My handsome boy, my good kid, no longer my baby.
“Finish your program. There isn’t much to do here. I’m good,” I called back.
He nodded and disappeared again.
I did the dishes. Auden finished his program, deleted it and gathered his books. He told me he had to go and I walked him to the door to the garage.
When we were there, I looked up into his light brown eyes. “Tell your sister I said ‘hey.’”
“Will do, Mom. Be back to catch more, yeah?” he asked.
“Anytime, sweets. This is your home too.”
He grinned at me then bent to give my cheek a kiss and he left.
I watched him drive out, saw the garage door going down then I moved into the house, right to my phone.
Auden’s gone, I texted Mickey.
I got no text back for some time before I got, Cill’s down but Ash’s still up. Hang tight.
I hung tight, more time elapsed and finally it came.
Come over now.
I didn’t waste a lot of time getting over there now.
I’d not made it to the curb on my side of the road before I saw Mickey’s front door open with Mickey shadowed in the frame.
I was about to step up on his front stoop when he noted, “You didn’t wear a jacket.”
“It’s right across the street.”
He didn’t reply. Just looked annoyed, reached to me and grabbed my hand. He pulled me in and closed the door then tugged me to the side where there was a coat closet. He let me go to yank the door open.
“Mickey,” I whispered.
“Deck,” he whispered back.
The reason I needed a coat.
He grabbed a huge canvas coat and handed it to me. I shrugged it on, and drowning in it, with Mickey wearing only one of those attractive sweatshirts with the high collar and zip at the throat, he found my hand under the long sleeve, tugged me through the house and out to the back deck.
He stopped us at the railing close to the grill. The night dark, the air chill, we were as far away from his sleeping kids as we could get, and I was very uneasy.
“What’s going on?” I asked, still whispering.
“Told you I talked with Rhiannon after Cill’s birthday went south,” he said.
He did.
Belatedly.
I didn’t mention the last. I just nodded.
“Told her then that was uncool, and I was not good with it or what it might mean. Told her she had to give me a really fuckin’ good reason why that shit happened, reason enough not to keep our kids home and safe with me.”
“And she said?” I prompted when he stopped speaking.
“If you can believe this shit, shit that was unbelievable then but it’s more unbelievable the day after she got a DUI, she said that she had some work thing she had to go to. Someone at her job was leaving. She’d had too much to drink so she didn’t want to get in her car. Said she texted Aisling that when Ash didn’t say any of that shit to me, and she would, and my girl checked her phone about seven hundred times when we were at The Eaves.”
The only thing I could come up with to say was, “Oh, Mickey.”
He took that lameness and kept giving me the ugly, “When I asked her to explain why she didn’t contact our son after, she said she had a big late birthday thing planned for when he got back to her and she didn’t wanna ruin it. And she did do a big thing. Though if she had it planned before I got in her face or not is anyone’s guess.”
“Excuses,” I murmured.
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Now tonight, I called her on the DUI, askin’ what the fuck is up that this shit is goin’ on and leakin’ into our kids’ lives. And she fuckin’ told me that I needed to call my buddy off. She wasn’t likin’ that I was handin’ her this crap, makin’ her out to be the bad guy in an attempt to steal our kids from her.”
I stared up at him, dumbfounded, and asked, “What?”
He nodded shortly. “That’s what the bitch said.”
“Your buddy?”
“Coert,” he bit off. “He’s the sheriff and he’s a friend of mine. Good friend. We’ve known each other awhile and we’re pretty tight. But he wasn’t the one who pulled her over. He was the one who didn’t slap a DUI on her the last time she pulled that shit, because that was her first time, but also because he’s my fuckin’ buddy, but I’m guessin’ she forgot that part.”
“So…so…” I stammered. “So she’s making this out to be you targeting her in an attempt to get custody of your children when you had nothing to do with her being picked up for drunk driving?”
His mouth got hard but he still forced through it, “That’s what she’s makin’ it out to be. Called it my ‘grand scheme.’ Said her blood alcohol level was negligible, just over the edge, proves I’m out for her and roped Coert into that shit, and if they try to put that on her permanent record, she’s fightin’ it. Also said I started this scheme even before we split. Said if I didn’t back down, stop maneuvering, she was gonna fight me tooth and nail. And she said if I tried to keep the kids from her, she’d have me arrested for kidnapping.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
Now I understood why he was so unhappy.
“Mickey,” I grabbed his hand and held tight, “I don’t know what to say.”
“What’s there to say?” he asked, lifting our hands and pressing mine against his heart as he shifted closer to me. “I’m stuck. Called Arnie again. The attorney?”
I nodded.
Mickey continued, “He said this is a case of declaring her unfit to raise our children. I’d have to call CPS. They’d have to inspect. I’d have to have evidence. I’d have to have witness testimony. The DUI on record is something but it isn’t enough. And at the kids’ ages, they’re old enough to be deposed. They could get dragged in. Have to talk smack about their mother.”
“It isn’t smack if it’s true,” I shared carefully.
“You’re right. But would you want your kids to sit with some fuck they don’t know and share their dad is a cheating asshole?”
No, I would not want that.
I shook my head.
“No,” he bit off. “So I got two choices, keep my kids from her and brace for whatever shit she throws at me. And she was pissed, Amy. She’s got her back up and she’s so deep in denial, it’s a wonder she’s breathing. Or let my kids go to her and wait for the other shoe to drop, maybe this bein’ something that scars my kids in some new way I won’t be able to heal.”
I moved closer to him and pointed out the obvious, “You’re between the rock and the hard place.”
“I am. ’Cept I got one more option, this comin’ from Arnie. Sit down with my kids and see if they wanna live with me, makin’ ’em say they don’t wanna live with their mom. And they might not wanna live with her, but I don’t wanna make ’em share that shit.”
No. That wasn’t easy. I knew it. I wasn’t with my children when they had to make that choice and say it out loud, but I’d seen the way they couldn’t look at me afterward. The sorrow on their faces. It was agonizing.