But there is no someone else. Not anymore. My parents are in Arizona. The few friends who stuck around after I left Evan are working their own jobs, managing their own lives. The carefully constructed support system of playdates and carpools I’ve built over the past year functions beautifully for planned events, less so for sudden illnesses.
“I’ll call Evan,” I say, though the words feel like surrender. “Ask him to reschedule.”
Jessica’s skepticism is professional but palpable. “That would be the fourth time. Judge Willis isn’t going to look favorably on another delay.”
She doesn’t need to spell it out. Evan’s lawyer is already painting me as unstable and uncooperative. Each postponement strengthens their narrative that I’m the problem, the unreasonable one.
I dial Tyson’s school instead. “Mrs. Gannett? It’s Golda Adler again. Can Tyson lie down in the nurse’s office for another hour? I’m across town in an important meeting, but I promise?—”
“It’s policy,” she repeats, more gently this time. “And honestly, he’s pretty miserable. Poor kid’s asking for you.”
The last part breaks me. Eight years old and sick and asking for his mom, who’s sitting in a sterile conference room trying to legally extricate herself from his father.
“I’ll be right there.”
Jessica starts gathering her papers. “I’ll try to stall them, see if we can push back an hour.”
“No.” The decision crystallizes as I speak. “Tell them to start without me. You know our position on everything. I trust you.”
She looks startled. “Golda, this is your divorce. Your custody agreement. You should be here.”
“My son needs me more.” I’m already gathering my coat and bag. “Do what you need to do. I’ll sign whatever we discussed. Just... don’t let Evan steamroll you on the custody schedule.”
The elevator ride down feels like descending into a different reality, one where legal language and custody percentages give way to the immediate needs of a sick child. Rain speckles my face as I run to my car, Seattle’s eternal damp a fitting backdrop to the mess churning inside me.
My phone rings just as I pull into traffic. Evan’s name on the screen. I let it go to voicemail, hands steadier on the wheel than I feel inside.
Ten minutes later, navigating through downtown, it rings again. Jessica this time.
“Evan’s lawyer is pushing hard for immediate resolution,” she says without preamble. “Says if we’re postponing again, they’ll petition for primary custody. Using your ‘erratic scheduling’ as evidence.”
Cold fury sweeps through me. “My ‘erratic scheduling’ is picking up our sick child from school. Something he hasn’t done once in the past year.”
“I know,” Jessica’s voice is tight. “But Judge Willis tends to favor stability. A full-time police officer with a regular schedule versus a self-employed voice actor with variable hours...”
The unspoken reality settles like lead. In the eyes of the family court system, Evan’s job makes him reliable. Respectable. My career—placed on the back burner during our marriage and then built around the flexibility to care for our children—makes me look unstable.
“What are our options?”
Jessica sighs, the sound of someone delivering unwelcome news for the twentieth time that day. “We can push for another date, but it weakens our position. Or we can proceed today, with the terms we’ve discussed, and I’ll represent your interests.”
“And if I’m not there?”
“Then Evan controls the narrative. Again.”
I pull into the school parking lot, spot Tyson’s small form hunched on a bench outside the nurse’s office through the glass doors. Head down, arms wrapped around his stomach, the fluorescent lights making his skin look sallow.
“Tell Evan,” I say slowly, “that I’ll sign the agreement as is, with the custody schedule we proposed. If he contests it, we go to court, and I bring every recording, every text message, every piece of evidence I’ve collected.”
“He’ll say it’s blackmail.”
“It’s the truth.”
“The truth is messy, Golda. And expensive. And traumatic for everyone, especially the kids.”
She isn’t wrong. A contested divorce, allegations of emotional abuse, character witnesses, evaluations... the children would be pulled into it all. Their father’s carefully constructed public image versus their mother’s word. The thought of Tyson and Blythe sitting through interviews with court-appointed psychologists, answering questions about daddy’s “scary face,” makes me physically ill.
“One hour,” I decide. “Tell them I’ll be there in one hour. Stall however you can.”
