“You’re making that up,” I accuse.
“I am not! It was for a commercial about fabric softener. The washing machine was supposed to be wise and street-smart.”
“Did you keep the accent consistent throughout?”
“I am a professional,” she says with mock dignity. “Of course I kept it consistent.”
“Can you do it now?” Blythe asks, bouncing in her seat.
“Absolutely not.”
“Please? Pretty please with extra sprinkles?”
“Extra sprinkles?” I look at Golda. “That’s a new level of bribery.”
“She’s escalating her tactics,” Tyson explains seriously. “Last week she offered to clean her room for a month.”
“And did you take the deal?”
“I’m not stupid,” Golda laughs. “Her room would be a disaster again within three days.”
“Hey!” Blythe protests. “I’m very organized!”
“You have twenty-seven stuffed animals on your bed,” Tyson points out. “And you name them all.”
“They need names! How else would they know who they are?”
The conversation devolves into a debate about proper stuffed animal nomenclature that’s so ridiculous I find myself genuinely entertained. This is what I’ve been missing, I realize. Not just the domestic stuff—the shared meals and inside jokes—but thesense of belonging somewhere. Of being part of something bigger than myself.
After the kids go to bed—with minimal argument, probably because they’re both exhausted from the day’s excitement—Golda and I clean up the kitchen together. It’s becoming a routine, this quiet end-of-day ritual.
“So,” she says, loading chopsticks into the dishwasher, “what really happened at practice? The unedited version.”
I consider sugarcoating it, but we’re past that point. “He made threats. Said it wasn’t over, that a lot could happen between now and the hearing. Implied he had ways of making my life difficult.”
Her hands still on the plate she’s rinsing. “He threatened you? Specifically?”
“Vaguely. But with no real leverage and thirty witnesses.” I take the plate from her hands, set it aside. “Look at me.”
She does, reluctantly.
“You think I’m going to back down because some asshole in an expensive suit tried to intimidate me?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “This is all so complicated, and you didn’t sign up for?—”
“Yes, I did.” The words come out harder than I intended, but I need her to understand this. “Maybe not consciously at first, but the moment I decided I cared about you and those kids, I signed up for all of it.”
Something flickers in her expression—surprise, maybe, or hope she’s trying not to feel.
“Dex—”
“I’m not going anywhere, Golda. Not because of Evan, not because of legal battles, not because your daughter has declared war on small appliances.”
She laughs despite herself. “She really has.”
“I know what I want,” I continue, stepping closer until I can see the flecks of gold in her blue eyes. “I want this. You, the kids, the whole messy, complicated package. All of it.”
Her eyes search my face, looking for doubt or hesitation or signs that I’m just saying what she wants to hear. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her, because some of the tension leaves her shoulders.
