Page 95 of Cruel Lies

But it doesn't turn. The days line up one after another, ordinary and warm, and slowly, the bracing starts to loosen.

The kids come home Sunday afternoon, dropped off by my mom, who gives me a look on the porch that says she has questions aplenty, but also the good grace to save them. Isabella barrels into the house shouting about a caterpillar she found at Grandma's that she has named Doctor Fuzz. Hayden trails behind with a library book about hydrothermal vents that he clearly intends to recite to me word for word.

"There's a whole world down there," he tells me at dinner, waving a chicken nugget for emphasis, "where there's no sun at all, and the animals don't need it. They eat chemicals from the vents. Isn't that insane, Mom? A whole world with no sun!"

"That's insane," I agree.

"There are worms," he says, delighted, "as long as your arm."

Isabella makes a face. "Doctor Fuzz would not like those worms."

"Doctor Fuzz is a caterpillar," Hayden says.

"Yes, and he is agood one," Isabella says, with the withering dignity of a six-year-old defending the honor of her comrade. I have to put my napkin over my mouth so they don't see me laughing.

This is what I fought for. I forget that sometimes, in the swirl of everything else, in the divorce and the company and the man in the tuxedo who takes my mirrors and answers questions I didn't know I was asking. But this—two kids at my table arguing about the heroic qualifications of a caterpillar—this is the thing that matters most.

This was always the thing.

I clear the plates. I do bath time. I read the hydrothermal vent book out loud, doing voices for the worms and the volcanos andthe many sightless fish that call the bottom of the ocean home, until Hayden falls asleep with his hand still on the page. I tuck Isabella in with Doctor Fuzz's shoebox on the nightstand, where she can see him, because she made me promise I'd tuck him in, too.

Then I go downstairs and stand in my kitchen in my socks.

Only when the house is quiet do I let myself think about him.

It's been like that all day long. I'll be doing something completely mundane—wiping down the counter, pulling a load out of the dryer, standing at the sink—and my mind will just go there, all on its own. Any time I'm in my bedroom, I keep sneaking glances at the chair in the corner of my room that I still haven't put the laundry back on, because it feels like his chair now.

The stoop whiskey.

Two white pills next to a glass of water.

You never have to thank me for that.

And also, most confusingly of all…

Nothing happened.

Todd would have taken it. Not because Todd was a monster inthatspecific way, but because Todd took whatever was in front of him and called it love and expected me to be grateful. He never once in ten years sat in a chair all night so I could sleep.

I don't know what to do with a man who does.

The mornings help.

Every morning, before ten, my phone lights up.You're beautiful, Calista Meadows.Same words, every day, relentless in their patience.

The first day, I sent back,Stop.

The second day, I sent back,You're going to give yourself carpal tunnel.

By Wednesday I stopped fighting it and just let the warm glow force a smile to my face for a few precious minutes before I put the phone down and got on with my day.

He sends other things, too. A picture of a sea creature he found online that he thinks Hayden would be interested in, some kind of translucent squid with a bioluminescent appendage on the end of it.

On Thursday, a delivery arrives. It's a stack of children's books about the deep sea, and a smaller box of the good bandages, the ones with the cartoon animals, because Isabella went through the last of hers performing an emergency appendectomy on the couch cushion.

Ronan Akov is always, always listening.

The company is doing good, too. The Jersey logistics firm signs the full contract on Tuesday, and the first payment hits the company accounts the following day. Shortly after, two more companies email asking for a demo.