Chapter 5 #2
"Hi there," the woman said. "We need a sourdough and one of your country loaves. We're going to a friend's tonight."
"Sure thing." I came around to the case. "The country loaves I just put up are tomorrow's. The ones we have today are on the second shelf. Sourdough's right there."
"Perfect."
I bagged the sourdough and a country loaf in two paper sleeves, tied them off, and brought them to the register. The woman handed me her card. I rang it up.
She was looking at me. The way someone looked at you when something was almost connecting in their head, and they hadn't gotten there yet. I kept my face on the register. I handed the card back.
"Thank you. The receipt printer's been finicky lately—do you want it in the bag or by email?"
"Bag's fine. I'm sorry—you look familiar."
"Oh?"
"I feel like I've seen you somewhere."
"I'm always at this shop." I gave her the smile I gave customers. "Maybe you've come in before."
"Maybe."
She was still looking at me. Her hand had come up to her chin. Her partner was holding the bread bag now, polite, half-attending to his phone.
Then she gasped.
"Oh my God."
"Sorry?"
"You're the woman from the video!"
"I—what—"
She was already pulling up her phone. The man looked up from his.
"The one with the firefighter!"
She turned the phone around and held it out to me.
I looked at the phone. My mind went blank. I could not be seeing this.
The clip was short. It opened with a man in firefighter gear lifting his mask off his face.
He was crouched in front of a woman sitting on the grass with her arm around a child.
The woman reached up. She put her hand on his face.
She pulled him toward her. She kissed him.
The clip ended on the freeze frame of the moment she had pulled back, both of their faces still close, his mouth still slightly open, her eyes still closed.
I was seeing myself in the moment I wanted to forget.
A view count under the clip read 1.4M. The number ticked while I watched. 1.4M became 1.5M.
"It's you, isn't it?"
I didn't know what to say.
The woman's partner tugged her sleeve. Once. The kind of tug a person used when they were telling someone they loved that they needed to stop.
"Babe."
"What?"
He gave her a look. She caught the look. She looked at her phone, looked at me, and looked at her partner.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just—it really looks like you."
"Happens sometimes."
"Sorry."
"It's fine. Enjoy the bread."
The man took the bag with both hands now and steered her toward the door. She went, looking back over her shoulder one more time. The bell jingled. The door clicked shut behind them.
I stood at the counter for a beat that was longer than a beat. I pulled my own phone out of my apron pocket and typed firefighter kiss house fire into the search bar.
The first three results were the video. The fourth was the video. The fifth was a different cut, slowed down, set to a piece of music.
No.
No.
I had spent seven months becoming somebody who didn't look like the woman in this clip. I had dyed my hair. I had put in contacts. I had bought glasses I didn't need. I had told myself, every morning, that nobody would see her. The woman on the screen was nobody I knew.
The woman on the screen was me.
The view count under the clip read 2.1M. The number ticked while I watched. 2.2M. I refreshed. 2.3M.
I put the phone face down on the counter. My hands were shaking. I held them flat against the wood until they stopped.
The bell on the front door jingled.
I lifted my face into the version of itself I kept for the people who came into the shop and turned around.
"Sorry I took so long." Benjie was carrying a small pharmacy bag and a coffee. "The line was insane. There was a lady ahead of me arguing with the pharmacist about a coupon. I almost died."
"That's alright."
The video was still playing in my head. The count under it was climbing the way the count under it had climbed on the woman's phone, on my phone, on every phone in the country, watching it right now. 2.3M. It would be 2.4 by the time I walked out of the shop. 3M before the end of the day.
"You okay?"
I looked at him.
"I'm fine."
"You sure?"
I had been seen. I had spent seven months at this counter, at the school drop-off, at the grocery store, and on the sidewalk between Mrs. Thompson's apartment and the bakery, and the disguise had held.
"Tessa?"
"Yeah?"
Benjie was looking at me. His face had moved from his usual face into the small, careful one he had when something wasn't right, and he didn't know what.
"I said, hold on, I'll grab you some water. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Water would be—yeah."
He went into the back. I stood at the counter and tried to keep my hands flat against the wood and not think about the count under the clip and not think about what I was going to do.
He came out a moment later with a glass of cold water and set it on the counter in front of me.
"Here."
"Thank you."
I drank. The cold was good against my throat. I held the glass with both hands.
"Tessa." He had his hands in his apron pocket now. "Why don't you and Noah go home? I've got the rest of the afternoon."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. It's slow. There's nothing here I can't handle."
"Mrs. Thompson—"
"I'll talk to her. Don't worry about it."
I looked at the glass in my hands. The water was almost gone. I wasn't going to be able to be at this counter for another hour.
"Okay," I said. "Thank you, Benjie."
"Anytime."
I drove to Miranda's office Tuesday morning with the radio off and the windows up.
