Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

you. Pursuing it makes her retreat into a corner with denials that everything in her world isn’t perfectly peachy and under her tight control. So I opened the top of the enclosure and brought the gopher out into my hands.

“Hugh Jackman,” I said. “This is Sasha. I believe you two have met before. Sasha, this creature has been checked extensively by a vet. It is disease-, virus-, and parasite-free, and has been vaccinated against pinworms.”

“Pinworms?” She grimaced.

“I’ve conducted my own behavioral analysis over a period of days and have determined that the bite risk is low,” I said. “These observations are supported by the—”

“Just shut up, Blair.” She pinched her brow. Her lip trembled. I stood there, waiting, while she attempted to shove her emotions back into whatever black hole she usually kept them tucked, a task as difficult as putting toothpaste back into a tube. Eventually she sat down at the outdoor table and I joined her. I put Hugh Jackman in the chest pocket of my polo shirt, and the little creature turned in a circle a few times and then balled up to sleep.

“Henry’s leaving me,” she said suddenly.

The afternoon garden was full of crickets and pretty gold lights. I stared out at it, trying to decide what to say. I knew exactly what I should say. All women do. I had been consoling friends about breakups since I was in high school, crammed into a toilet stall with four other girls, listening to the wailing of a member of our crew over a two-week Romeo and Juliet–type tryst broken up by a senior with huge breasts. I needed to tell Sasha that I was here. That I was listening. That she would be okay. That men sucked, were pigs sometimes. But I couldn’t do anything in that moment but sit rigidly and stare at the beautiful garden, because terror had seized my limbs, a cold snap gripping at every fiber of my being.

Sasha and Henry were my son’s parents. If they didn’t stay together as one unit, they would become separate teams both playing for my son. For his time. His love. His attention.

His custody.

“I found a pair of women’s sunglasses in Henry’s car,” Sasha said. She took a worn tissue from her pocket and balled it against her nose. “He met her on a bus, can you believe that? A fucking bus! What was he even doing, riding a bus? I haven’t ridden a bus in decades.”

I held my head in my hands.

“They’re moving to Wyoming, apparently. To open a bed and breakfast.”

“They’re what?” I stood, the chair kicking out from behind me. “So Jamie—”

“Jamie doesn’t know.” Sasha sniffed, pushing back her frizzy hair. “Don’t tell him.”

“Sasha, this is awful,” I said. “I can’t believe this.”

“I can see exactly what’ll happen,” she said, hardly listening to me. “This new woman will be super interesting to Jamie. He’ll want to hang out with her all the time. His world is full of such interesting people, and here I am baking cookies he doesn’t even like and nagging him to clean his room and brush his teeth. There’s a woman back there, a cop, he says.” She jutted her chin toward the house at the end of the yard. “Just moved in. He’s been ducking over there and she’s been teaching him to swim. I noticed her over there and went to say hello. She seems like a hard-ass. Busy. Always on the phone. I was planning on asking her what the fuck she was thinking, deciding all on her own that she’d teach my kid to swim without even meeting me, but you know what? I was too intimidated. What an interesting person, this police officer with her big empty mansion, chain-smoking and taking important calls and intimidating the fuck out of the neighbors. So very, very interesting. And then there’s you with all your…” She glanced at me. Seemed to reconsider her words.

“My history,” I said.

Sasha nodded. “You’re interesting, too. All these interesting women in my son’s life.”

“Sasha, you are interesting,” I said. “You’re a great mother, and—”

“Spare me.” She held up a hand.

“I’m serious,” I said. “You’re not only interesting but you’re good. You’re incredibly good at heart. A friend came to you and said, ‘I’ve been arrested for murder. Will you raise my infant son?’ And you said yes. Jesus Christ! Who does that? Who just takes on someone else’s kid like that, without question, without judgment? You let me be a part of his life. When I’d been charged with murder.”

“You didn’t murder that guy.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “It was to help the girlfriend, like you said. You’re too holier-than-thou to murder anyone.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” I said.

Sasha sighed. She looked beaten down. I wasn’t getting through. I knew it might take weeks, months, to remind her of the great woman she was.

“What will Henry want in terms of custody?” I asked.

Sasha thought for a moment. Her shoulders were hunched. She lifted them, let them fall again. “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I suppose he’ll want fifty percent.”

“But what about me?” I cried.

“What…?” Sasha looked up at me. “What about you?”

“I know.” I dragged my chair back into place. “I know. I’m sorry. I just said ‘What about me’ right in the middle of your breakup. I’m so sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

But if Henry wants fifty percent custody of Jamie, that leaves Sasha fifty percent, and me zero percent, I thought. Or it leaves Sasha and me twenty-five percent each. It was getting hard to breathe. A door at the front of the house slammed. I heard footsteps thumping on the tiles, fast, then Jamie appeared with his school backpack on and threw open the door to the yard like a magician revealing himself safe and unharmed after being loaded into a box of rattlesnakes, wearing a straitjacket.

“I’m here!” he declared. He pointed at me. “Blair! You’re here too!”

“Yeah, buddy.