43. Jenna
JENNA
Derek's supervised visit is scheduled for eleven, thirty minutes in the yard with a monitor named Carol standing close enough to write down every word he says, and I've had the morning mapped out in my head since I woke up, the twins fed and dressed and reminded twice that this is one of the good, boring visits, the kind where nothing happens except a little stiff conversation and a wave goodbye.
I'm wrong within the first ten minutes.
I hear his car before I see it, that particular low growl of an engine he's always babied more than he ever babied his own kids, and when I check the clock on the stove it reads ten forty, twenty minutes early, no Carol in sight yet.
Something in me goes cold and alert all at once, the exact feeling of a plan coming apart before it's even started.
"Mom, Dad's here," Eli calls from the front window, already halfway into his shoes.
"Wait for me before you go outside."
"He's just parking."
"Eli. Wait for me."
He waits, though not happily, and I've barely made it out onto the porch before Derek's already climbing out of his car, alone, no sign of Carol's sedan behind him, nothing but empty gravel drive and a man walking toward my kids like the last several months of court dates never happened.
"You're early," I say, keeping my voice level, keeping myself between him and the porch steps without making it look like that's what I'm doing.
"Traffic was light." He smiles, easy and reasonable, the smile he's always been best at, the one that used to make me doubt my own memory of the night before. "Figured I'd get a few extra minutes with them before the professional chaperone shows up to supervise my own children."
"The order says the monitor has to be present. That's not optional, Derek."
"The order says a lot of things. I'm their father.
I don't think five minutes alone with my kids on my own property line is going to bring the whole system crashing down.
" He crouches slightly, aiming the smile at Josie now, who's drifted halfway down the porch steps despite my hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, munchkin. You want to come see the car?
I got the good air freshener, the one you like. "
"I'm supposed to wait for Carol," Josie says, uncertain, looking between the two of us like she's trying to solve a math problem nobody's shown her the rules for.
"Carol's running late. It's just us for a few minutes. That's allowed." He holds out a hand, still smiling, still using the exact reasonable tone that used to convince me I was the unreasonable one every single time. "Come on. Both of you. Let's go wait in the car where it's warmer."
"They're not getting in your car, Derek."
"They're my kids too, Jenna."
"Not without Carol here. That's not a negotiation.
" I step down onto the top stair, angling myself so Josie has to move back toward me instead of forward toward him, and I feel Eli come up close on my other side, quiet in the way he gets when he's decided something is dangerous even if nobody's said the word out loud yet.
"You can wait right there until she arrives.
That's what the order says, and you know exactly what happens if you violate it. "
Something shifts behind his eyes, quick and ugly before the smile smooths back over it, the exact transition I spent nine years learning to read from across a room. "I'm not violating anything. I'm standing in a driveway talking to my own family. Since when is that a crime?"
"Since a judge decided you needed supervision to do it safely."
"That's not what she decided, and you know it.
" His voice stays quiet, controlled, the same register he always used right before things got worse, and I feel Josie's hand find mine, small and cold.
"She decided I needed a chance to prove I've changed.
This is me proving it. Standing here, being patient, not making a scene, even though you're standing on that porch treating me like I'm something dangerous in front of my own children. "
"Your mother likes to make things complicated that don't need to be." He says it to the twins now, not to me, like I've stepped out of the conversation entirely just by disagreeing with him. "That's just who she is. Always has been. I used to think it would get better and it never did."
"Don't talk about me like I'm not standing right here."
"I'm not talking about you. I'm talking to them." He doesn't even glance my way when he says it, and that, more than anything else this morning, is the thing that finally cracks something loose in my chest, the old familiar trick of him talking right through me until the room forgot I was there.
"Get in the car, kids." He says it lighter now, almost playful, like he's offering candy instead of asking two eight-year-olds to climb into a vehicle without the one adult legally required to witness it. "Five minutes. Your mom's just nervous. She'll get over it."
"No." Eli's voice cracks a little on the word, but he doesn't move, doesn't let go of my sleeve. "We're supposed to wait for Carol."
Derek's jaw tightens, just barely, the smile costing him more effort by the second, and he takes one step closer to the bottom of the stairs before headlights sweep across the driveway and Sheriff Cole's cruiser pulls in fast enough to spray gravel against the side of Derek's car.
"Derek." Cole's out of the vehicle before it's fully stopped, already moving, already reading the whole scene in about two seconds flat, the way he does. "Step back from the porch."
"I'm not doing anything wrong, Cole. I'm talking to my own kids."
"You're twenty minutes early to a supervised visit with no monitor present, and I've got a call on record of a mother reporting exactly that. Step back." His voice doesn't raise, doesn't need to, carrying the same flat authority I remember from the night at the fundraiser months ago. "Now, Derek."
