Ethan has dragged his chair flush against hers. He’s got one of the picture books I bought him spread open, a fat crayon in his fist, his whole face folded down into concentration. Each time Miranda turns a page, he turns one of his own. When she runs her highlighter under a line, he drags orange under a row of ducks. His tongue pokes out the corner of his mouth.
“What are you studying?” he asks, peering over her arm.
“Kidneys.” She doesn’t look up. “You?”
“Ducks.” He examines his work. “These are very important ducks.”
“I can see that. You’ve underlined them.”
“You have to underline the important parts.” He gives it back to her word for word because she told him so an hour ago, and my chest does something I’d rather it didn’t.
Miranda hums and circles a term in the margin. Ethan circles a duck. She mouths a definition to set it in her memory, and he mouths a sound back that’s mostly vowels, his whole idea of studying hard. Neither of them looks my way.
I’ve started collecting moments I’m not supposed to keep. The wolf does it with me, gone warm and low in my chest. It only goes this quiet when the house is locked and everyone inside it is safe.
“You’re staring,” Miranda says, eyes still on the page.
“There’s a wall behind you.”
“Then move, and you can stare at that instead.”
Ethan twists around to me, beaming, hoisting his book up so I can admire a page of ducks under siege from orange crayon. “Dad. Look. I studied.”
“Look at that, buddy. Good job.”
“Miranda’s going to pass her test,” he tells me, “and then she gets to be the nurse for the whole pack.” His face clouds. “Can ducks be nurses?”
“No,” Miranda answers.
“Why not?”
“No thumbs.”
He takes this in solemnly, then bends back to his ducks.
I stay in the doorway a while longer, towel on my shoulder, and let myself have all of it: the warm kitchen, the scratch of a crayon against paper, the woman who won’t take a cent from me teaching my son that the important parts get underlined.
The hearing is three weeks out. Vanessa is somewhere, sharpening something. I know all of it, and for one afternoon, I put it down to watch my family.
The peace holds for two more days. Then Tuesday morning, my phone buzzes on the kitchen counter while I’m whipping up eggs. The screen lights up with Sterling’s name, followed by a message. I’m here.
I’m already crossing the foyer when the front door swings open, Sterling first, Coach a step behind him, neither one bothering with a greeting.
“Where’s Miranda?”
“Upstairs with Ethan.” My jaw tightens. “What’s going on?”
Sterling holds out his phone.
A headline in tall red type sits above a photograph of Miranda taken at the engagement dinner.
HOCKEY FIANCÉE BURIED UNDER SIX FIGURES OF GAMBLING DEBT.
The article is already going viral. The timestamp says it broke an hour ago, and the comments under it are harsh trolls. I scroll down with my thumb, and the second photograph is worse, a still pulled from somewhere inside the hospital, Miranda in scrubs, a date stamp at the bottom that’s a year old.
My claws are through my fingertips. I retract them with a slow inhale.
“Gambling.” My voice has gone quiet. “She has never gambled a dollar in her life. The debt was her mother’s medical bills.”
