Mom’s condition improves. She isn’t sent to Birmingham or Montgomery, but home, after four days, and I go with her for the first night. It isn’t something I’m happy about, but I do my best to keep that from her, because it isn’t her fault she’s so weak. She needs someone on hand for when she needs to get up, and it’s only fair that it be me. Zach is seeing someone up in Auburn; after spending two of Mom’s three nights in the hospital with her, he wanted to go see the girl—he told me this blushing adorably—so here I am. Standing on the back porch looking at the moon, which peeks out from behind a gauze haze of clouds.

It rained today, and so the yard is gross and soggy. The leaves, dry and curling as they rot atop the grass, hold little bits of water, gleaming bright white in the moon’s glow. I draw my hand that holds the baby monitor close to my chest and blow my breath out, long and warm and white. It feels so clean out here—the air does. Fall to me has always felt like a baptism of some kind: the rich, warm, summer self is chilled and shriveled, at the mercy of some source of heat. My jacket always feels so cozy. I enjoy the seasonal drinks and buy myself a brightly colored pair of gloves, a new one every year. I snuggle in and sort of like the feeling that I’m at the mercy of the heater, fire, my warm, thick coat. I think I like the warming of my cold self. Something about it—it feels pure—the need inherent there.

I suck another sharp breath in and take my time blowing it out. There’s a reason that I’m out here. That I can’t stay in, enjoying the heat or a blanket.

That reason has a name. That name is Gabe.

I rub my chapsticked lips together, shove my hands into my coat pockets. The moon loses to the clouds, and dark spreads over my mom’s tiny yard.

I think I feel…bereft.

It’s been five days, and I want more.

Such blasphemy to even think that thought. So much insanity. I am insane. I must be insane. What I think about the most right now as I drift off to sleep, or when I first wake up, is just Gabe in those thick, gray, cotton running shorts. The way his knees and lower legs looked, and the shoes on his feet. I think about his hair, dried funky from sweating and sitting in the cold. I think about his shoulders, big enough to be a force all of their own; his body, god-like.

I wonder about him. If he has so much restraint—if he can come into my house with me and stand so close to me there at the top of the stairs—if he can look almost right through me as I tell him I have always loved him, I still love him—and then walk away like it is nothing—like what he did to me the one night was nothing—what happened to break him down so that the day I knocked on his front door, he let me in? What must have happened to break him open? What broke Gabe’s heart? What would make him need someone so much that he let me in?

Because it’s clear he sort of hates me now.

I feel quite sure he hates me. I don’t even know how I know, I just do. I can feel it coming off him. Hate and want, resentment, unforgiveness. If I remember right, I think he told me the night of my birthday that he didn’t hold my leaving against me, but…he does. I think he does, at least a little bit. I’m getting mixed signals from him, and I’m confused. I’m so confused.

I’ve never done this—not ever before—but as moonlight bursts forth again, drenching the yard and me in brilliant white, I crouch down underneath the roof’s edge, with my heels against the swatch of wood below the doorstep, and I dig my phone out of my pocket.

Lainey said something the other day, to me. Something about something Victor said. I said I didn’t want to hear. Not even sure why…

I unlock the phone, and set the monitor on the deck beside me. Then, with slightly shaking hands, I navigate to TMZ. I find a picture of him with a white-blonde woman—short and elfin, with a glinting nose ring and lipstick that’s kind of purple. ‘Gabriel McKellan and longtime girlfriend Madeline Decristo stop on their way into the premiere of The Husband. Awaken, a Bladerunner-meets-The Giver-style fantasy based on Decristo’s book, Awakening, is set to begin filming this month.’

I check the date—April 2016—and then scrutinize Gabe’s face. He doesn’t look happy, not particularly. He’s not exactly smiling. I’m not even sure what that expression is. He looks fuller. Maybe ten or fifteen pounds thicker. I look at the woman, and I hear Lainey’s voice: “I think I might know the scoop on Gabe McKellan.”

Her face is very pretty. Dainty. She has big, crystalline blue eyes and gorgeous eyebrows. And that hair. So sleek up in a twist. She’s got this small smile on her mouth, this kind of “I have a secret” smile that makes her look mysterious and smart.

It looks like his arm was maybe on the small of her back.

I look at them for one more moment before going to Page Six.

“If you do decide you want to know, Page Six has got the scoop. It’s brutal, too.”

I don’t want the scoop. I don’t want to want it.

And still—I search his name. I hold my breath waiting for the page to load. And when it does, I blink, and read the headline one more time because I just don’t understand.

McKellan and Decristo battle over three-year-old

My eyes fly over the story.

According to recent court filings, the fiercely private power couple welcomed a child in December 2013. County court records reflect a motion filed by lawyers for McKellan in May 2017, alleging Decristo spirited the child away, comparing her actions to ‘a heist.’

According to sources familiar with the drama, Decristo flew the child to Portugal with no warning to McKellan, and afterward informed him he was not the child’s biological father.

“Gabe didn’t know she had been cheating, but she’s been with one of her exes on and off since before the baby got here,” says a source. “She did genetic testing and found out that Gabe wasn’t the dad. Anyway, she’s with the kid’s real father, and she decided she didn’t want [him or her] to see him anymore. She wanted to transition [him or her] to viewing Gabe more like an uncle and this other man more like a dad.”

I devour details like “compound outside the city” where the child was being raised, and “devastated” as a descriptor of Gabe’s reaction to being told the child wasn’t his by blood. My eyes catch on the words “no recourse in the state of New York for non-biological fathers who aren’t married to the child’s mother, no matter how much money they have.” It’s a quote from Madeline Decristo’s lawyer. “If he wanted a more formal arrangement, he could have agreed to marry Ms. Decristo or adopt the baby.”

A source from Gabe’s camp said, “Adoption should never be necessary when a man has raised a child believing her to be his own. Simply put, if a woman lies to a man about paternity, he should have rights. This is immoral. Gabe’s daughter should be extradited to America. We’re going to keep on fighting this.”

I check the date on the article. September 4, 2017. I click another link and blink down at a newer story, this one from just five days ago. I swallow as I start to read.

“Sources familiar with the bitter custody war between powerhouse authors Gabriel McKellan and his former partner Madeline Decristo say the two are at an impasse over custody of a young child, raised from birth as McKellan’s biological daughter but later learned to be the product of another union between Decristo and an unnamed Broadway actor…”

I unclench my jaw and skim straight to the bottom, reading only the last line. “Legal experts in the state of New York say McKellan’s chances at salvaging paternal custody are ‘abysmal.’”