Derek steps back, hands up in a show of compliance that doesn't reach his eyes, and something in my knees finally gives out enough that I have to lock them to stay standing.
Carol's sedan pulls in a full three minutes later, and by then Cole's already got Derek talked down to the far side of the driveway, voice low, words I can't quite hear but can guess the shape of.
The visit happens anyway, technically compliant, Derek sitting a careful distance from the twins in lawn chairs I set out weeks ago, Carol taking notes on a clipboard, and it's the longest thirty minutes I've ever sat through.
I stand at the window the entire time, arms wrapped around myself, watching a man smile and wave at his own children like the last twenty minutes never happened.
Cole finds me on the porch after Derek's car finally pulls out of the driveway, Carol's not far behind him, and I'm shaking hard enough that I have to sit down on the top step before my legs make the decision for me, shaking in a way I haven't done since the last morning I ever spent under the same roof as Derek, back when I still measured every hour by how carefully I could keep him calm.
"You did everything right," he says, crouching down to my level, the same steady patience I remember him using on frightened witnesses back when I still thought courtrooms were something that happened to other people.
"You didn't let them in the car. You called it in fast. That matters, Jenna. That goes in the file."
"He didn't even raise his voice."
"He didn't have to. That's what I need you to understand.
Men like Derek don't need volume to be dangerous.
That's exactly why the order exists." Cole's quiet for a second, watching me carefully.
"I'm filing this as a violation. It might not be enough to end visitation outright, but it's enough to tighten the leash considerably. You did the right thing today."
I nod, because I don't trust my voice yet, and he stays another few minutes before he has to go, promising to call if anything else comes up, and then it's just me and the twins and a house that feels too quiet after that much fear moved through it.
The twins ask about it at lunch, careful, circling the subject the way they've learned to circle anything that scares them.
Josie wants to know if Dad's in trouble now.
Eli wants to know if Cole's going to arrest him, and when I tell him probably not, just a mark against him in the court's eyes, something in his face closes off, like he wanted a cleaner answer than the one the real world's willing to give him.
I don't have a better one to offer. I've spent nine years learning that men like Derek rarely get the ending they deserve, only smaller and smaller rooms to be dangerous in, and I'm not about to lie to my own son about which kind of story we're living in.
I think about calling Rafe twice that afternoon, my thumb actually hovering over his name in my phone both times, old habit reaching for him before the rest of me catches up and remembers he already tried once, a few nights ago, standing on my porch with a speech he never got past the first two words of before I told him it was too late for that particular kind of brave.
There's no version of us left to call. I put the phone down both times.
I get through dinner and baths and two extra chapters of the book Eli's currently obsessed with, mostly because neither of them wants to go to sleep tonight, and I don't blame them for it.
It's well past their bedtime when I finally get them down, Josie curled around her stuffed dog, the one she insisted on naming after the real Biscuit within a week of meeting him, Eli quiet in the way that means he's still turning the morning over even with his eyes closed.
I check the locks twice, front door and back, something I haven't done out of real fear in months, and pour myself a glass of wine I don't actually want, just to have something to hold onto while my hands stop shaking.
I'm rinsing the glass a while later when I notice it through the kitchen window, a shape near the tree line at the edge of the property that doesn't belong there, low and dark against the darker trees behind it.
I go still, dish towel forgotten in my hand, and watch it long enough to be sure I'm not imagining things.
A car sits parked just off the gravel where the drive curves toward the road, close enough to the tree line that I wouldn't have seen it at all if the moon weren't doing me the small favor of breaking through the clouds right at that moment.
It hasn't moved in the two or three minutes I've been standing here, and by the settled look of it against the tree line, it's been there a while, like it's working up to something or waiting for someone to notice.
I go check on the twins first, some old instinct louder than curiosity, and find them both asleep, Josie's breathing even, Eli's hand still curled loose around the corner of his blanket. I stand in their doorway a long moment before I make myself go back to the window.
The car's still there, headlights off, engine idling low enough that the sound barely carries, just a faint vibration against the glass I have to hold my breath to catch.
I don't have my phone in my hand. I don't have Rafe's number pulled up, don't have Cole's direct line memorized the way I probably should by now, and I don't have any way of telling, not from this distance, not in this dark, whether the man behind that wheel drove out here to finish something that started in my driveway this morning, or whether it's nothing at all, a stranger who took a wrong turn and hasn't noticed yet.
I stand at the window with two frightened kids asleep down the hall and an idling engine I can't identify sitting fifty yards from my door, headlights off, going nowhere, and I don't have the first idea what happens next.