“OK. In that case, get in there and help me close this deal, and then we’ll see what we can reschedule.”
I follow Caleb into the conference room. His posture is bracing for impact. Our founder client sits at the head of the table, arms folded tight enough to blanch the knuckles, while our new associate looks like he might throw up.
“I understand that our terms are strict,” I say, sliding into my chair and catching the tail end of whatever meltdown has just occurred. “But they’re industry standard, and we structured them to protect your interests as much as ours.”
The founder glares at me with the moral outrage of someone who eats founders for breakfast on Twitter but cries during the Apple keynote. “I just want to ensure that Kingsley & Kingsley isn’t going to screw us down the line. I’ve had attorneys pivot their loyalty before. It’s always the startups that get burned.”
For the next thirty minutes, I perform the role of confident attorney, charming partner, consummate professional. I answer questions and sprinkle in the right mix of empathy and unyielding logic, but beneath it all my brain is somewhere else, cycling through disaster scenarios involving Kelsie showing up at field trips or texting Michaela directly or, God forbid, making a scene in the middle of a swim meet. It’s a slog. But when the signature is finally on the agreement, the handshake happens, and the founder leaves, I don’t even wait for the door to close.
“Are you OK?” Caleb asks.
I shake my head. “Not even a little.”
He starts to say something, but I’m already halfway down the hall to my office. I stare at the filing on my screen, the legalese a taunt, and I feel something break loose inside. Rage, mostly, but also a cold, animal fear.
I dial the nanny again while I throw files into my bag. Caleb enters my office and sees the filings on my screen.
The call goes to voicemail.
Shit.
I grab my keys.
“I need to?—”
“Go,” Caleb says before I can finish. “And David? We’re going to beat this.”
I wish I believed him.
NORA
The house is quiet when I check on Michaela again.
She’s curled up on my guest bed, shoes kicked off, her face slack with the exhausted peace that only comes after crying yourself out. My golden retriever rests beside her like a giant teddy bear, her fingers curled into his fur.
I pull the quilt up over her shoulders—the one my grandmother made, soft from decades of washing—and stand there for a moment, watching her breathe.
Eight years old. Eight years old and dealing with things no child should have to process.
I tried to explain when she asked. Tried to find words for a situation I barely understand myself. Her mother wants to see her. Her mother left when she was very small, but now she wants to come back. Sometimes grown-ups make choices they regret, and sometimes they try to fix those choices, even when it’s complicated.
Michaela had listened with those serious dark eyes—so much like her father’s—and then asked the question I couldn’t answer:
“But why did she leave in the first place?”
I didn’t know, couldn’t even understand if I did. I’m not sure anyone could.
She cried after that. Not loud, dramatic sobs, but quiet tears that seemed to leak out despite her best efforts to hold them back. I’d sat with her on the couch, not touching at first—some children don’t want to be touched when they’re upset—until she’d eventually leaned into my side and let me put an arm around her.
“My dad works really hard,” she’d said, voice muffled against my sweater. “He’s always there for everything. Every school play and every swim meet, and every time I’m sick. If she wanted to be my mom, why didn’t she just... stay?”
I didn’t have an answer for that either.
Now I’m standing in my guest room doorway, wondering how I got here. Principal Nora Harrison, fifteen years in education, impeccable professional boundaries, currently babysitting a student in her personal residence because she couldn’t say no to the panic in David Kingsley’s voice.
The doorbell rings, and my heart does something inconvenient.
I take a breath, smooth my hair—why am I smoothing my hair?—and go to answer it.
