Chapter 3 - Iris Avery
We returned home after midnight.
Callie slept in our room.
Not because she medically needed monitoring.
Because she asked.
At seven, terror earns some flexibility.
Mason stayed downstairs.
Vivienne and I went into my office.
I closed the door.
She remained standing.
“What did you promise?”
Her face tightened.
“I didn’t promise you another daughter.”
“That is not what I asked.”
She looked away.
“Simone has a daughter.”
I stared.
“I know.”
Of course I knew.
Iris Avery.
Eight years old.
One grade above Callie at the same private elementary school.
Quiet.
Dark-blond hair.
Serious eyes.
She attended some family events with Simone.
Not this party.
She had been with her father for the weekend.
“What does Iris have to do with us?”
Vivienne crossed her arms.
“Simone is having surgery.”
“What surgery?”
“Aortic valve repair.”
I knew Simone had a heart condition.
I did not know surgery had been scheduled.
“When?”
“Ten weeks.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“She asked me not to say anything until she told people herself.”
I let that go temporarily.
“What did you promise?”
Vivienne sat.
“I told her if her recovery became complicated and she needed help, Iris could stay with us.”
I stared.
“For how long?”
“As long as needed.”
“Define needed.”
“I didn’t.”
“That is a problem.”
“I know.”
“No, Vivienne. The problem is not the phrase. The problem is that I am hearing this after a woman shoved our daughter down a staircase and told her this family needs another daughter.”
“She was never supposed to say that.”
That sentence made me colder.
“You knew she was using that language?”
Vivienne hesitated.
“No. Not exactly.”
“What exactly did you know?”
“She started saying Iris would feel safer if she knew there was a permanent backup family.”
“Permanent.”
“I told her our home could be a temporary safe place if she was hospitalized.”
“Temporary safe place is not permanent family.”
“I know.”
“Did Simone?”
Vivienne’s silence answered.
I sat across from her.
“Start at the beginning.”
Simone and Vivienne had been close since their twenties.
They met at graduate school.
Stayed friends through marriages, divorce, children, deaths, career changes.
When Simone’s cardiologist recommended surgery, she panicked.
Not primarily about dying.
About Iris.
Simone was divorced from Iris’s father, Nathan Avery.
He remained alive.
He remained Iris’s legal father.
That fact should have simplified everything.
It did not.
“Why wouldn’t Iris stay with Nathan?”
Vivienne rubbed her forehead.
“Because Simone does not trust him.”
“Does the court?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Nathan had struggled with alcohol after the divorce.
One DUI.
No child in the car.
He completed treatment.
Three years sober.
Parenting time gradually restored.
Current order:
Joint legal custody.
Simone primary residential parent during school weeks.
Nathan alternate weekends, one midweek overnight, shared holidays.
Not an absent father.
Not a stranger.
“What did you sign?” I asked.
Vivienne went still.
May you like
That was the second answer I did not want.
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