August 29, Saturday
WHEN WARREN'S face appeared, it was clear he was broadcasting from his bedroom at the apartment.
He was shirtless, his hair standing up in a way that had nothing to do with sleep, and behind him the covers lay in a state of considerable disarray, a scrap of black lace visible against the white sheets in a way that made my stomach turn unpleasantly.
"Isabel." He didn't reach for a shirt. "What's up?"
I kept my eyes fixed determinedly on his face. "I wanted to talk to you about Lily and Scott. I'm worried things are getting too serious."
He waved a hand, unconcerned. "It's puppy love. Every kid goes through it. You're overthinking."
"I think they need more supervision than they're getting right now."
"Which is why you should be home instead of playing Law & Order."
"Serving on a jury is a serious commitment, Warren."
"You're only an alternate. You don't even need to be there." He squinted. "Did you do something to your hair? It looks weird."
I bristled. "Let's get back to Lily and Scott. Will you talk to her—or to him?"
"How am I supposed to supervise a sixteen-year-old's love life and hold down a job? I can't be everywhere, Isabel."
"Maybe you could take some time off. Or—" I hesitated, then pushed forward anyway. "There's family leave. You could look into it, just until things settle down."
He actually laughed at that, a short, incredulous sound. "Family leave. Right. Because the dealership's just going to run itself while I—"
A door opened somewhere behind him, off-camera, and Warren's entire face rearranged itself in half a second, the irritation sliding away, replaced by a loose, easy grin that I hadn't seen directed at me in years, if ever.
"Hi, baby," he said, not to me.
I sat very still, watching him watch someone I couldn't see, watching the shape of a life continuing on without me in a bedroom that used to be an abstraction and had just become vividly, unbearably specific.
He looked back at the camera, already halfway gone. "I gotta go. Later."
The screen went dark before I could say anything.
I sat in the small conference room for a long moment, the laptop's fan humming its usual indifferent note, and felt something settle over me that was heavier than embarrassment and colder than anger.
I'd spent seventeen years believing, somewhere beneath the daily friction of the marriage, that Warren would rise to whatever the moment required if it truly mattered enough.
That underneath the golf shirts and the vanity and the wandering attention, there was a father in there who'd show up when it counted.
Watching him grin at a woman in his bedroom while his daughter's romance careened along unsupervised, I understood, with a clarity that felt almost physical, that I might have spent two decades overestimating a man who had never once, not really, been building toward anything beyond his own comfort.
And what did it say about me that I'd picked him?
I gathered my things and walked out to meet Deputy Wells, aware that I'd apparently underestimated my own underestimation of Warren, and wondering, not for the first time, exactly how much more room there was left to fall.