Chapter 7: The Conversation That Could Not Wait
The lawyer's name was Patricia Hale.
Dave found her himself — not through his mother, not through anyone Cynthia might have briefed in advance.
He called her on Easter Sunday, left a message, and she called back within the hour.
Some people, I was learning, understood urgency when they heard it.
Patricia came to the house the following Tuesday.
She was in her late fifties, practical suit, no-nonsense reading glasses, and she sat at the dining room table with Lauren on one side and Dave on the other and me at the end, and she laid out what a proper parenting arrangement looked like with the brisk efficiency of someone who had seen every version of this situation and had no patience for the ones that dragged on.
"Child support will be calculated based on current income," she said.
"Visitation schedule will be built around Ava's needs first, logistics second.
I'll need both parties to sign off on the initial framework before we file."
"What about the previous payments?" Lauren asked.
Patricia looked at her notes.
"Informal, undocumented, routed through a third party." She looked at Dave over her glasses.
"That arrangement ends today.
Everything going forward is formal, traceable, and enforceable."
Dave nodded.
"There's a medical situation," I said.
"Lauren is waiting on test results.
We need a contingency clause — something that addresses Ava's care and custody if Lauren's health situation changes significantly."
Patricia looked at Lauren.
"Is that something you want included?"
Lauren's hands were flat on the table.
"Yes."
"Then we'll draft it." Patricia made a note.
"It's not uncommon.
Better to have it and not need it."
Cynthia was not in the room.
She had offered to be, and I had said no, and for once she had not argued.
She was upstairs.
I could hear her, occasionally, moving around.
She had been quieter since Sunday morning.
Not softer, exactly — Cynthia didn't do soft — but quieter.
Like someone recalculating.
After Patricia left, Dave and Lauren stayed at the table going over the draft framework.
I made coffee and stood at the counter, not quite in the conversation but not leaving it either.
"She's going to need consistency," Lauren said.
"She's at an age where change is hard.
If visitation is going to start, it should start soon and stay regular.
Not every few months when it's convenient."
"I understand that," Dave said.
"Do you?" Lauren looked at him directly.
"Because for five years, convenient was the operating principle."
Dave didn't flinch away from it.
"You're right."
"I'm not saying it to punish you."
"I know."
"I'm saying it because she's already attached to a version of you that lives in her imagination.
The real version needs to show up consistently or it's worse than not showing up at all."
"I'll show up," Dave said.
Lauren studied him for a moment.
Then she looked at me.
"Is he going to?" she asked.
It was a strange question to ask a wife about her husband.
But it wasn't a strange question to ask someone who had watched him for six years.
"I think he wants to," I said.
"Whether wanting is enough — that's what we're all about to find out."
Dave looked at me across the kitchen.
There was something in his expression — not a plea, exactly.
More like a man standing at the edge of something and hoping the ground holds.
I didn't look away.
"The arrangement needs one more thing," I said to Lauren.
"My name on the emergency contact.
If something happens and Dave isn't reachable, I want to be the one who gets called."
Lauren was quiet for a moment.
"You'd do that?"
"She knows where the scrambled eggs are," I said.
"And she saved me a purple chocolate.
That's enough for me."
Lauren let out a breath that had been held for a long time.
Dave put his hands flat on the table.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Cynthia, still moving around in her recalculation.
I refilled my coffee.
There was still the matter of Dave and me — the real conversation, the one about two years of waiting rooms and parking lot tears and a secret that had been kept like a stone under the floorboards of our marriage.
That conversation hadn't happened yet.
But it was coming.
And I had decided I was going to have it somewhere that wasn't Cynthia's house.
"We're going home tomorrow," I said to Dave.
He looked up.
"Just us?"
"Just us," I said.
"We have things to talk about that we can't talk about here."
He nodded slowly.
"Okay."
I looked at Lauren.
"You have my number.
Call me after Thursday."
"I will," she said.
I went upstairs to pack.
At the top of the stairs, Cynthia was standing in the hallway.
She had clearly been waiting.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
I stopped.
"I'm listening," I said.
She looked at the floor, then at me.
"I told myself I was protecting my son.
I know now that I was also protecting myself.
From the mess of it.
From having to watch him face what he'd done." She paused.
"That wasn't right."
I studied her.
"It wasn't," I agreed.
"I'd like to know Ava," she said.
"If that's — if that's something that can happen."
"That's not my decision to make," I said.
"That's Lauren's."
Cynthia nodded.
She looked like she'd expected that answer and had been hoping for a different one.
"Talk to Lauren," I said.
"Directly.
Not through Dave.
Not through me." I picked up my bag.
"And Cynthia — if you ever try to manage what Ava knows about her own family, or what Lauren is entitled to, or what I am allowed to find out — that conversation will be the last one we have."
She held my gaze.
"Understood," she said.
I believed her.
Not because Cynthia had become a different person overnight.
But because she had looked at Ava across that kitchen table and seen, finally, what she had been willing to walk away from on those church steps.
May you like
And that had cost her something.
I walked past her and went to finish packing.
