you'll figure it out," she said. "And I want to make sure we keep talking to each other, really talking, not just managing logistics."
Later that night, lying in bed with Felicity's head on my shoulder, I thought about how much had changed. A month ago, our marriage had been hanging by a thread. Macy had been living with an unstable mother who was slowly destroying her sense of security.
Now Jessica was in prison and could only reach us if we let her. Macy was safe, healing, and making her own thoughtful decisions about her relationship with her mother. We were in a good place as a family—Macy felt safe with us.
Felicity and I were not just surviving but actually growing stronger.
Tomorrow we'd start couples therapy, another step in making sure we kept choosing each other, kept doing the work, kept building something stronger than what we'd had before.
My phone rang again. Same facility, same response—decline. And I was at peace with it.