Page 24 of The Lion in the Library

She considered this. Accepted it. Beamed, and disappeared toward her backpack.

“Estrella,” Roberto said.

“My personal life is not your concern,” I said into the receiver. “If you want to arrange a visit with Luz, have your lawyer call mine. As you know, I have full custody and your visitation is at my discretion.”

“That could change,” he said.

The words were quiet. Not shouted. That was how Roberto operated — smooth surfaces over everything underneath, like a floor that looked solid until you stepped on it.

“It could change,” he repeated. “A high-profile relationship, photographers outside your building, your children being seen in the papers — a judge might have questions about stability.”

My jaw tightened. “A judge might also have questions,” I said, equally quietly, “about a father who has had eleven documented contact hours with his daughter in the past three years.”

Silence.

“We’ll talk,” he said finally. “When things are calmer.”

“They’re perfectly calm now,” I said. “Goodbye, Roberto.”

I hung up.

For a moment I stood very still at the kitchen counter, my hand flat against the cool tile, breathing. Outside the window, Los Angeles was doing its ordinary morning thing, entirely indifferent to the fact that my ex-husband had just attempted to threaten me before eight o’clock.

Then Luz came back for her lunch and Pedro reappeared needing help with his shoes — the left one specifically, which had developed opinions about being tied — and the morning resumed its necessary momentum, and I was grateful for that, because it did not allow me to fall apart.

Mrs. Feldman arrived at noon with her folder of exercises and her expression of patient professional encouragement, which I had come to recognize as the face she wore when she expected a difficult session.

She was not wrong.

“From the top,” she said, settling into the armchair across from me. “The ‘th’ passage. Nice and slow.”

I read the passage. My mind was in three places simultaneously: the ‘th’ sounds, Roberto’s voice that morning, and the very satisfying mental image of my lawyer receiving his call and demolishing it with the calm efficiency I paid her to bring to exactly these situations.

“The third line,” Mrs. Feldman said. “Again.”

“The thirty-three th—” I stopped. Tried again. “The thirty-three⁠—”

“You’re rushing,” she said. “Something’s on your mind.”

“No,” I said.

She looked at me with the patience of a woman who had coached many actors through many difficult days and knew the difference between someone who had nothing on their mind and someone who was performing having nothing on their mind.

“From the top,” she said again, kindly.

I read the passage from the top. I was careful about the ‘th’ sounds. I was less careful about the rhythm, because part of my attention was occupied with composing, in elegant and legally unimpeachable language, everything I intended to say to Roberto’s lawyer when the time came.

“Better,” Mrs. Feldman said, in the tone that meant adequate. “Now the second exercise. The one with the vowels.”

The vowel exercise required me to produce a sequence of sounds that English speakers found natural and I found faintly absurd, as though someone had disassembled a perfectly functional language and asked me to rebuild it from diagrams.

I produced the sequence. I thought about Luz and her six hair clips, and how she had asked if she looked like a princess, and how she had not flinched when Roberto was mentioned because she had learned very early, in the way that children of absent parents learn, not to hold too much hope in that direction.

She deserved better than that.

“Good,” Mrs. Feldman said, which was a step up from adequate. “One more time.”

By the end of the session, I had worked through every exercise on Mrs. Feldman’s list and arrived at a state that I recognized as useful anger — the kind that had edges you could do something with, rather than the shapeless kind that just wore you down.