grown-up in my own house! Some stepmother. She called me a bitch!”
“Watch your language!” I shout back. “Jewel is right here.”
Mallory scoffs. “Oh, like she hasn’t heard worse a hundred times.”
I turn to her. “Yes, and that’s exactly the problem.”
She throws up her hands. “And we’re back to Bad Mallory again, how surprising.”
“Well, you make it so easy.”
“STOP!”
This is Dylan. His face is florid and visibly sweaty. Angel has stepped away from him, looking askance as if he might bite her.
“I can’t take it anymore! Dad, you criticize all the time, and Angel’s so mean”—Angel tries to protest, but Dylan steams ahead past her, not appearing to notice—“and Mom is hysterical and no one listens to me and I’m just tired of it! I wish you’d never found me!”
“Well, fine,” Mallory spits out. “Maybe I should go, just go forever, you’ll never have to deal with my hysteria again.” She snatches her purse up off the desk at the front of the room, but I recognize the act. She doesn’t intend to go, she probably never did.
Dylan puts his hands to the side of his head and utters a low, frustrated growl. “That’s not what I meant! I-I—”
Dylan’s face is working hard, trying to get words out that stall and sputter on his tongue, and I recognize the anguish in his face over this. Angel has turned pink with fury, and Jewel is sitting cross-legged on the floor; so recently she couldn’t breathe, and now she clutches her stomach, rocking slightly in place.
I put my hand on Mallory’s elbow, fighting against my animal nature, to bring my voice to a moderate, soothing register. “Come on, Mal, settle down, okay? Let’s just catch our breath and talk for a minute—”
“Don’t patronize me, you pompous ass!” She swings her arm in an arc to shake me away, and in doing so her purse flies loose from her shoulder, spinning as it does, and spilling its contents across the hardwood living room floor.
I glance down and see prescription bottles. Three or four, and more for Tylenol and aspirin, which I’d bet my useless college degree don’t hold anything so innocent.
I make a dive for them, flashing back to the time I fought her for the ATM card. She is on her knees on the floor, too, gathering them up to her bosom. The bottles I get my hands on aren’t even in her name.
“Who’s ‘Patricia Clark’?” I ask, no longer able to screen the contempt from my voice. “And why does she need so much Vicodin?”
“They’re prescription! And it’s none of your business!”
“So this is how you’ve stopped drinking.”
She tosses her head, trying to be confident and failing as she rarely does. “You have to admit I’m much better now, aren’t I?”
I suddenly remember a failed visitation from a few weeks ago. Mallory was supposed to be home and wouldn’t answer the door, but it swung open with repeated knocking. Angel and the kids came back to the car, said their mom wasn’t feeling good and that they had to go home. They’d said she was lying on the couch, seeming too weak to move, or even give them a hug.
At the time, I thought she’d gotten swine flu, or perhaps was sleeping off a hard drunk. I called Nicole and left a message to check on her. Drugs never entered my mind.
How dare I hope she’d changed?
“Get the hell out of here.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “I’m visiting my children.”
“It’s not your weekend.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re not getting any extra time after this little revelation.”
She tosses her hair and smiles at Angel. “Well, we’ll see. My circumstances are changing, I’ll have you know. And so are yours, and not for the better. Did you happen to mention to the children that you lost your job? Or are you saving that pleasant surprise for later? You do need to be able to feed your children in order to have custody.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Oh, that’s right, Daddy Turner will save the day. Or maybe he won’t, this time. Maybe he’s tired of supporting you. And now without darling Casey to pitch in around here—”
I pull my phone out of my pocket. “Dylan and Angel. Please take Jewel upstairs.”
“Daddy?” Jewel says, her tiny voice breaking me in pieces with how innocent and scared she sounds.
“Go upstairs with your brother and sister.”
The kids scurry away upstairs, whispering.
I hold up the phone. “I’m calling the police unless you’re out that door in three seconds.”
“I am not leaving