Chapter Thirty

ETHAN

It’s days before Thanksgiving, and all I can think about is whether or not Lara and I have made a horrific mistake. With both of our parents going to war against each other, we decided, between the two of us, that the best way to try to give them one last chance to settle things was to have a big, family feast, with my parents, Nathan, Riley, me and Lara.

We both were hoping that having a big family meal together, a Thanksgiving to bring the entire family under one roof and at one table, would spark some kind of productive discussion, or at least get everything on the table. I convinced my parents to do it for Riley’s sake, not to make her choose between her grandparents at such a stressed-out point in her life.

Somehow or another Lara convinced her father of the same thing, and we carefully negotiated that it would be at Nathan’s house, that Lara and I would manage the details of the food, that I would bring Riley as well as my parents there. But now with only a couple of days to go, I’m having second, even third and fourth thoughts about our plan.

Riley’s napping in her bedroom, so I take my phone off the charger and call Lara. She should, in theory at least, be home, and able to talk. She answers after three rings, sounding a little sleepy or distracted but not irritated.

“What’s up? Something happening with Riley?”

I shake my head to myself. “No, I just wanted to go over the plan again,” I admit. Things were so much simpler, so much easier, when it was me, Alexis and Riley. Even though Alexis was still hurting then over Lara cutting her out, our parents weren’t at each other’s throats about it, and there was no question of who would have custody of Riley. No one had any real reason to fight over it, except for Lara and Alexis, and that had been resolved just by them not speaking.

“The plan is that we kind of force our parents to be pleasant one another, and don’t bring up the actual court stuff,” Lara says.

“How are we going to keep that part of the plan in place? Because I’m pretty sure there’s nothing more that our parents will want to do than talk about the court bullshit,” I point out. It’s something that we’ve been going around and around on ever since we hatched the plan between ourselves about a week before. That was when we’d finally sort of absorbed that the court drama was really, truly going to happen.

“We’re going to say that if they can’t behave themselves around their granddaughter, we’ll take her away,” Lara says, and I can hear that little chill in her voice. I’m glad I’m not the target of it. If you had asked me even within a few weeks after we’d broken up whether Lara was capable of the kind of coldness that would let someone completely cut a family member out of their life, I would have said no. But she was clearly capable of it, even if it hurt her.

“So, we tell them that we’ll pick Riley up and just walk out if they’re not able to maintain their manners,” I say.

“Basically, yeah. And if they start, we take her out of the room. If they continue, we take her out of the house,” Lara says. I am probably going to have to depend on her to follow through on that. I don’t know how I’m going to strand my parents at Nathan’s house, if it comes to that. I say as much.

“It would kind of serve them right to end up stranded in his dining room, though,” I say with a little laugh to myself. I picture it in my head and I have to admit that it would be, in a terrible way, kind of hilarious.

“It would. I mean, if they want to act like Riley’s a rope in a game of tug-of-war, then the best thing to do is make sure they know we’re not going to let them play,” Lara says.

“You sound like we’re the parents and they’re the kids,” I point out. I hear her chuckle, and there’s a bitter edge to it.

“I think that we have to take control of the situation, because if we let them, between the three of them they’re going to end up just spiraling everything completely out of control.” I have to admit that she’s right about that, and that was actually the reason we came up with the Thanksgiving plan in the first place.

We decided that we needed that kind of an event to just sort of show them that we were united, that we had agreed to go along with what Alexis wanted, and that we were not going to let them pull Riley apart in their stupid drive to each “win.” Even if I can understand where my parents are coming from, wanting to protect my claim to my own daughter, doing things their way would just put Riley under way more stress than she can handle, or than she even remotely deserves.

“Okay, we can pull this off,” I say, more telling myself than telling Lara.

“We can. We kind of have to,” she agrees.

“Have to?” I’m surprised at her insistence.

“We have to give them another chance to straighten up what they’re doing before we move onto something else. We have to at least try to make them drop the suits, and I think this is the best way to do that, don’t you?”

I think about that for a moment. I have to agree that the best option would be for both Nathan and my parents to drop their cases in family court, and having a united front, like we’re planning to, should be the ticket to achieving that.

“Right, you’re totally right about that,” I say after a couple of seconds’ thought.

“If you think we shouldn’t go through with it, now’s the time to say so,” Lara says.

“No, I’m with you. I am,” I say quickly.

“If it’s going to work at all we have to be one-hundred percent, and ready to make consequences happen,” Lara points out.

“I’m completely with you. I just… I guess… I was getting cold feet in general. It’s going to be stressful no matter what, though.”

“It is,” Lara agrees. I hear her sigh and I wish that there was some way to just solve the problem without her having to do anything. It’s a feeling I’ve had before, the feeling I had every time Alexis would start crying about losing her sister, and not knowing how to make things right. It shocks the hell out of me that I’m feeling that for someone else, especially for Lara, and especially so soon after Alexis’ death. It hasn’t even been a year. It’s been a little over seven months.

“We’ll get through it,” I tell her. It’s the same thing I used to tell my wife, and I know it doesn’t help. How could it? But it’s the only thing I can say.

“We have to, you’re right about that,” Lara says. We finish up the call and then it’s time for me to get Riley up to have lunch, and I know that I’m committed. No matter how much of a shit show Thanksgiving turns out to be, I’ve backed the horse I’ve backed and for Riley’s sake I have to keep my mind on the goal.