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Amelia

I’m happy. I’m content.

It’s a strange feeling. I don’t just feel better than I have in two months, I feel better than I have in eight years.

I have a busy day. In addition to dealing with several minor festival emergencies, I also have to greet tourist groups that booked their visit to the festival through the agency. I barely get away in time to pick Chase up from school.

I wait for him outside of school, eager to see his smiling face. I feel like I haven’t seen him in months. I pull him into a long hug when he finally makes his way to me. I ask him about school, but it’s like I have to pull every word out of him on our way to the Grove Grind Cafe, until he switches the subject to baseball and then he’s talking so much that he barely has time to breathe.

We get our usual table and order two cheesecakes.

“Auntie Mads is coming today,” I say between two bites.

“Is she coming to the game on Sunday? She hasn’t seen me play in so long, I bet she’ll be surprised.”

“You should invite her to come when you see her at dinner tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And Blake will come with us to dinner too.”

Chase’s excitement drops and my stomach goes with it.

“You like Blake,” I say.

But Chase doesn’t answer.

“Did your dad say something about Blake?”

He nods.

“What did he say?”

“He said Blake is your boyfriend.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

“Why doesn’t Blake just go out with Charlotte instead?” It takes all my self-control not to laugh. “And then we can be a family again.” That stops the laughter dead in its tracks.

The very thought of going back to Ethan sends cold shivers down my back. I don’t want to go back to constantly being careful what I say and what I do. I don’t want to go back to being one wrong word away from yet another argument. I don’t want to go back to that cold house that had to be just the way he wanted because we were building it on his parents’ land. And I certainly couldn’t go back to someone I can’t trust.

“Well, first of all,” I say when I find my voice again, “Blake doesn’t like Charlotte.”

Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but it seems easier than telling him just how much I hate his dad right now.

“Me neither,” mumbles Chase.

“Well, there you go, that’s something you have in common.”

I can’t talk badly about Ethan’s girlfriend with Chase without feeling like a bad mother, but nothing is stopping Blake.

“And second of all, your dad doesn’t want to be with me. That’s why he asked me to move out of the house and get a divorce.”

“But if there wasn’t Charlotte—“

“It wouldn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want to be with me. He would just find someone else. Or be alone.”

Chase frowns at me.