Chapter 21

Chapter 21 of 48 · 8-minute read

Transiting Mars Square Lauren’s Natal Saturn

The restaurant is smaller inside than expected. Some of the cars out front must belong to the staff because I see only three patrons. One table belongs to two young women in deep conversation. Snippets of their conversation drift across the room.

“My grandmother doesn’t even remember me anymore⁠—”

“So you’re not even going to visit her⁠—”

“I don’t see the point. Besides, It’s just too hard⁠—”

I shake off the sudden feeling that my own daughters will be having the same conversation in a restaurant somewhere in years to come. Call Mama, I remind myself.

At the other table is a shaggy-haired man with several college textbooks on the table beside him, a laptop, and a steaming plate of chicken fried rice and spring rolls. He takes a bite, stares at the screen, then types a few words. End of the semester.

I should call Rhiannon as well to see how her tests are going. I can’t wait for her to get home from college. She has always been one of my biggest supporters, second to Jan and Jesse, while Sonnet is younger and less mature as well as more judgmental about how together she thinks her mom should have it, even when or especially when everything around me has been falling apart.

I step around the PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign and find a spot in the corner, almost out of sight of the front door. I order a carafe of iced tea and a bowl of pad Thai, then use the time alone to call both my mom and Rhiannon. No answer. I leave voicemails: comforting, reassuring, loving messages for both. I don’t want either of them to worry, but especially not my mom, who can be frail when she worries.

Guilt swirls around me, but I don’t need any more of her “help.” If she worries herself into a tizzy, she’ll end up calling Quent and getting facts all messed up. At almost eighty, her mind is slowly starting to go. I don’t want her to take me with it.

I dial Sonnet’s phone on the off chance that Quent still has it and recharged it, but it goes straight to voicemail. Poor Sonnet is at home in my bed, probably still shaking from the events of last night. She doesn’t have a phone so until I can get home, she’s cut off from the rest of her world. I don’t worry at all that she’ll leave. She’s already too afraid that something will happen and the courts will send her to live with her dad full-time. Jan will check in on her while I’m running errands, and she can hang out with Christabel in the evening. At least for now, I’m honoring Sonnet’s request not to tell anyone that she’s home.

Before I can dial Christabel to ask how her afternoon at the police station has gone and see if they’ve taken her to her uncle’s house to pick up her stuff and then back to my house, my phone rings. I decrease the volume quickly and answer. From this corner of the tiny restaurant, no one can hear me as long as I keep my voice down.

“Lauren? Hey, it’s Tom. I’m on a break. Justine and I were just talking about your situation, and she asked Quent to have your daughter give you a call.”

“And? Tom, I told you, tell Justine to tell Quent to have her call me immediately. Or Sonnet can call you. Or, for that matter, she can call Justine. I don’t care. I just want Quent to hand Sonnet her phone and have her call me. Do you understand?” My throat is tight. Voice tense.

Maybe I’m being unreasonable. Some tiny part of me wants Quent to understand what it’s like not to know whether your kid is safe or what it’s like to think your mom is dying and you have no information. I want him to understand how cruel that is. I’m also hoping I can use his “losing” Sonnet to end these games of his. It could backfire, but I’m feeling confident after getting my power back. I don’t owe him notification that she’s right where she’s supposed to be.

“Well, now, Lauren, no need to start getting upset about it. I’m sure Quent is doing his best.”

“Tom? Are you my lawyer or Quent’s?”

Tom was a great lawyer for me for the last six years, but something’s been off-kilter since Christmas, when he and Justine became close. The tighter their relationship, the less of a champion for me he’s become. Tom swears he and Justine are merely friends and there’s no conflict of interest, but he seems to be seeing Quent’s side of the two sides of our divorce much more readily now than ever before. In less than a year, Sonnet will no longer be a minor, and she will be free of the courts to live where she wants. Her child support will end as well. At this point, I’m not sure I can hold out that long with an attorney who has migrated to the other side.

