36. Rafe
RAFE
The brewery's gone quiet by the time Priya calls, kegs racked, floor mopped, Gunny already halfway home with a stomach bug he swears isn't a stomach bug.
I'm doing a last walk of the taproom when my phone lights up with her name instead of a number I don't recognize, and something in my chest braces before I've even answered it.
"Rafe. Got a minute?"
"For you, always." I lean against the bar, arms crossed, already reading the tone under the tone. "That's not really a question, is it?"
"No." Something rustles on her end, a folder opening, maybe, the same brisk sound she makes right before she hands me something I don't want to hear. "Hearing's set. Five weeks out."
Five weeks, she said. I do the math without meaning to, count it out in days the way I used to count out deployments. Thirty-five, give or take. Short enough to survive. Long enough to lose my mind over.
"Okay." I say it steady, the way I say most things I haven't decided how to feel about yet. "What do you need from us?"
"That's actually why I'm calling. There's a piece of this I want to walk you through before you hear it from anyone else." Her voice shifts, careful in a way I've learned to brace for. "It's about you specifically."
"Go on."
"You remember the outside influences conversation.
Same worry, just closer now that there's an actual date on the calendar.
" She lets that sit a second. "I've been thinking about how that plays out for this stretch specifically, and I want to be straight with you.
The safest version of this, legally, has you keeping a lower profile through the proceedings.
Not gone. Not hiding. Just not the visible fixture you've become. "
The words land somewhere under my ribs, quiet and precise, exactly where they're meant to.
"Define lower profile."
"No school pickups where you'd be seen and noted by staff who might end up on a witness list. No public events where you're photographed standing with all three of them like a family portrait.
Nothing that reads, on paper, like you've already moved in before a judge has decided whether that's good for those kids or not.
" She says it plainly, no apology in it, the tone of someone who's delivered worse news to better people. "I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like you're asking me to disappear."
"It's not disappearing. It's being careful, for five weeks.
There's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one right now.
" She takes a breath, and it's the first real give I've heard in her voice this whole call.
"You matter to this case, Rafe. Not because a judge is going to weigh your character against Derek's directly, but because everything about how this household reads on paper right now needs to say stable, established, and led by Jenna.
Not led by you. Not yet. That's not a statement about what you are to her.
It's a statement about what wins in front of a stranger in a robe who's going to make up his mind about your whole family in about forty minutes. "
"I understand the strategy."
"I know you do. That's not the same as you liking it.
" She's quiet a second, and when she speaks again it's gentler, like she's talked to enough people in exactly this spot to know what comes next.
"For what it's worth, this isn't forever.
You disappear into the background until the hearing, we win, and you get every single day after that to be exactly as visible as you both want. "
"And if we don't win?"
"Then we appeal, and we have a very different conversation. But we're not losing this one, Rafe. Not if we play it smart." She pauses again. "I need you to trust me on this."
"I trust you." It comes out before I've fully decided it's true, and once it's out I realize it is. "Doesn't make it sit any easier."
"Nobody expects you to." Something almost like warmth creeps into her voice now. "Talk to Jenna tonight. She needs to hear this from you, not from me in a client email."
"I will."
"Good. I'll send the hearing details in writing. Get some sleep if you can." She hangs up before I can answer, brisk and efficient, already moving on to whatever her evening actually looks like, and I stand there in my own empty taproom holding a phone that's gone quiet in my hand.
I don't move for a while.
Gunny left his jacket on the hook by the walk-in, forgotten in his hurry to get home and be sick in private, and I end up staring at it instead of doing anything useful, some dumb part of my brain deciding that's easier to look at than the actual problem.
Not the visible fixture you've become, she told me, and she didn't say it to hurt me.
She said it because it's true, and that doesn't stop it from sitting in my chest like something with teeth.
I've spent six years being careful about how much of myself I hand anyone, how much space I let myself take up in a life that isn't mine to hold.
These last months I let that slide without deciding to, became the guy who does pickups and fixes woodstoves and gets asked by an eight-year-old if he's her mom's boyfriend in front of a whole gym.
I got comfortable being necessary. Now the smartest person in this fight is telling me the safest thing I can do is become less necessary, starting now.
That's not a new lesson. That's the oldest one I've got.
Gunny comes back for his jacket ten minutes later, looking pale and irritated and entirely unwilling to discuss whatever's actually wrong with his stomach, and he takes one look at my face before he's even through the door.
"Who died?"
"Nobody. Court date's set."
"That's good, isn't it? Means this actually moves now instead of just sitting there making everybody sick.
" He grabs the jacket, pulls it on, watches me with the particular attention of a man who's known me long enough to see past whatever I think I'm hiding.
"Why do you look like somebody just told you the whole thing's already decided against you? "
"Because Priya wants me scarce for the next five weeks. Low profile. No pickups, no photos, nothing that says I'm already living a life I haven't been given permission to live yet." There's no dressing it up, so I don't bother. I watch it land on him the way it landed on me.
