Emma helped give Chelsea a bath, then changed her Band-Aid afterward. It was just a Band-Aid, but watching how gentle and sweet Emma was with my sister made me smile.
After that we moved to the living room and sat on the sofa to watch Frozen, me at one end and Emma at the other because Chelsea wanted to be in the middle curled up against me. Brad jumped into my lap and I was officially buried.
Emma smiled at me from the other end of the couch. “You’re like a docking station for small vulnerable dependents.”
“Well, we all need a job.” She laughed.
When Chelsea fell asleep, I carried her up to bed. When I came down, I sat back in my corner. I didn’t want to assume Emma wanted me closer.
She looked at me, amused. “All the way over there?”
“Well, I don’t want to crowd you. Though the docking station is available if you’d like to give it a try.”
She made a show of thinking about it. “You know, I would like to give it a try. See what all the fuss is about.”
I grinned and made a come-here motion with my hand and she scooted over and let me put an arm around her. The highlight of my entire week, hands down.
“So what do you want to watch?” I asked, hoping she couldn’t feel my heart racing, though I was pretty sure she could.
She tilted her head up and her mouth was very close to mine. “Whatever you want.”
“Okay. Hellraiser it is.” “Ha.”
I picked up the remote and started scrolling. “How about The Sopranos?”
“Sure. But from the beginning though. It’s been a few years.”
“Got it.” I was scrolling down to season one when my phone pinged on the coffee table. “Sorry, I leave the ringer up when I’m babysitting,” I said.
I looked at my screen and cracked up. “Look what Brad just sent me.”
It was a picture of a shirt with the Toilet King on it and a text that said, “Your birthday gift motherfucker.”
She laughed. “When is your birthday?” she asked. “Not until next year. When’s your birthday?”
“In a few weeks, actually.”
“Oh. Well, do you have plans? Can I take you out?” I asked. “It’ll be after my contract’s up.”
Her way of saying she wouldn’t be here for it. I only got to feel disappointed for a second before my phone pinged again.
“Sorry,” I said, looking at it. “It’s my mom. I have to reply to this.”
I took my arm away from Emma and typed a short message about Sarah being home and Chelsea being in bed.
“What time does she get home?” Emma asked. “I don’t know. Midnight?”
She must have heard the tone in my voice. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I hit send and put my phone away. But when I went to put my arm back around her, she didn’t scoot in.
“It doesn’t feel like nothing,” she said.
I looked away from her. “She’s dealing with some pretty serious legal issues at the moment.”
“For what?”
I paused, not sure how much I wanted to share. I decided on all of it. Emma was going to be here when it all hit the fan anyway, so there was no point in keeping her in the dark.
“She’s going to prison.” I stopped because the next part was hard to say out loud. In fact, I had never done it with anyone besides Brad and Benny. “She embezzled money. A lot of money.”
Emma just stared at me.
“She wrote herself fake checks. She was doing it for the better part of a year. She got caught.”
“Had she ever done anything like that before?” she asked.
“No. Never. She didn’t have any priors, not even a speeding ticket,” I said. “We hoped for a slap on the wrist, probation, restitution. Even her old boss asked for leniency.” I shook my head. “She didn’t get it. She worked for a nonprofit and almost put it out of business. It pissed off the judge. He gave her some time to get her affairs in order, then she has to turn herself in. She got six years.”
“Oh my God,” Emma breathed. “How much did she take?”
“A lot. Flew the kids to Disneyland. Redid the landscaping. Stupid shit. Shit that wasn’t worth it. I don’t even know why she did it. To be honest I don’t even think she knows.”
“And who’s taking the kids?” Emma asked. I paused. “I am.”
I couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It only became official a few days before I met you. It was hard to talk about,” I said. “Mom’s best friend Leigh agreed to take them, but they’d have to move twenty miles away to live with her. Leigh’s got horses and she can’t board them. Alex and Sarah were having a really hard time with it. I didn’t want them to have to change schools. Plus if I move in here, I can keep paying the mortgage so Mom won’t lose the house. She already had to liquidate her 401(k) and all the college funds to pay back the money she took. I couldn’t let the house end up sold after all that.”
“When does she leave?” “Next week.”
The words hung there.
Today I was single. I had my own place, my own life. And next week I’d be the legal guardian of three children.
I still couldn’t believe it. No matter how fast it was coming or how many emails Mom sent with instructions and the names of pediatricians and dentists they had to see and sports I had to sign them up for in the fall, I still couldn’t accept this was real.
We sat there for a moment in silence and I stared at a photo on the
mantel, the last one we took with Dad before he died. The one-eighty our lives had taken since then was truly unbelievable. Some alternate universe. A hellscape.
“She won’t be able to chaperone Chelsea’s field trips,” I said, almost absently.
