Chapter 8: What the Message Said

I didn't ask Caleb about the text.

I made the coffee.

I got Mia up and dressed.

We found a breakfast place two blocks from the resort that had good pancakes and a jar of crayons on every table, and Mia drew an elaborate picture of the pier while Caleb ate in near silence.

He wasn't rude.

He wasn't the Caleb from day one.

But he was somewhere else.

On the walk back, Mia ran ahead to look at a dog tied outside a shop.

Caleb fell into step beside me.

"Dad wants me to tell him what you've been saying about him," he said.

I kept walking.

"What did you say back?"

"Nothing yet." He paused.

"He said he's worried about us.

That he just wants to make sure we're okay."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He said it simply.

"I'm fine."

"Then you can tell him that."

"He's going to ask more questions."

"Probably."

Caleb was quiet for a moment.

"Mom, why is he doing this?"

I thought about Diane's voice.

*You do not respond until you've talked to someone who knows what they're doing.* I thought about the screenshots sitting in my email.

I thought about what I actually owed a seven-year-old in this moment.

"I think," I said carefully, "that Dad is scared."

"Of what?"

"Of not being the most important person in your life."

Caleb frowned.

"That doesn't make sense.

He's my dad."

"I know.

But sometimes adults get scared of things that don't make logical sense."

He chewed on that.

"Is that why he says stuff about you?"

"I think so.

Yes."

"That's not a good reason."

"No," I said.

"It isn't."

Mia came running back, breathless, to report that the dog's name was Gerald and he was very soft and she had asked the owner and the owner said Gerald was four years old which was almost the same as her.

We walked back to the resort.

While the kids packed — Mia very seriously, Caleb throwing things in his bag with the efficiency of someone who had already mentally left — I sat on the edge of the bed and opened my phone.

I found the lawyer's number Diane had texted me the night before.

I looked at it for a moment.

Then I typed a message: *Hi — I was given your number by Diane.

I'd like to schedule a call when you have time.

It's about a custody situation that may be developing.*

I read it back.

Hit send.

The response came eleven minutes later.

*Of course.

I have availability Tuesday at 10am or Thursday at 2pm.

Which works better?*

I typed back: *Tuesday.*

I put the phone in my bag.

"Mom," Caleb called from the other room.

"I can't find my blue shirt."

"Check under the bed."

A pause.

"Found it."

I stood up.

Looked around the room — the rumpled beds, the towels, the small balcony where Mia and I had watched the fast boat.

Eleven hundred dollars.

Three payment installments.

Five days.

Day three had almost broken me.

Days four and five had given me something I hadn't expected to find.

I zipped my bag.

Carried it to the door.

In the car to the airport, Mia fell asleep within ten minutes, her head against the window, rabbit in her lap.

Caleb looked out his window at the passing highway.

"I want to come back," he said.

"To this place."

"Maybe next year," I said.

"Can we do the paddleboards again?"

"If you don't fall off as many times."

"I only fell off twice."

"You fell off four times."

"Two of those were on purpose," he said.

I didn't argue with that.

At the airport, while we waited at the gate, Caleb's phone buzzed again.

He looked at it.

This time he showed it to me.

Mark's message read: *I need you to tell me what Mom has been saying about me.

It's important.

I need to know so I can protect you.*

I read it once.

Then again.

Caleb was watching my face.

"What should I tell him?" he said.

I handed the phone back.

"Tell him the truth.

That we had a good trip and you're about to board."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

He typed it.

Hit send.

Put the phone in his pocket.

He didn't look at it again until we landed.

And when we got home — when the bags were inside and Mia was reunited with her other stuffed animals and the ordinary shape of our life reassembled itself around us — I sat down at the kitchen table and opened my email.

I read through the screenshots one more time.

All of them.

Then I opened a new email, attached the screenshots and the notes I'd typed, and wrote one line in the body:

*Everything you need to start with is here.*

I sent it to the lawyer.

I closed the laptop.

Mia came into the kitchen dragging a second rabbit she'd apparently been worried about all week.

"Mommy, they missed each other," she said, holding both rabbits up.

"I can tell," I said.

May you like

I never had children of my own, so more than twenty years ago, when I sp...

I never had children of my own, so more than twenty years ago, when I spotted a thin little boy sitting by himself across the stre...

My rich father found me after I spent my childhood in foster care — one...

My rich father found me after I spent my childhood in foster care — one week later, he died, and his lawyer said, "You walked righ...

My neighbor smashed my lawn sprinklers with a golf club because "the wat...

My neighbor smashed my lawn sprinklers with a golf club because "the water was getting on his brand-new car" — I didn't call the p...

She climbed into my lap, both rabbits in her arms, and settled there like it was the most natural thing in the world.

It was.