"That's a hell of a thing to ask a man."
"It's smart."
"Didn't say it wasn't. Said it's a hell of a thing to ask.
" He crosses his arms, leans against the doorframe, and for once doesn't reach for a joke to soften it.
"You've spent six months finally letting people count on you again.
Now some lawyer, good as she is, is telling you to go back to being the guy nobody sees coming for dinner. "
"That's the job right now."
"Sure." He says it quiet, none of his usual clipped certainty in it. "Doesn't mean it won't cost you something."
"It costs whatever it costs. Jenna wins her case either way." I straighten up, reach for something to do with my hands, and end up wiping down a bar that's already clean, because apparently that's where we both are tonight. "Five weeks. I've survived worse on less sleep."
"I know you can. I've watched you do worse for longer." Something softens in his face, just for a second. "Just don't disappear from yourself while you're at it. That's the part I've seen you get wrong before."
He doesn't wait for an answer to that, just claps me once on the shoulder and heads out into the cold, leaving me alone with a clean bar and a bad feeling I can't fully explain to anyone, not even to Gunny, not even when he's clearly asking.
The porch light's already on when I turn up the gravel drive, and I sit in the truck a minute longer than I need to before I go in, running through how I want to say this like it's a briefing instead of a conversation with the woman I love.
The twins are already down by the time she opens the door, hair still damp from a bath, and something in my face must give me away because she doesn't ask how my day was. She just steps back and lets me in.
We settle at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug she's not drinking from, and I don't waste time getting to it. "Court date's set. Five weeks from today."
"Okay." Something careful comes into her voice, and she watches my face for the rest of it. "That's fast."
"Priya thinks it's good. Means this doesn't drag out all spring." I rub a thumb along the seam of the table, buying myself a second before I get to the rest of it. "There's more, though."
"I figured." She sets her mug down, folds her hands, braces the way she does before news she already suspects is coming. "Tell me."
"She wants me to keep a lower profile until it's over.
No school pickups where I'd be seen. No public stuff that makes it look like I've already moved into your life before a judge decides that's good for the twins.
" I keep my voice steady, the flat, even register I fall into automatically whenever something actually matters.
"Nothing that reads like outside influence. "
Jenna's quiet for a second, and I watch her run the same math I ran an hour ago, watch her land somewhere close to where I landed.
"That's not fair to you."
"This isn't about what I deserve. It's about winning." I reach across and take her hand, because I need to be touching something steady while I say the rest of it. "Five weeks. Then it's over, and I get to be exactly as visible as I want to be for the rest of however long you'll have me."
"You make it sound simple."
"I know how it sounds. That doesn't make it wrong." My face stays calm, deliberate, giving away nothing of what's actually happening underneath it. "I'd rather be quiet for five weeks than be the reason this goes sideways for you and the twins. That's not a hard call."
"I hate that you have to make it at all."
"Me too." That's as close as I let myself get to the truth of it, and she doesn't push, just squeezes my hand once, firm, like she's trying to hand some of her own steadiness back across the table.
"The twins are going to ask why you're not around as much."
"Tell them whatever you think they can handle.
I trust you with that." I mean it, even though the thought of Eli asking Josie why I stopped showing up puts something cold straight through my chest. "I'm not going anywhere.
I'm just going to be careful about where anyone can see me not going anywhere. "
"That's a strange kind of brave."
"It's the only kind I've got left for this particular fight."
We sit with it a while longer, her hand in mine, the kitchen settling into the particular hush that only shows up after both kids are asleep, and I don't tell her the rest of what's sitting under all of it, the old, familiar shape of being told the safest thing you can do for people you love is take up less room in their lives.
I've heard some version of that lesson my whole life.
I just never expected to hear it out of a lawyer's mouth, dressed up as strategy instead of what it actually is.
It's late when I finally head back, the brewery dark except for the one light I always leave burning over the tanks, and I sit down at my desk with a legal pad because that's what I do when something needs handling. Write it down. Break it into steps. Make it a problem instead of a feeling.
Step one, I write. Skip pickups.
I get that far and stop, pen hovering, because there isn't a step two that makes any of this easier to hold.
There's no checklist for making yourself smaller on purpose.
There's no inventory system for exactly how much of yourself you're allowed to hand two kids who've already started counting on you being there.
I sit with the pad a long time, the tanks humming their low steady hum behind me, and somewhere in the quiet an old voice finds its way back in, the one I thought I'd finally gotten some distance from these last few months.
It doesn't sound like Priya. It doesn't even sound like Derek's lawyer, or the version of Derek I've built out of everything Jenna's told me.
It sounds like me, a long time ago, before any of this, telling myself the exact same thing I told myself the morning after that road. You were right not to trust yourself with people who need you. Look how easily they can be talked into being careful about you.
I close the notebook without writing a step two. Some problems don't get smaller just because you put them on a list.