Chapter 4: What Caleb Told His Father
I found out the next morning.
Caleb was eating cereal at the small table by the window, phone face-up beside his bowl.
I poured coffee and sat across from him.
"Did you text Dad last night?" I said.
He looked up.
"Yeah."
"What did you tell him?"
He stirred his cereal.
"That I apologized.
And that we went to the pier."
"Anything else?"
A pause.
"That he shouldn't have said what he said.
About the place being cheap."
I set my coffee down.
"You told him that?"
"Yeah." Caleb looked at me steadily.
"Was that bad?"
"No," I said.
"That wasn't bad at all."
He went back to his cereal.
Mia came out of the bedroom dragging her stuffed rabbit by one ear, still half-asleep, and climbed into my lap without asking.
I wrapped an arm around her.
My phone buzzed.
Then again.
Then a third time in quick succession.
I picked it up.
Three texts from Mark, sent within two minutes of each other.
*We need to talk about what Caleb said to me.*
*I don't appreciate him being put in the middle of this.*
*Call me when the kids aren't around.*
I read them twice.
Then I put the phone down on the table, screen-up, where Caleb could see it if he looked.
He looked.
He read them.
His jaw tightened the same way it had at lunch the day before.
"He thinks you told me to say it," Caleb said.
"I know."
"I came up with it myself."
"I know that too."
"Are you going to call him?"
"Later," I said.
"Not now."
Mia had fallen back asleep against my shoulder.
I could feel the weight of her, warm and trusting, completely unaware.
I kept my voice even.
"Caleb," I said.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.
Not to protect me, not to protect Dad.
Just honestly."
He put his spoon down.
"Okay."
"How long has Dad been saying things about me?
About money, about this trip, about the way I do things?"
He thought about it.
Really thought — I could see him sorting through something.
"Since like Christmas," he said.
"Maybe before."
"What kinds of things?"
"Like — " He stopped.
Started again.
"Like when I told him you got a new car, he said you probably couldn't afford it.
And when I said we were going on a trip, he asked if you were putting it on credit cards.
And one time he said — " He stopped again.
"It's okay," I said.
"He said that you always had to be the one who looked good, and that's why you spent money you didn't have.
That it was about making yourself look successful."
The apartment was very quiet.
Mia breathed against my shoulder.
"He said that to you," I said.
Not a question.
"Yeah."
I looked out the window.
The sky was already bright, the kind of flat white beach-morning that made everything look slightly overexposed.
"Okay," I said.
"Are you mad?"
"Not at you."
Caleb picked his spoon back up.
He took one bite, then set it down again.
"Mom.
Why does he do that?"
"I don't know exactly."
"Is it because he's still mad about the divorce?"
"Probably partly."
"Are you still mad about it?"
I thought about the honest answer.
"Sometimes," I said.
"Less than I used to be."
He nodded slowly.
Like he was filing it somewhere.
"I'm not going to do that," he said.
"Say stuff about him to you, I mean.
Even if I'm mad."
Something moved in my chest.
"That's a very grown-up thing to decide."
"He shouldn't do it either."
"No," I said.
"He shouldn't."
My phone buzzed again.
A fourth text.
*This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
You're turning him against me.*
I didn't pick it up.
Caleb saw it from across the table.
He read it.
He looked at me.
"You didn't turn me against him," he said.
"I just — I saw what I saw."
"I know."
"Are you going to tell him that?"
"Yes," I said.
"But not today.
Today we're going to the beach."
Caleb looked at me for a moment.
Then something in his face loosened — not quite a smile, but close.
"The pool still smells," he said.
"The ocean doesn't."
He picked up his spoon again.
This time he finished the bowl.
We spent the morning on the beach.
Caleb got in the water.
He didn't complain about anything.
He buried Mia up to her waist in sand and let her direct the entire operation, which took forty-five minutes and involved a moat, a flag made from a straw, and a lengthy negotiation about where the castle door should go.
I sat in a beach chair and watched them.
My phone was in my bag.
I didn't check it once.
But that afternoon, while the kids napped, I finally opened Mark's messages.
All four of them.
I read them in order, slowly.
And then I scrolled up.
Further than I'd meant to.
May you like
Past the messages from this trip, back through the last several months.
What I found there was not what I expected.
