She never pressured me.

“What protects a child today may not be what protects them ten years from now,” she said.

I heard her.

I wrote it down.

I still could not bear the idea of another demand arriving from a Hale attorney while I was trying to imagine a safe place to put a crib.

Margaret called once, three months after the divorce.

She said she’d heard I was selling a property and implied that financial trouble had finally found me.