Nicholas had probably already seen the clip. If he hadn't, he was going to. The first time I had hired a lawyer, he had found me in less than a week, and that was before the internet had handed him a video of my mouth on a man's mouth.
I had to file before he did. That was the only thing left in my head.
Whichever state filed first set the venue.
Miranda had told me that the first time I sat in her office.
She had also told me that family courts looked at a child's environment, and that a stable male presence in Noah's life would help us against a wealthy, articulate father with a credibility advantage.
Last Wednesday, that had been an abstract.
I parked in the lot behind Miranda's building and sat in the car with my hands on the wheel for a beat.
Then I went in.
The receptionist showed me back. Miranda was already at her desk. I sat in the chair across from her.
"Tessa." She didn't waste a beat. "The video changes the math. Until Sunday, I would have told you we had a few weeks to be careful. Now, I don't think we have a few days. I want to file the petition as fast as I can put one together. I'll have a draft for you tomorrow night."
"Okay."
"Your husband is a lawyer. Once he sees the clip—and we should assume he has—he will file in his home state inside a day, maybe two. We have to be in front of him."
I had my hands folded in my lap. I was trying to keep them folded.
"For the petition, I need every piece of documentation we can get on Noah's residency. School enrollment. The pediatrician. The rent receipts. Anything that shows the two of you have been in this state for the last six months."
"Most of it was in the house."
She didn't look surprised. She had heard it on the phone on Monday.
"Then we go through the institutions. I'll have my office put in record requests this afternoon. Letterhead moves things faster than people realize. They'll send copies inside the week."
Something in my chest let go.
I had spent the past few nights since the fire trying to figure out how I was going to call the school, the doctor, and the bank in a voice steady enough that they would not put me on hold for a supervisor.
I had not slept for any of it. Miranda picking it up was somebody else carrying it for an afternoon.
"Thank you."
"Send me anything you do still have. On your phone, in email, anywhere. I'll work with what's there and request the rest."
I nodded.
"There's a second filing I want to do at the same time." She wrote a small thing on her pad. "An emergency protective order. Ex parte."
"What does ex parte mean?"
"A judge can issue an order without notifying the other side first, if there's evidence of an immediate threat.
The video. The customer recognizing you on Sunday.
His history. We argue the threat. If the judge issues the order, you have it in your hand before he is served the petition.
If the judge denies, we have made the record. "
"Please."
"I'll include it with the filing."
She set the pen down. Folded her hands.
"Tessa. There's something I want to come back to. Last Wednesday, I told you that family courts respond to certain narratives. I told you that a stable partnership reads better in court than a single mother alone in a new city. I was talking about an abstract."
I held still.
"The video has changed the size of what I told you.
Strangers are watching that clip, and they are not watching it as a custody dispute.
They are watching a firefighter carry your son out of a building with your hand on his face, and they are calling it a love story.
By the time we are in front of a judge, that story will be in the room. "
She looked at me.
"I am not going to tell you what to do about that. It isn't my place. But I want you to understand how the room is going to read it. The judge will not say so. The judge will see it."
She paused.
"Can I ask what your relationship with this man is?"
"I—" I stopped. Started again. "I barely know him."
She nodded once. The way she nodded when a piece of information landed said she was filing it.
"Alright. The case stands on its own merits. The story the country is telling about you is not the case. But I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you that the two are going to live in the same room when we walk into court."
She let it sit.
Miranda was not wrong.
She knew exactly what we were up against. She also knew how to play the game.
She wasn't going to tell me to manufacture a relationship for the case.
She was a lawyer. But she had told me what the country was doing with the clip, what the room would look like when we walked into it, and she had let the rest sit.
I had spent ten years reading what a man was not saying. Reading what a lawyer was not quite saying was easier.
I sat across from her with my hands folded.
"If he were in the picture," I said. "Would that help?"
She held my eyes.
"I can't advise you on that, Tessa. Legally, I'm not in a position to tell you to enter a relationship for the benefit of a case.
What I can tell you is this: a firefighter who carried your son out of a fire and showed up in his life consistently—that's the kind of stable male presence courts respond to.
Especially one the country is already telling a story about. "
She let that sit, too.
I thought about Cole. About what I would need to tell him.
Hi. I'm actually Natalie. The ungrateful girl who shouted at you eighteen years ago for saving her life. Can you pretend to be my boyfriend so I can keep my son from being taken from me by my abusive ex-husband?
Ridiculous.
And what would he say? Sure. I'll help you.
There was no way.
I thought about Noah. About him at the prep table, folding pastry boxes.
About him asleep on Mrs. Thompson's sofa.
About the way he had been calmer and more himself in seven months in Havensworth than he had been in eight years with his father.
About what it had taken me seven months to build for him, and what it would take Nicholas a single weekend with a judge to take away.
I had to try. Cole didn't have to say yes. I just had to ask.
"Alright," I said. "I'll talk to him."
I stood. Picked up my bag.
"Thank you, Miranda."
"You have a case, Tessa. A real one."