September 19, Saturday
I SAT down in front of the laptop ten minutes early, going through the small ritual Jill had suggested weeks ago and that I'd only recently started taking seriously—four counts in through the nose, hold for four, out for six, over and over, until my pulse steadied and slowed.
You don't have to win this conversation, I told myself.
You just have to get through it without giving him anything to use.
Deputy Wells stood by the door in his usual spot, watchful, and somehow also giving the impression he wasn't listening at all, though I knew better by now. I'd stopped being able to pretend these calls happened in private. Today, of all days, I wished I could.
Warren's face filled the screen a minute after I dialed, his tie already loosened, a stack of folders visible behind him. Saturday—office. Some things never changed.
"Five minutes," he said, by way of hello. "I've got a client call."
"This won't take long." I kept my voice level, businesslike, the tone I used to use running PTA meetings when a parent wanted to relitigate the bake sale. "We need to talk about your schedule with the kids. They have too much unsupervised time."
"They're fine, Isabel. They're teenagers, not toddlers."
"They're teenagers whose parents just went through a divorce, and now this is happening. You should be checking Josh's grades weekly, not waiting for a progress report to tell you he's failing algebra. And Lily needs an actual curfew, not a suggestion."
Warren rubbed a hand over his face, the gesture of a man wronged.
"Fine. I'll tighten things up." A pause, calculated in a way I recognized from years of marriage.
"But that probably means Heidi moves into the house.
I can't be there every hour myself, not with my workload.
She's around more than I am anyway at this point. "
I felt the words land somewhere behind my sternum, a small, precise blow. Heidi. In my kitchen. In the house I'd chosen the paint colors for.
In my bed.
I glanced, involuntarily, toward the door.
Wells hadn't moved, hadn't so much as shifted his weight, but I was suddenly, acutely aware of every word traveling across the room to him—my ex-husband's girlfriend, my absent motherhood, laid out for a federal marshal to overhear like gossip at a hair salon. Heat crawled up my neck.
I wanted to say no. I wanted to say absolutely not, find another solution, wanted to remind him whose name was still on the deed. But I had asked for supervision. I had asked for accountability. And there was no version of this sentence that let me have one without conceding the other.
I counted—one, two, three, four, five—the way Jill had taught me, silent and deliberate, giving the anger somewhere to go besides my mouth.
"Okay," I said finally, my voice steadier than I felt. "Whatever gets them looked after properly. That's what matters."
Warren looked faintly surprised, as if he'd braced for a fight and found none waiting. "Okay. Good. I've got to run."
The screen went dark. I sat there a moment, hands flat on the table, aware that I had just handed my husband's girlfriend a key to my old life and called it victory.