Chapter 12
Holland
David Moreno’s office is on the fourth floor of a building in Pioneer Square. After dropping Lina at Tessa’s, I find him looking out a window that faces an alley of brick facades, a half-dead plant on the sill that apparently nobody remembers to water.
“Forty-two letters, it’s amazing,” he admits, laying them on the desk and tapping them with his fingers.
“Every family on the girls’ team you coach, except one.
Two teachers from Lina’s school and the pediatrician.
Checkups and vaccines up to date. All dated and signed. This is what a judge wants to see.”
“And Megan?”
“Megan has a gorgeous house in Richmond,” he grants, taking off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.
“She has Grant, who’s a partner at a big firm and makes an obscene amount of money.
In her filing she says she also has a room painted the color she’s already chosen for a girl she hasn’t seen in four years.
What she doesn’t have is a single example proving she’s been there for her daughter at any point.
Not even a birthday card or an email to a teacher.
Nothing. Four years of blank space. But there’s something new,” he adds, and his tone changes.
“They’ve filed a supplemental declaration. ”
He slides a page across the desk and I read it slow.
It’s lawyer language, cold, but it’s perfectly clear what they’re after.
It claims a “volatile influence” has entered Lina’s environment.
An athlete with a disciplinary suspension for assault, a career of constant trades from one team to another.
“A troublesome public presence,” those are their exact words.
According to her lawyer, that introduces “instability” into a home that should offer the opposite.
They don’t write Natalia’s name, though they don’t need to, and I don’t even know how my ex found out.
“Screw them,” I mutter through my teeth, and my lawyer raises an eyebrow. “Sorry,” I apologize. “How could she have found out I’m starting a relationship with Natalia Costa?”
“No, it’s fine, don’t worry. It’s normal to be angry, it’s exactly what they want you to feel.
To answer your question, these big firms don’t usually do anything without a private investigator who’s probably been watching you for the last two months.
But I’ll warn you about one thing: this isn’t complete nonsense.
On paper, ‘a stable home with two adults with resources’ sounds good to a judge.
Meanwhile, ‘a player suspended for an assault coming in and out of a kid’s life’ sounds a little like risk, even though you and I know that woman lobs soft balls to your daughter on Sundays at the park.
The trick is for the judge to see the second thing before the first.”
“And how do we do that?”
“With evidence. Natalia’s been in that program for months, two afternoons a week, without missing a single day.
I have the sign-in sheets. And several moms willing to testify that she’s gotten their daughters coming home talking about soccer instead of crying.
The word volatile loses its meaning when you set several months of showing up Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same time right in front of it.
And now she isn’t even required to keep helping your team anymore. She does it because she wants to.”
***
That night, at home, Lina is off.
I notice it at dinner, in how she pushes the peas to the edge of her plate and answers in single words to things she’d normally give a ten-minute speech about. When I ask about school, she shrugs. When I ask about Andrea, she says “fine” and goes quiet, and Lina almost never just says “fine.”
I let it go until we clear the plates. She’s at that age where she still likes helping me with things around the house; it makes her feel grown-up, I guess it’ll end soon enough. For now, I hand her a towel to dry the silverware and we take the chance to talk.
“You used to read me the story at night,” she blurts out of nowhere, not looking at me, rubbing a spoon that’s already dry over and over.
“And I still read it to you.”
“Not always. Tuesday Natalia read it to me.”
I set down the plate in my hand with care.
“And that bothered you?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
She thinks about it, spoon dangling. Seven-year-olds think about the important things with their whole body; you can see it in her shoulders.
“It’s just that before, you were only my mom,” she says at last. “And now you’re also Natalia’s girlfriend. I didn’t know I’d have to share you.”
She says it with no drama, the same way she’d say they put broccoli on the school lunch again even though nobody likes it less than Daniela. But it stops my heart.
“Come here,” I sigh, opening my arms to hug her. “Listen to me, this is important. Loving Natalia doesn’t take away one little bit of loving you. Love isn’t a cake where the more you give someone else, the less is left. I love you both, okay? And you’re my daughter, so I’ll love you always.”
“And the story?”
“The story is whatever you choose. If you want me to always read it to you, perfect. Do you want it always with me, or some nights with me and some with Natalia?”
She thinks it over with the same seriousness she uses to trade cards with her friends.
“You during the week. Natalia on Fridays, because when she gets excited about a character, she says the words funny. Saturday, when we have more time, both of you.”
“Both of us,” I repeat. “Done.”
She nods, satisfied, like someone who’s just closed a good deal, and goes back to her silverware.
***
When Natalia gets home, I tell her what happened while I open a bottle of wine. I say it with a little fear, almost expecting her to take offense, I don’t want her to think she’s in the way, because deep down, Lina adores her.
“She’s right,” she admits. “I planted myself in your life without warning and we never talked about it with her. I just showed up and started sleeping over in your room. It makes sense she’d protest. We’ll redraw the map, that’s all. Kids reorganize fast if you explain the new rules to them.”
The three of us are in the kitchen, though Lina got the concept a lot better than we did. Then Natalia’s phone rings. She looks at the screen and the expression on her face shifts a little.
“It’s my agent. Be right back,” she announces, getting up and moving away from us.
She goes out to the porch and closes the glass door. I see her from behind, one hand on the back of her neck, pacing back and forth in the small space. From here you can’t hear a thing, but you don’t need to.
It’s the third time this week she’s gone out to talk to her agent and stepped away from me.
The first time I didn’t think anything of it.
The second time either. Now that little detail lodges inside me like a stone in my shoe.
I keep telling myself it’s nothing. Agents call, it’s their job.
But she has a track record. She changes teams nonstop, and the Emeralds still haven’t offered her a renewal despite the goals she’s scoring.
Natalia talking about her future on the other side of a closed pane of glass sets off every alarm in my head.
Lina has followed my gaze to the glass and now sets her cup down on the table with care.
“Mom,” she says, getting my attention with that tone she uses when she’s about to ask something that scares her a little. “Is mama Megan going to come take me?”
Everything stops. My heart, my head, I practically turn to stone.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, leaning down to look her in the eyes while she shrugs.
“It’s just that a kid in my class left school, and Andrea told me that when parents split up, sometimes a kid has to go live with the other one. And I hardly ever see mama Megan anymore, but maybe now she wants me to go with her, I don’t know. I’d rather be here.”
I kneel down again and take both her hands, trying not to cry.
“Listen to me carefully. Nobody’s taking you anywhere, okay? This is your home. Your bed is upstairs, your drawings are on the fridge, your toothbrush is in the bathroom. You stay here with me.”
Lina nods slow, like she wants to believe me more than she really does, or like a weight’s been lifted off her. Then she looks toward the porch.
“I’d like Natalia to stay too,” she adds.
“I’d like that too,” I confess very quietly.