Page 32 of The KING Review

“So, is there anything new with either of you?” Ellie asks, tapping her pen on the desk. She gives me a smile, then turns it on Marie, where it tightens slightly.

Sera is playing with her dolls—including her Helen Fisher—in the corner of the room, where Ellie has a small pink plastic table set up for the kids in her mediation sessions.

I lean back in my chair, shaking my head—even though I know I’m lying.

There is something new, and that’s me and Neve.

I know that I should mention it, but there are so many ways it could cause issues—not limited to Marie deciding to use it against me, or a deeper conflict of interests, given that Ellie knows Neve tangentially. I resolve that there’s no contact between Neve and Sera, and I don’t know if there will be yet (lie), so I can keep it to myself for now.

Marie folds her arms, crosses her legs, and cuts her eyes to me. “Kris is moving in,” she says evenly, as if she’s letting me know what the weather will be like on Thursday. “It’s been a long time coming. Sera already knows him well, so… It’s happening next week. We’re both ready for it.”

I keep my expression carefully neutral, but inside, it’s like the floor drops out from under me. I knew Kris was in the picture, and that it was serious—but moving in?

I can’t parse the weird kind of grief I feel. I don’t want Marie back, but I think there might be an ugly part of me that doesn’t want her to be happy. It’s not even that I don’t want her to be happy without me—I just… don’t want her to be happy when I’m not.

The thought hits like a punch in the chest.

I’m not happy.

Ellie gives Marie a bland nod, scribbling a note in her legal pad. “Thanks for letting us know,” she says, and I know that’s all she can say. It’s not her place to speak on the merits of Marie’s relationship, and if Ellie thought Kris moving in would put Sera at risk, she’d say. She looks up at me. “Grant, any changes on your end?”

I open my mouth, then close it, shaking my head. “Nope.” My hand closes around the arm of the chair. “Nothing’s changed for me.”

Marie looks pleased. I know she is, because she’s got that tight little smile she wears whenever she thinks she’s caught me off guard. I refuse to give her the satisfaction.

Ellie doesn’t push. We run through the rest of the handover protocol, which is the usual hell of dividing up the next few holiday weekends and agreeing to keep the same “neutral pick-up point,” like we’re a pair of high-stakes arms dealers instead of parents just trying to keep up with the best kid on planet Earth.

When we leave, Marie doesn’t even bother saying goodbye to me. I load Sera’s case into the trunk, then buckle her into her booster seat.

We’re barely out of the parking garage before Sera’s singing, voice lilting and sweet, as she bounces her Helen Fisher up and down on her knee. Then she presses her finger to the window, pointing at the sky. “Papa, look! The story moon!”

I bark a laugh, glancing up at the night sky through the windshield to see the crescent moon, hanging low, thin, and bright in the clear sky. “A story moon, bug?”

“Yup!” Sera chirps. “How the moon looks in stories.”

I chuckle to myself. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of her made-up words for things. Marie and I used to call them Sera-isms. Part of me wonders if Marie still calls them that. I still write them down in my notes app. I don’t want to forget them when she stops making them up.

“The story moon,” I echo, and the words catch in my throat.

I let her monologue fill the car, nodding in the right places, feeling something unspool in my chest for the first time all afternoon.

When we get home, Sera helps me make dinner, perched on the same kitchen stool she’s been using since she was two. She bounces on the balls of her feet, never still. We make what she calls “green pasta sauce” (spinach pesto), and she insists on taste-testing every ingredient before it goes in the blender. I can’t stifle my laughter when she tries the lemon juice, hissing at the sour taste.

She draws while I do the dishes—a picture of the moon story she came up with in the car, with her riding a dinosaur’s back, both of them grinning huge. After bath, after pajamas, after two books, she lays her head on my shoulder while I kneel beside her bed to tuck her in.

“Papa, why don’t you have a special friend?”

I freeze. My mind blanks.

“Like Mama has Kris,” she says diplomatically. “Is it because I’m your favorite?”

I swallow hard, then force a smile.

“I’d be a lot more boring if you weren’t,” I say, and that makes her giggle—a high, delighted sound, the kind I never get tired of.

Still, I can see in her eyes that she wants to know the answer to the question.

“Do you want me to have a special friend?” I ask softly, pushing her hair back from her forehead. Her lashes flutter, already half-asleep.