Chương 3
“I don't know yet.”
That night, after Lily fell asleep with the television remote tucked beneath her elbow and Emma finally stopped pretending she wasn't tired, I sat on the bathroom floor with the door closed.
I opened my email.
Natalie's message from three days earlier was still starred.
Attached were the draft petition, the financial disclosure checklist, and the notes from our last meeting.
I had spent months telling myself I was gathering information.
Information was safer than action.
Action had consequences.
I opened the draft petition.
My name sat above Mark's in clean black type.
Rachel Mercer, Petitioner.
Mark Mercer, Respondent.
I read the first page without absorbing most of it.
Then I reached the property section.
The house on Willow Bend was listed as my separate property, inherited from my father before my marriage.
Mark had spent years calling it our house.
Legally, that word had always been more complicated than he knew.
The commercial building on Palmer Avenue was complicated too.
My father had bought it through an LLC sixteen years ago, and after his death, ownership had passed to me.
Mark's logistics company had been renting the ground floor for six years at a rate my father had deliberately kept below market.
Mark knew the landlord was an LLC.
He had never cared enough to ask who owned it.
I had never volunteered the answer.
Until that night, the omission had felt almost embarrassing.
Now it felt like a door I had forgotten was mine.
I typed Natalie a message.
Are you available first thing Monday morning?
My finger hovered over Send.
From the other room, Emma murmured in her sleep.
I pressed it.
Then I opened Mark's latest text.
You have embarrassed me in front of my entire family.
I read it once.
I typed three words.
Emma is ten.
The typing indicator appeared immediately.
I waited.
It vanished.
Then it appeared again.
His answer finally came.
This is exactly what I mean.
I locked the phone.
For the first time all evening, I knew exactly what I was going to do next.
The next morning, Mark called before seven.
I watched his name light up the hotel nightstand while Lily slept sideways across one bed and Emma lay curled beneath the blanket on the other.
I let it ring until the screen went dark.
Thirty seconds later, he called again.
Emma opened her eyes.
“Is that Dad?”
“Yes.”
She stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“You can answer.”
I picked up the phone and stepped into the bathroom.
“Hello.”
Mark did not say good morning.
“Where are you?”
“With the girls.”
“I know you’re with the girls, Rachel.”
His voice had that clipped patience he used when he wanted to sound reasonable while blaming me for making reason difficult.
“I’m asking where.”
“I’m not telling you.”
There was a pause.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not telling you.”
“Are you seriously doing this?”
I leaned against the sink.
A little plastic cup wrapped in cellophane sat beside my elbow.
“I’m seriously keeping Emma away from the people who humiliated her on her birthday.”
“My mother lost her temper.”
“Your mother threw a cake onto the floor because our daughter isn’t a boy.”
“You keep saying it like that.”
“That’s because that’s what happened.”
Mark exhaled sharply.
“Mom has apologized.”
“To whom?”
Another pause.
“Don’t do this.”
“To whom did she apologize?”
“To me.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course she had.
“Then she apologized to the wrong person.”
“Rachel, you walked out of my parents’ house with my children.”
“Our children.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
His tone shifted.
He was trying another door now.
Softer voice.
Lower volume.
The version of Mark that appeared when anger failed to move me.
“Just come home.”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
“We’ll talk.”
“We’ve talked for twelve years.”
“That’s dramatic.”
I looked at my own face in the bathroom mirror.
My hair was flattened on one side from sleeping badly.
There was mascara under my left eye.
Nothing about me looked dramatic.
“Emma asked me last night if you wish she were a boy.”
Silence.
A long one.
I heard movement on his end, then the faint clink of a mug against a counter.
Finally, he said, “She’s ten.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t understand adult conversations.”
“She understood that one.”
“That’s not fair.”
“To whom?”
“Rachel.”
I waited.
He lowered his voice again.
“I love Emma.”
“Then tell her.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“You think I’m using her?”
“I think you’re angry with my mother and you’re dragging the kids into a marital fight.”
“Your mother dragged Emma into it when she smashed her birthday cake.”
“You were provoking Mom.”
For one second, I could not place the sentence.
It seemed to come from somewhere outside the conversation.
“What?”
“You kept pushing her.”
“Before or after she threw the cake?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I actually don’t.”
Mark’s breathing changed.
He had never liked being forced to hear the shape of his own logic.
“This is why we can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
I almost asked him what like this meant.
Instead, I said, “I’ll contact you later.”
“Rachel, don’t hang up.”
I did.
When I came back into the room, Emma was sitting up.
Lily was still asleep with one foot sticking out from under the blanket.
Emma watched me put the phone down.
“Was he mad?”
“He was frustrated.”
“That means mad.”
I sat beside her.
“Sometimes.”
She picked at a loose thread near the cuff of her pajama shirt.
“Did he say sorry?”
I could have protected Mark.
I had done it automatically for years.
He was stressed.
He didn’t mean it.
He’ll talk when he calms down.
I looked at Emma’s bent head.
“No.”
She nodded once.
“Okay.”
May you like
The word hurt me more coming from her than it had coming from me.
At nine fifteen, Natalie called.
