“Be honest with me about what you can actually carry. A life you hold up on exhaustion alone comes down eventually. We’ll build it so it stands.”

Chapter 6 — Building Tomorrow

For the next six weeks, our life became a tightly measured sequence — school drop-offs, childcare, records work, motel dinners, legal appointments, and back again.

I made the children’s lunches on top of the little refrigerator. I worked until late afternoon, collected each of them from where they needed collecting, and heated cheap meals in a microwave that smelled permanently of somebody else’s burned popcorn. For the first few days, Grant sent affection.

Please stop punishing everybody and come home before the kids get confused, he wrote.

Then, the moment Rebecca filed for temporary support, the affection turned.

So your lawyer’s got you thinking cooperation means coming after me financially.