Chapter 37 #2
I nod. “She’s been teaching him to waltz. But he needs to work on his brooding.”
“Brooding is essential to ballroom,” Michaela says with immediate authority. “Otherwise it’s just moving pleasantly in a circle.”
David huffs a laugh into his cup.
Miranda looks between us. “I feel like I’ve stepped into a very specific, very expensive fever dream.”
“That’s fair,” I say.
Amelia points at Archie, who’s risen from his post at my feet and is now pressing his nose hopefully toward the marshmallows. “Can he have one?”
“No,” Miranda and I say at the same time.
David glances at me. “Unified front. Promising.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Miranda says dryly.
Amelia drains the last of her cocoa with an enthusiastic slurp; Angus mostly wears his.
“Michaela!” Amelia shouts, already hopping off the bench. “We still have to decide whether the pirate judge can have a dragon.”
“The answer is obviously yes,” Michaela says, scandalized this remains unresolved. She hands me her empty cup, pats my arm once, and runs after Amelia.
Archie lifts his head, checks with me, then with David, then lopes after them, ever the furry chaperone.
Angus wriggles down from Miranda’s lap the second he sees movement, toddling after the girls with no plan beyond participation.
“I’m glad we finally did this,” Miranda says, watching the kids.
“The kids have been begging for a playdate ever since we ran into Michaela and Serena weeks ago. And I have to say it was well played, sending us to brunch with the girl group before you and I officially met. I already had a vested interest in liking you just so I’d get invited for mimosas again. ”
David chuckles. “Then I’m apparently indebted to Serena.”
“And Jenna,” Miranda adds. “Jenna is fabulous. Obscenely tall. But fabulous.”
He smiles. “I’ll pass on your compliments.”
Miranda laughs, then tips her head, the humor softening into something more practical. “Since I’ve got the man himself here—how bad is the court mess, really? Nora’s given me the outline, but where are things actually at?”
Something in David settles. Not hardens exactly, but clicks into that measured, lawyerly stillness I’ve come to recognize. He rests his forearms on his thighs, hot chocolate cupped between his hands, and watches the kids for a beat before answering.
“We’re in discovery and pre-hearing prep,” he says. “The supervised visits are ongoing. Kelsie’s team is trying to build a narrative that she’s stable now, that she was young when she signed away her rights, that she’s been unfairly prevented from reestablishing contact.”
Miranda’s mouth flattens. “Which is bullshit.”
“Yes,” he says. “But polished bullshit. Which is generally the more dangerous kind.”
I glance at him. His tone is dry, but I can feel the strain under it. He’s calm because calm is how he survives things. Not because this isn’t chewing at him from the inside.
Miranda leans forward, tucking her hands between her thighs for warmth. “And your side?”
“My side is the truth,” David says. “Which I’d like to think still has some value in family court, though I’m not sentimental enough to rely on that alone.” His mouth tips slightly. “We have records. Witnesses. My father’s leading strategy. My brother, Caleb, is doing what Caleb does.”
“How’s visitation going?”
David tilts his head. “It’s going. The four-week mark is the Wednesday after next,” he says.
“Michaela will need to speak to the court-appointed assessor again. But so far her take is that Thomas is kind, the lemonade is good, and Kelsie takes a lot of pictures.” David’s jaw tightens.
“She also says Kelsie doesn’t play with her.
That’s been consistent across all four visits.
And the cashew incident was a close call.
But Thomas was astute enough to check ingredients before ordering. ”
The climbing frame is loud with children. Michaela’s explaining something about maritime jurisdiction. Amelia is nodding seriously. Angus is lying on his back on the platform staring at the sky.
“You think the judge will give Kelsie weekends, too?”
David sighs. “Honestly, yes.”
Weekends.
My stomach turns over.
Miranda goes still beside me. “Even with everything?”
“Maybe not immediately,” David says. “And not overnight or unsupervised. But courts like progression. They like the appearance of momentum. If they believe Kelsie’s making a good-faith effort and Michaela isn’t in immediate danger, they’ll be tempted to expand access incrementally.
A few more hours. Then maybe a half day.
Then eventually overnights become a conversation someone thinks is reasonable. ”
“No,” I say before I can stop myself.
David turns his head and looks at me.
I hate how frightened my voice sounds. Hate that I can’t lawyer it up or principal it into something calm and strategic. “She can barely tolerate a single afternoon,” I say. “She pawns Michaela off on Thomas and photographs the rest. How is that a path to weekends?”
“It shouldn’t be,” he says quietly. “But family court isn’t always asking the same question we are.”
Miranda mutters something that is probably not fit for children and definitely not fit for playgrounds.
I stare at the girls. Amelia has found a stick and is using it as a scepter. Michaela is correcting her on judicial procedure. Archie is stationed below them like private security with fur.
I feel suddenly, absurdly cold.
“What can stop it?” I ask.
David exhales through his nose. “At this point, we’d need Kelsie to withdraw her claim. But since she’s doing this to save face with Thomas, I think that’s unlikely.”
“Would Thomas turn on her?” Miranda asks.
I shake my head. “He supports her wholeheartedly,” I say. “It’s sad, really. He genuinely seems like a good man trying to do the right thing.”
David’s mouth shifts in a way I know means agreement without comfort.
“I think he believes what she’s told him,” he says. “Or believed it, anyway.”
Miranda catches that immediately. “Believed?”
I turn to him. “What does that mean?”
He glances at the kids again before answering, like he’s checking the perimeter before he says something ugly in daylight.
“It means when I picked Michaela up from the initial visit, I might have suggested he ask himself why his wife spent the afternoon inside with a migraine and a glass of wine while he did the actual parenting.”
Miranda’s brows lift. “Subtle.”
“I was aiming for restrained.”
“You missed.”
A small smile pulls at my mouth despite everything. David’s does, too, faint and brief.
“I also told him,” he continues, “that if he wants to do right by Michaela, he should do it for her. Not for Kelsie’s version of events.”
That lands somewhere deep in me. Because of course he did. Because even furious, even frightened, David still aims his whole body toward protecting his daughter.
“And you think that got through to him?” I ask.
“I think it bothered him,” David says. “Whether that’s the same thing is anyone’s guess.”
Miranda leans back against the bench and studies him with a look much more sister than stranger now. “OK. I’m going to say something, and you can tell me whether I’m overstepping.”
“You’re Miranda,” I say. “Overstepping is your cardio.”
She ignores me. “Men like that—powerful, rich—don’t enjoy discovering they’ve been made a fool of,” she says. “If Thomas is half as decent as you both seem to think, then the first crack in Kelsie’s story might matter more than you realize.”
David is quiet for a beat.
“I sincerely hope so.”
We fall quiet for a beat, and that would normally mean the end of the conversation. But Miranda has never believed in leaving an emotionally loaded subject at merely difficult when she could push it into transformative.
“So,” she says lightly, “on a totally unrelated note, are you in love with my sister in the permanent, terrifying, life-rearranging sense?”
I choke on my hot chocolate.
David turns and looks at her with that composed, slightly dangerous calm he wears when he’s choosing his words carefully.
“Yes,” he says.
Just that.
Yes.
Holy shit. This man!
I will not cry in a public park. I will not cry in a public park.