convincing, though, and her face is drawn and pale, violet shadows under her eyes. I wonder what happened; or maybe it’s what didn’t happen.
I step out of the doorway and, seeing Emma, Dylan runs into the house without a backward glance for Beth.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask. “Stay for dinner?”
She peers into the hallway beyond me; Dylan has already disappeared. “No. Thanks though, but I should unpack. Do laundry.”
They sound like flimsy excuses to me, but I can hardly force her. “Okay… if you’re sure…” She nods. “Not too long till the court hearing, right?” I’ve already submitted my written statement about Dylan and his care, and so has Nick.
“A couple of weeks.” Already she’s edging back towards the car.
“Not long at all.”
She nods again, and then she waves, and she’s back in her car before I can even say goodbye.
When Beth shows up the following Tuesday for her usual visit, Dylan and Josh are in the midst of building a Lego empire all over the family-room floor. I feel guilty, because I should have gotten him ready to go out, but he was enjoying himself so much and, amazingly, Josh was, too. The result, though, is that when Beth tells him they have to go, he has a meltdown of the kind I haven’t seen in weeks.
“Dylan.” She puts one hand on his arm and he shrugs it off almost violently, a look of fury on his face that makes Beth bite her lip.
“No,” he says, and the firmness of the word surprises us both. “No.”
“You can do the Lego when you get back,” I suggest. “Josh will wait for you.”
Beth shoots me a savage look and I fall silent. She rises from where she was kneeling. “You can stay and finish, Dylan,” she says quietly. “I’ll watch.”
She spends the entire two hours sitting on the sofa in silence, watching Dylan with a distant look on her face while he pays absolutely no attention to her. I’m not sure what to make of any of it, and I end up hovering in a way I’m sure annoys Beth, before I finally retreat to my office.
“It feels as if she’s withdrawing from him,” I tell Nick later, as we settle on the sofa after dinner. Dylan is in bed, Emma and Josh in their rooms. “Because he’s withdrawing from her.”
Nick shrugs and sips his wine. “I suppose that’s a natural consequence of the situation. It will be better once he’s back with her full-time.”
“Yes…”
He turns to look at me. “You do think she’ll be given back custody, don’t you?”
“I hope so.” As much as I’ve come to love having Dylan with us, I know it’s best for him and for us—and of course for Beth—for him to go back home. It’s just over a week now till the court hearing, and I feel both anxious and eager for it. I want Dylan to be settled, and I want us to be able to move on as a family. I want Beth to have her son back, but I will miss him. Everything is a tangle of emotions, the feelings too close together to separate.
“Hey, I wanted to tell you something.”
Both of us turn to see Emma standing in the kitchen, her hands deep in the pockets of her holey jeans. Nick puts down his wine glass as we both adopt that friendly, hyper-alert expression common to all parents when their teen announces they want to tell them something.
“Yes?” Nick says with raised eyebrows and a smile. “What’s up, Emma?”
“I’m applying for a job at the music store on Park Avenue.”
“Okay…”
“I didn’t get the job at Subway, and I like this better. Also… I’m thinking of taking some music classes at Hart Music School. Piano and voice.”
“Okay,” Nick says again, looking a little flummoxed. Emma stopped piano lessons when she was twelve.
“It’s just something I’ve been wanting to do,” Emma says. “It might not come to anything.”
“Not everything has to have a result,” Nick says in his easy way. “You can just do something for the fun of it, Emma.” She nods slowly, and I wonder if, in our ambition to get her into an Ivy League, she somehow forgot this. If we all did.
“That sounds great, Emma,” I say, and she narrows her eyes, instantly suspicious.
“Because it’s not McDonald’s?” she jeers, and I try not to flinch.
“Because you’re following an interest and you seem excited about it.” I do my utmost to keep any edge from my