“Well, Lauren, I’m your lawyer, of course. I think you have to be reasonable about⁠—”

“Reasonable? Last night, Quent⁠—”

I bite my tongue. That was close. I almost blurted out everything Sonnet told me about Quent picking her up from her job under the auspices of me being in trouble or hurt, that Sonnet lost her job because of it, or that Sonnet escaped out a second-story window, climbed two fences, and walked all the way home to me in the middle of the night. I’m certainly not going to tell him that Sonnet begged me to keep her whereabouts a secret. Legally, she is right where she belongs, but Quent doesn’t know that, and his webcam-girl-turned-bride doesn’t know that, and my lawyer doesn’t know that. I’m certain in my gut now that if Tom knew the whole truth about last night, Justine would know it within five minutes and Quent within six.

“Lauren, you need to calm down and⁠—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

The words come out too loud. The three other diners turn to look at me. The server with a bowl of Thai food on a tray, wisps of steam curling upward from it, stops in mid-stride. She calmly places the bowl in front of me and backs away.

Why is it that when you don’t let people run all over you, suddenly you’re the mean one? Or the one who needs to calm down?

I clear my throat and lower my voice. “Tom, don’t you know that telling a woman my age to calm down is the surest way to have the opposite effect of anything you could possibly say?”

I’m well aware that anything I say can and will be held against me. My steamy response will only prove to Tom that I am as unreasonable as Quent alleges to anyone willing to listen to him. Or as Quent has often said, “unreasonable and unhinged.” It’s not my nature to raise my voice to anyone, but I am a lot better at defending myself now than I was a decade ago.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tom mutters, though I’m certain he doesn’t mean it. “For the record, I did ask Justine to tell him to have Sonnet call you, but the kid has locked herself in her room and she won’t come out. Not even for breakfast or lunch today. I didn’t want to tell you this yet, but Justine says Quent wants to use this as further evidence of parental alienation. I’ve talked her out of doing anything about it for the next few days, as a favor to you, Lauren. The judge on your case is out of town until Monday so nothing is really going to happen before then, anyway. So if I could get you to sit tight and Quent to sit tight, I think this will all blow over in a few days. You don’t want to make it worse.”

How is standing up for my parental rights making it worse? Instead, I ask, “How can Quent take my child away from me and blame me for alienation?”

Tom sighs. “I take it from what Quent has said that the two of them don’t have a fruitful relationship.”

“You could say that, but it’s also an understatement.”

“And for that, Quent blames you. He firmly believes that the reason he has such a poor relationship with his daughter is because you’ve poisoned that relationship. He believes, according to Justine, that if he can keep her away from you until she’s eighteen, he’ll have a chance to rebuild that relationship.”

“And also to not pay support and to have me pay him?”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“Tom, I’m saying this to you very calmly and I hope you are hearing it very clearly. Tell Justine to tell Quent that I want him to hand the phone to Sonnet and let me hear her voice now.” I punch the button on my phone to disconnect and stare, fuming, out the window.

I take another bite of my pad Thai as the kitchen door opens. A man backs out of the swinging doors, snickering loudly. I drop my fork.

Jesse?

I don’t sense his energy. This man is a ball of frenetic darkness and light, mostly darkness. He has Jesse’s height, but his shoulders aren’t as broad. Jesse was athletic, but this man is thin, his muscles sagging.

He turns and scans the room, his gaze sliding over me. No recognition. I don’t know this man, and he doesn’t know me.

He looks back through the windows in the swinging doors and snickers again. Jesse used to laugh, light peals of joy when we were having fun in our word play and jokes and light-hearted discussions of what books or music we found entertaining or enlightening. Jesse never snickered.

It’s not him.

I can see why Christabel thought this man resembled Jesse. The same height, the same-colored eyes, the same cheekbones, a similar smile. But not Jesse. An older version of Jesse, maybe. This man looks like he’s at least twenty years older than Jesse, maybe even in his early sixties.

He waves at someone on the other side of the swinging doors, twists on the ball of one foot, and stumbles his way out the door. He leaves a trail of energy behind, swirling around me and following him out the door.

Cold energy. Chaotic energy.

Not my Jesse.

I stare at the noodles in my bowl and shove it aside. What was I thinking? Did I really want to see Jesse so badly that I was willing to see him in a stranger?

I don’t feel better for coming here. Instead, the gaping hole in my heart only widens.

I miss you, Jesse. So much.

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