Cynthia’s jaw tightened. This isn’t over, Derek said. No, I agreed. It isn’t. They left. I heard their voices in the hall, low and rapid, and then the sound of a door, and then the car in the driveway backing out with more speed than the situation required. I sat very still for a moment. Then I called James and told him what had happened.
He told me to document the conversation to the best of my ability, date and time included, and to change the locks on the house while Derek was out. I changed the locks that afternoon. A locksmith named Gerald came within two hours and replaced every exterior lock and gave me three sets of keys. And when I handed him the check, he looked at me with the careful neutrality of a man who had seen this particular situation before and knew better than to ask questions.
That night, for the first time in weeks, I slept well. But the morning after I woke and felt the full weight of it, not the legal machinery which was in motion, but the human cost. My son, 44 years. The boy I had driven to baseball practice and held during fevers and sent off to his first day of school and walked down the aisle at his first wedding.