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“No. I just don’t like wine.”
“You want something else?” he asks. “Gin and tonic? Margarita?”
He’s making slightly more effort than he should to get me to drink midday. There’s probably a reason for that. “I’m good, thanks.”
“You know your husband is picking my daughter up from dance this afternoon?” he asks, changing the subject with gritted teeth. “Myfucking daughter, and I’m not even allowed to pick her up when her mother can’t be bothered. You’re lucky you guys don’t have a custody battle on top of everything else.”
“If we had custody of something,” I reply tightly, “we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.”
He offers a sympathetic wince that is clearly feigned. “Right. Sorry. It’s just so hard to be away from my kids. I get them for the weekend, and it kills me the way they cry at the end. They ask me every damn time when they can move home and all I can say is ‘soon.’”
I set my menu off to the side. This conversation is killing my appetite. “You think they’d rather live with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it’s easier to be in my position—I get to be the parent who spoils them. I’m not there day in and day out. But they want more time with me, and I could easily get fifty percent custody—I’m just not sure I could do that to Lucie. The kids are her whole life. She doesn’t have anything else.”
I sip my water. “Doesn’t she work for Caleb?”
He throws out his hands. “How much work do you think she’s actually doing? She isn’t qualified for anything. She’s basically just hoping to be Caleb’s trophy wife. The kids are telling me Caleb stays over. I mean, what kind of example does that set?”
My stomach twists as I picture Caleb on Saturday mornings, waking up with his new family, making them pancakes. He was never around on weekends when we were together, but now,now, he’s got time for fucking ballet lessons and sleepovers.
The waiter takes our order, and when he leaves, Jeremy picks up right where he left off.
“Caleb’s distracting her. The last time I got them up, they both had fevers. She couldn’t even bother taking them to the doctor. And she’s routinely late for school pickup. If she keeps going the way she is, I’m going to have to try to get full custody.”
Lucie sucks, but not two minutes ago, he said he wouldn’t even try to get fifty percent custody because it would hurt her, and now he’s considering takingallof it? “I thought you said you couldn’t do that to her.”
“I don’twantto do it,” he corrects, refilling his wine. “But I may be forced to. I have to make sure my kids are safe. I’m really hoping it won’t come to that, though. If she thought I was going to get custody, she’d come running back so fast it’d blind you.”
I laugh. “Why wouldyouget full custody? I think the bar is set pretty high for that.”
His smile sends a shiver up my spine. “My uncle’s the DA. If she got caught for something, it’d be pretty easy to make her look unfit.”
I stare at him. Lucie appears, on the surface at least, to be the ultimate rule-follower. “What would she get caught for, though?”
“Well,” he says, leaning forward, planting his forearms on the table, ready to deliver a sales pitch, “if she got caught with drugs in her car, for instance.”
“Does shedodrugs?” The woman I see on Instagram looks like the only drug she’s even heard of is aspirin.
“She’s sleeping with her boss, openly. She’s not taking the kids to the doctor. Who knows what she’s doing?”
“Are you saying you have reason to hope she’ll get caught, or are you talking about framing her?”
He shrugs. “It all works out the same, one way or the other. It helps you, too. Your divorce could be finalized really fast if you don’t find a way to stop it.”
Holy shit. Heistalking about framing her. Though I might not be a model of ethical behavior, I have no intention of helping this guy commit a felony. And even if Lucie isn’t the greatest mom, Jeremy is hardly parent-of-the-year material himself.
“Don’t you think this whole situation sucks?” he asks. “I don’t know how you stand it. Seriously. I can’t even imagine what you went through with your daughter. I just wish Lucie could be in your shoes for a single hour so she’d realize how lucky she is to have the kids. Instead, she’s ignoring them all day to go fuck your husband.”
It’s insulting that he thinks his little manipulation here will work when it’s been done so clumsily. But that doesn’t prevent a tiny spike of anger in my chest.
If Hannah had lived, I’dneverhave been the mother Jeremy is describing. I just don’t understand how Lucie has wound up with everything—my husband, two kids, a job that’s fallen into her lap—while every effort I make seems to lead nowhere. I carry a child for forty-one weeks and go home empty-handed. I spend months applying for jobs and going to interviews, and I’ve still got nothing.
“Look, I’m just going to level with you,” he says. Jeremy is so routinely dishonest that he has to announce the moments when he’snotdishonest. “If I could getaholdof something, I could fix things faster for both of us.”
I blink. It’s not a hypothetical plan at all. He really intends to go through with it.
Our meals arrive and we both sit back, thanking the waiter with polite smiles.