When she got out, she wouldn’t pass the school’s background check. All the memories I had of Mom on the bus, on our way to Como Park or Long Lake—Chelsea wouldn’t have that. She wouldn’t have her dad and she’d lost parts of her mom now too. Alex would be in his twenties when she got out. She was going to miss his graduation. Sarah’s too. Chelsea would be ten, a sixth grader. I’d be thirty-five. Maybe I’d be married. Maybe Alex would. She’d miss the weddings. She’d miss our lives.
And I was angry.
I’d been angry for years. I was angry when Dad died, and then I slid right into being angry at Mom and angry at what was happening to my life and I just… I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t forgive it. I couldn’t understand it and I couldn’t forgive it. And now everyone would pay for it. Alex, Sarah, and Chelsea. Me.
Emma watched me quietly.
“I’m trying really hard to not hold on to it,” I said. “It’s just a lot to accept. It was right after my dad died.” I shook my head. “It was so out of character for her, I don’t get it.”
“Be glad you don’t get it. It means your life has been a lot gentler than hers.”
I stopped and looked at her.
“How old was Chelsea when your dad died?” she asked. I wrinkled my forehead. “Five months.”
“When did she do this?”
I paused. “That same year.”
“She could have been dealing with postpartum depression, PTSD, complicated grief. Any of those things can make you impulsive and reckless. She might have been self-medicating to deal with it, taking things you didn’t know about. Trauma changes you.”
I set my lips into a line. “So you think she got so depressed she decided to steal two hundred thousand dollars?”
“Justin, people get so depressed they kill themselves.”
I blinked at her.
“You have a lot of ice in Minnesota, right?” she asked. “Yes…”
“What happens when water gets into a crack and it freezes?” “It expands,” I said. “Makes the crack bigger.”
“Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life gets cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don’t know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”
“I’ve… I’ve never thought of it that way,” I admitted.
Emma tucked her leg under her. “I think the thing that always got me through the stuff with my mom was knowing that she didn’t want to be the way she was. Nobody wants to be the villain, Justin. If you start there, it’s easier to get how people end up who they are and where they are. My mom put me through a lot. She hurt me. A lot. But she’s full of more cracks than I can ever comprehend.”
“So how do you reconcile that?” I asked. “How do you learn to forgive her?”
She shrugged. “You don’t have to forgive her. You really don’t. You can still love someone that you’ve decided not to speak to anymore. You can still wish them well and hope for the best for them. Choosing a life without them doesn’t mean you stop caring about them. It just means that you can’t allow them to harm you anymore. But if you don’t think your life would be better without them in it, then accept that they have cracks. Try to understand how they got them and help fill them with something that isn’t ice.” She peered at me. “If you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin. It’s so much healthier than anger. For both of you.”
I wanted to respond, but I didn’t even know what to say.
It was weird but it had never occurred to me that maybe Mom had been changed because of what happened with Dad. I mean, she always seemed to keep it together. She didn’t miss work, she didn’t stay in bed for days at a time or lose a bunch of weight or stop brushing her hair.
But maybe she did fall apart. Maybe she just didn’t let us see it. Maybe
that was her way of protecting us from more cracks.
I felt a small lump form in my throat. Because when I reframed it this way, I started to wonder if I’d failed her. If I hadn’t felt like someone safe that she could be honest with and lean on. I hadn’t met her where she was.
Emma was right. My life had been gentler than hers.
I studied the woman sitting next to me. Imagine someone who went through what she did, turning out the way she had. Able to give grace to someone who’d let her down so badly. Emma was a better person than I was. And my life had been gentler than hers too.
The front door opened and my sweaty, slightly sunburnt teenage brother came in. I was glad for the interruption.
I leaned to look over the back of the couch. “Hey, how was it?”
Alex dropped a gift shop bag on the floor. “It was epic! Mitch barfed on the Corkscrew, we were making fun of him the whole time.”
“Nice.” I nodded at Emma. “Alex, this is my girlfriend, Emma.” She smiled. “Hi.”
“Hey.” My brother froze and beamed like he’d never seen a woman before. “So what’re you guys doing?” he asked, looking back and forth between us.
I hadn’t brought anyone home in years, not since the streak started. This was exciting for everyone apparently.
“We’re getting out of here, actually.” I looked at my watch, then at her. “Ready to go?”
“Ready.” She stood.
I gave Alex the rundown on his sisters. Then I collected Brad and we got in the car.
I wanted to ask her if she’d like to go do something else. Dessert somewhere maybe? But it was already almost 11:00 and she had work in the morning. I figured I’d save myself the letdown of being told no and I’d just drop her off. But I was not ready to end the night, by any stretch.
Something told me I wouldn’t be ready for her contract to end either.
