The Other Side

The first week after the permanent order was the quietest she'd had in years.

No voicemails. No number withheld calls. No showing up at places he knew she went. Drake was, by legal mandate, absent from her life, and she sat in that absence like someone who'd been holding their breath for a long time and couldn't remember how to exhale.

Gavin brought dinner on Sunday. Myrna had made the cassoulet she liked, which meant Myrna had been talking about her, which meant the worry hadn't gone away.

"How are you actually?" Gavin said, which was his way of asking if she was going to fall apart now that the immediate crisis was handled.

"I don't know," she said. "I think I'm waiting for something."

"For what?"

"For him to find a way around it. That's what he does. He finds the way."

Gavin was quiet for a moment.

"Maybe this time there's no way around it," he said.

She looked at him. She wanted to believe him. She also knew, in the deep practical knowledge of someone who had lived this for twenty years, that there was always a way around it. Drake had been temporarily barred from her life before. It had never held.

But this time was different. This time she had the full hearing. This time she had the permanent order. This time she had an attorney, and a PI, and a spreadsheet, and a brother who showed up with groceries and a sister-in-law who sent cassoulet, and she had been building something — a life, a record, a set of facts — that was meant to last.

She was going to find out if it did.

The sun went down at six-fifteen. She made tea and sat at the kitchen table and looked at the drawer.

It was still there.