"I have a lawyer. " Laura said, and the thread of truth vanished, and the blade came out smooth and clean. "I don't want to use them. I want to do this the right way, the human way, you and me figuring out a schedule like adults. But I have rights, Marcus. I'm her mother.
No judge in Colorado is going to keep a mother who's completed treatment away from her own child. Especially not a mother who's asking nicely and being told no by a father who's what, exactly? Working 70 hours a week, passing her around to neighbors, sleeping with his boss. " Marcus's whole body went still. "That last part's not going to look good. " Laura said almost gently. "In a custody review, a single father in a relationship with his direct supervisor, that's the kind of thing that raises questions about judgment, about stability. " She stood up, smoothing her skirt.
"I'm not threatening you. I want you to hear me say that clearly because I know how you catastrophize. I'm not threatening you. I'm telling you that I'd rather do this the nice way. But there's a nice way and there's a hard way and which one we do is entirely up to you. " She walked to the door.
She paused with her hand on it and she looked back at him and for 1 second, 1 single second, Marcus saw something in her face that might have been real regret or might have been the performance of regret and the horror of it was that after 3 years he could no longer tell the difference. "She has my eyes. " Laura said softly. "Does she still have my eyes? " And she left. Marcus stood alone in the empty conference room for a long time. Then he pulled out his phone and his hands were not steady and he typed a message to Elena and then he deleted it and typed another and deleted that, too.
Because what was he going to say? "My ex-wife who abandoned our daughter has hired a lawyer and just threatened to use us against me in a custody fight. " On the first Monday of whatever this was between them, he could feel it, the exact mechanism of it. The way Laura had reached into the best thing that had happened to him in 3 years and turned it into a liability inside of a single conversation. A single father in a relationship with his direct supervisor. That raises questions about judgment.
She'd made Elena into a weapon and she'd done it in 10 minutes. Marcus put the phone in his pocket without sending anything and he went back to his desk and the coffee cup was gone from Elena's office and her door was closed and her light stayed on but she did not come out and Marcus told himself it was better this way. Cleaner. Safer. For her.
For his job. For Amara. He told himself that the smartest thing he could do the thing the numbers said was to let the space open up between them that Laura had just carved out because a man in a custody fight could not afford a single thing that raised questions about his judgment. He told himself that for 3 days. It was Thursday afternoon when Dylan dropped into the chair beside his desk and said without preamble "Okay, what did you do? " "I didn't do anything. " "You did something.
Elena's been walking around like a ghost all week and you've got that face on the wall. Face the one you had for a whole year after Laura left and the two of you haven't so much as looked at each other since Monday. So what did you do? " Marcus kept his eyes on his monitor. "Laura's back. " Dylan went quiet. "Laura back back like She showed up here Monday.
Wants to see Amara. Has a lawyer. " Marcus's jaw tightened. "Made a point of mentioning that a single father sleeping with his boss doesn't look great in a custody review. " "Oh. " Dylan said. "And then oh that's Marcus. That's a threat.
You know that's a threat, right? That's not a person making amends. That's a person who found your pressure point and pressed it. Maybe maybe she's telling the truth about treatment. Maybe she deserves a chance to Do you actually believe that or are you saying it because believing it lets you do the thing you already decided to do which is push Elena away and go back into the bunker? " Marcus finally looked at him.
"Yeah. " Dylan said. "That's what I thought. You're doing the Marcus thing. Somebody threatens the thing you love so you throw away the other thing you love to protect it because in your head you can only ever keep one good thing at a time. " He leaned in. "Let me ask you something.
When Laura said that stuff about Elena, did she say it because it's true? Or did she say it because she walked in and saw in about 4 seconds that Elena is the best thing that's happened to you in 3 years, and she wanted to take it away from you? Marcus didn't answer. He didn't have to. They both knew.
That's what I thought, Dylan said and stood. Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do about your kid. That's yours. But I'll tell you this, you've spent 3 days protecting yourself from the wrong disaster. Laura's not the collapse.
Laura's the earthquake. Elena's the thing that was going to help you stand up in it, and you're pushing her out the door because your ex-wife told you to. He picked up his coffee. You're the best engineer I know, man, and you keep bracing the wrong walls. He left, and Marcus sat there, and he thought about it, and he realized Dylan was right about something that went deeper than Elena.
He'd spent 3 years believing his whole job as a father was to protect Amara from instability, from another person leaving, from the chaos that Laura had brought into the house. And so, he'd sealed the house. He'd made it a fortress. And he'd been so busy protecting his daughter from the possibility of someone leaving that he'd never once let anyone arrive. Amara had grown up in a house with one door that locked from the outside, and the person he'd locked out along with all the danger was the one woman who'd walked in on a Friday night and made his kid laugh in a kitchen that had been silent for 3 years.
He'd done to Amara exactly what he'd done to himself. At 5:50 that Thursday, Marcus stood up from his desk and walked to Elena's office. And this time, he didn't have coffee in his hand. He had nothing. He was empty-handed and terrified, and he knocked.
Come in. She was at her monitor. She looked up, and for a second, her professional face slipped just enough for him to see how tired she was. How the week had cost her something, too. And then it smoothed back over.
Marcus, if it's about Riverside, I sent the markups to your It's not about Riverside. He closed the door behind him. It's about Monday. And it's about the three days since Monday where I've been treating you like a stranger because I panicked, and you deserve better than that, and I'm sorry. Elena set down her pen.
She didn't say anything. She was going to make him do all of it, and she was right to. My ex-wife wants custody, or at least she wants to threaten it. She has a lawyer, and she made a point of telling me that me being with you would look bad in a review. Questions about my judgment, my stability, all of it.