She left the room, her school bag slung over one shoulder, leaving me alone with the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
At ten o’clock, I went back to the kitchen and picked up my phone from the charging dock. My fingers felt cold against the glass screen as I looked at Jordan’s contact name.
I had not called him in three months, relying entirely on brief emails about child support payments that were always three days late.
I drafted a short, polite message, giving the date of July eighteenth and the time of the gathering. I kept the words simple, focusing entirely on Ethan’s wishes for his fifteenth birthday.
I hit the blue arrow before I could convince myself to delete the text.
The reply came within three minutes, the small gray bubble appearing on the screen almost immediately. My phone buzzed in my palm, a short, sharp vibration that made me jump.
I read the words twice, my thumb hovering over the glass as the words sank in.
We will be there, Jordan wrote, but Percy and I are bringing our own family.
The phone slipped from my fingers, landing with a sharp plastic click on the kitchen floor.
It lay there on the linoleum, the screen glowing upward in the dim morning light.
I stood perfectly still, staring down at the words as the screen slowly faded to black.
I carried the basket of folded laundry up the stairs at four o’clock, wanting the physical work to quiet my mind after the text message from Jordan. The silver sedan with one hundred and forty thousand miles on it sat in the driveway below the hallway window, its hood still warm from the grocery trip that had cost me two hundred and eighty dollars. The house was quiet, the heavy summer air hanging in the upstairs hallway like a damp sheet.
Ethan’s bedroom door was cracked open, showing a slice of his messy desk and the back of his grey hoodie. He was hunched over, his shoulders tense.
