MICHELLE
The knock on my door sends my stomach to my feet. Three hard thumps, a fist slamming into the cheap wood with insistence. That's not the sound of a Girl Scout selling cookies or a salesman hoping to talk me into switching internet providers. That's the sound of someone who's here to demand something from me.
Lexi looks up from the snacks she's organizing for our park trip with the kids today. "Want me to answer that?"
That's not a hard question to answer. Yes. I would very much prefer that she act as a buffer between me and whoever is out there, but I am a grown woman, capable of opening my own door.
"No worries." I wipe my hands on the back of my jeans. "I can do it." Dread gathers in my bones, charging the marrow with an electric current that has my body humming. I take a deep breath and promise myself that I'm overreacting.
And then I open the door.
Standing on my porch, his eyes crackling with the same kind of crazy that always takes my breath away, is Russell. His leering smile strangles me. The curl of his upper lip is a thousand pounds of nightmares pressing against my chest. The thin mesh of the screen door separating us might as well be made of smoke, for all the protection it provides me.
"Open the door."
I shake my head, fighting for even one single breath. "No." The word is so quiet it almost doesn't exist.
Russell steps forward, his eyes like ice and fire, sending sweat shivering down my spine. "What did you say?"
I clear my throat. "I said no."
"I want to take Claire for a little while."
"You can't."
"That's where you're wrong." Russell makes a fist with one hand and rolls it against the palm of his other, cracking his knuckles. "What is it we agreed to? Shared parenting? I can take my girl whenever I want, thanks to your fancy divorce paperwork."
"You've been gone for nine months." The thought of letting Claire anywhere near this man is enough to make me braver than normal. She's the whole reason I left him in the first place.
"And now I'm back."
Panic tastes like pennies, drying out the back of my throat and sending lightning through my veins. I didn't press charges the night Russell pulled the gun on me. It was one of the promises I made to make him agree to a divorce. What's worse, I didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer, so I downloaded the divorce paperwork online and filed it myself, agreeing to each and every one of Russell's stipulations just to encourage him to sign on the dotted line. The demands he made were outrageous. Shared parenting instead of full custody for me, with zero financial obligation on his part. I knew he'd disappear the moment it was final, so I let him off without a fight. It didn't matter what the paperwork said because he'd be out of our lives forever.
Except here he is. Very much back in our lives.
"Michelle?" Lexi appears from around the corner, takes one look at my face and comes to stand directly behind me.
"Who the fuck are you?" Russell juts his chin, eyeing my friend.
"More importantly, who the fuck are you?" echoes Lexi, not one to let anyone intimidate her in any way, shape, or form.
Russell turns back to me, dismissing Lexi with a harsh laugh. "I want to see my daughter."
"No." I press my hands into my hips so he won't notice them tremble. "We're about to leave for the park and she is in no way ready to see you."
"I'm her dad. She's always ready to see me."
Lexi scoffs. "Just a suggestion from someone who's been around for the last year. If you want to do something good for your daughter, you could start with some child support or something." She steps even closer to me and I swear I'd fall down if she wasn't there to prop me up.
Russell throws his head back and laughs. "Nice try, but I don't owe Michelle a damn thing."
"You owe her more than you could ever comprehend."
Lexi's trying to help, but Russell comes pre-installed with an anger button the size of Texas. The more she pushes him, the more he's going to push back. If she doesn't back down, things are only going to escalate until it all explodes spectacularly on my front porch.
I hold up my hands, a peace offering. "Of course you deserve to see her," I say to the man who made my life more miserable than I ever thought possible. "And you know she'll be ecstatic." That's a lie. Claire has told me more than once that life is so much easier now that Daddy's gone. "But we've got such a big afternoon planned and she'll be disappointed to miss it. Wouldn't it be better if you could have a whole Daddy-Daughter day for yourselves?"
It wouldn't be better. Not at all. But I'm banking on the hope that by the time he gets back to wherever he came from, this misguided burst of parental give-a-shit will die off and he'll be gone again. If I had thought, even for a second, that he would end up on my doorstep someday, I would have fought for full custody.
Russell takes a step back from the door, pinching the bridge of his crooked nose. "Whatever. The next time I show up, you better hand her over to me or I'll call the cops."
"How ironic," I bite off. "You calling the cops on me."
My bravado is all show. Inside I'm quivering like my legs are made of marshmallows. Can he even do that? Am I outside of my legal right by keeping Claire from him today? I don't remember what the paperwork even says because I never thought it would matter. I thought he was gone for good.
He makes a face, not used to this new, bolder version of me, and then turns his back and walks away, more swagger in his step than he deserves. He climbs into a brand-new Chevy Sonic—complete with an obnoxious yellow paint job and thirty-day tags—and I let out a long, shaky breath when he peels out of the driveway and hits the gas so hard his tires spin. I wish I'd been strong enough to fight for what I wanted, for what I deserved, during our divorce. I wish I had pressed charges on his stupid ass and sent him to jail and gotten him out of our lives the right way instead of the easy way.
"I'm so sorry." I can't look Lexi in the eye. Not yet.
"No babe. I am. I'm sorry someone like you ever had to put up with someone like him."
I lean my head against the doorjamb. "Do you think she heard?"
"Who, Claire?"
I nod.
"Nope. She and Gabe are in her room having a dance party. They couldn't have heard a plane fall out of the sky over the hilarity that's going on in there." Lexi takes my hand. "Come on. Let's grab those kiddos and head to the park. We can talk about what happened once we're there if you need to." She gives my shoulder a squeeze. "Or not at all. Whatever makes you the most comfortable."
I nod again, a dust storm of anxiety burying my voice. I can't think through all that's going on in my head, so I go on auto-pilot, plastering a big smile across my face and following Lexi's lead as we pack the kids into her car. She turns on the radio and they all sing along, while I focus on deepening my breaths and reminding myself that Russell is more bark than bite. The more distance we put between ourselves and my house—between the one place Russell knows where to find me and the happy sounds coming from the backseat—the more I relax. I can make it through this day without letting the confrontation with Russell ruin our play date. After all these years, I'm a master of putting one foot in front of the other, of smiling and laughing despite tormented thoughts and the constant throb of what if in my head.
By the time we make our way to the park, I've got the encounter with Russell tucked into one of the far recesses of my brain, where I lock it up tight and lose the key. We're here. The sun is shining and this park is beautiful. The kids are happy. My best friend is with me. Right here and right now, everything is okay. We unload our snack-filled bags as the kids clamber out of the car and race off towards the playground.
"Careful!" I call out as Claire almost collides with a dog sprinting through the open expanse of grass between the parking lot and playground to catch a ball thrown by its owner.
My girl spins to face me but keeps running backwards. "I'm okay!" she says before turning around and sprinting past Gabe on her way to the swings.
I pause to search out the owner of the dog, just to raise a hand and throw him an apology, and damn if it isn't David Carmichael. And double damn if he isn't walking towards me with a huge grin on his face.