“That’s very presumptuous of you.” He smiles, still distracted. “I didn’t even ask you to join me.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I grab my sweater off the outdoor sofa andhe grabs my ass as I pass him. “I’m taking the kids to what’s-his-face’s.”
“Their dad’s?” he says.
“Yeah, that guy,” I say, going inside and hollering up to Roxie and Dez to get a move on. Dez will want to bring the cat, and Roxie will want to drive because she just got her license, and I’m not really in any mood for it tonight because I have to spend the drive over thinking about my strategy to deal with Tia, who will inevitably be the one to answer the door and push my buttons. How will she do it today? Who knows? It’s always new and inventive and I have to remember the meditation I did last night and how I promised myself I would rise above the drama and be the better person and not react. I have to get into my Zen place no matter what shit that bitch tries to pull.
Ray will pretend he didn’t hear the door so he doesn’t have to get involved, and Tia will find a way to say something insufferable, like the casual way she says “our kids,” like they have anything to do with her, and then she’ll try to backpedal and say when they’re with her and Ray they’re her family, too... and don’t I want them to feel loved and accepted? She’ll turn it around on me like I can’t see she’s trying to help Ray steal them from me—she actually thinks the custody battle will go his way and that they’re somehow “her/our kids” and not my fucking kids.
I let out a growl of frustration thinking about this as Rox and Dez come outside with their overnight bags. I know they can sense my mood because there is no talk of bringing the cat or Rox driving. They pile in and I white-knuckle it on the two-lane road around the lake, thinking how if Tia twists hergiant ring around on her finger, pretending she’s not doing it to irk me, or if she brings up some personal thing about Ray just to demonstrate their intimacy—the fact that she knows him better than I ever did or ever will even though I was married to him for fifteen years and she barely fucking knows him—it will take all I have not to...
“Mom!” Roxie yells and I slam on the brakes and swerve, just barely missing a blur of something running across the road.
“Shit!” I scream, trying to gain control of the car. When I screech to a halt, the car jerks and I see all of our lives flashing in front of me for just a moment. Then I breathe. I turn and make sure everyone’s okay.
“It was just a deer. It’s okay,” I say, but I see the silent tears on Roxie’s cheeks and the fear in Dez’s eyes. Everyone has been so shaken, so traumatized from what happened to poor Ally, that it’s far from okay. Every loud sound is a shock—any raised voice is a reminder of people screaming in terror, a reminder of the fragility of it all, which they shouldn’t have to feel at ten and sixteen years old. They’ve been forever changed and I’m helpless to comfort them.
“Look, it ran into the woods. Nobody’s hurt,” I say, and Roxie nods and wipes her tears bravely, not saying a word. Dez turns and looks out the window.
“Nobody’s hurt,” I repeat under my breath, then restart the car and slowly pull back out onto the road.
At Ray’s new, stupid house—the one he bought across the lake from ours in order to be close to the kids—I pull into the driveway and pop the hatch so the kids can grab their things. I get out to hug them goodbye, and before I can just drive away in peace, I see Tia leaning against the door frame, twisting hergiant diamond ring as the kids bolt past her into the house, where I know there’s Friday-night pizza waiting for them.
Be the better person; don’t react, I tell myself. She waves. Would the better person wave back or see through the condescending nature of the purposefully taunting wave and just get in the car and go? I can’t decide which is the high road. Before I have a chance to, she saunters up to my car.
“Oh hey, I just wanted to tell you that you really need to fix the lock on the gate to your backyard. You have a pool so it’s actually illegal not to have a working lock.”
“Uh. What?” I snap.
“Just a warning,” she says.
“Um...Youare the one who broke the lock,” I say, wondering where exactly this is going. She literally smashed the padlock with a hammer a couple of months ago, stating she heard a dog barking in the backyard and that we left our corgi outside in extreme heat and she was going to call animal services on us. We weren’t even home and Toots wasn’t outside. She was with us, safe, in air-conditioning, eating an abundance of Beggin’ Strips at the cabin. Stupid twat. She didn’t even manage to get into the yard before the alarm scared her away, but she still made an official report of animal abuse.
“Oh, let’s not get into that again,” she says.
“Yes, let’s not get into that again. I have a couple estimates to fix the lock and the places where you dented the gate,” I say. “Would you like them? Then maybe we can drop it.” I really was taking the high road when I decided not to send the estimates and make things even more volatile.
“Listen, it’s a violation. It’s not safe to have a gate unlocked when you have a pool. Anyone could wander in and drown.”
I meet her eyes, and I can tell she’d probably like to rewordthat—she knows I’m thinking I would welcome her over to the pool anytime in that case.
She hands me some photos. I take them and flip through the half a dozen printouts.
“What the hell?” I say, looking at the images of my broken gate lock.
“I had to report it to code compliance. You left me no choice. You’ve had weeks to fix it.” I feel my mouth go slack and hear a sharp bark of laughter escape my body.
“Are you on crack?” I ask.
“I’m on the right side of the law is what I’m on,” she says self-righteously.
This woman has been snooping around my house for months. She calls herself a stay-at-home mom now that she’s married to Ray, even though the kids are at school all day and she’s not their mom. She literally has nothing else to do. I’ve caught her three times snapping photos, trying desperately to catch me in the act of being an unfit or abusive or neglectful mother so she can bring her evidence back to Ray for the custody case and win the day—she’s his own little Barbie doll minion. She’s made it her full-time job to dig into my past and catch me doing anything slightly distasteful.
When I met Sasha and Regan for margaritas just last Saturday, she was leaving Finnigan’s across the street, and she waited in the fucking parking lot, making sure I didn’t drink and drive, ready to follow me and call the cops. I had a virgin and went home early.
Somehow, the woman I walked in on while she was fucking my husband in a utility room at the Lakeview Inn during the town’s holiday banquet is the morally superior one now.
“You reported it?”
