In case the narcissist tries for revisionist history.
It absolutely guts me when Katie starts crying.
“I don’t want to move,” she says. “I don’t want to leave my friends, or school, or you and Aunt Zoey and Uncle Arlo or Lucas!”
“You don’t have to, sweetheart. I’ve already talked to my lawyer. We made Mommy sign a piece of paper admitting she lied, and saying that you will live with us full-time now.”
Zoey hands her a tissue and she wipes her eyes with it. I still don’t interrupt her. “Where is she going?” Katie asks.
“California. It’s several thousand miles away.”
“Why did she lie?”
“Because Mommy…” I sigh. “Because some people have trouble with the truth,” I tell her. “They weren’t raised like I was raised, or like I’m raising you. They lie to get what they want, even if they have to hurt people to do it. That’s why lying is bad, because you can hurt people.”
“I don’t have to move?”
“No, sweetheart. In fact, friends of Uncle Arlo, and my attorney, are getting the rest of your things from Mommy’s place tonight and will bring them here. You’re not ever going back to Mommy’s. The next time you move, it’ll be when all of us move into the new house, once it’s built.”
She asks me to play the video again. This is a hard, sad lesson to teach my little girl, but maybe it will help inoculate her against the narcissist’s damage and be far less painful for her in the long run.
I can only hope.
After she watches it a second time, I set my phone aside. “Lucas did something very smart and thought to film Mommy when she showed up because he knew Mommy was a liar. Then he posted it on Facebook, and a lot of people saw the video before he took it down.”
“Why’d he take it down?” She looks angry. “It’s not nice what she did! People should know she lied!”
“Because I agreed for it to be taken down when Mommy signed the papers that she wouldn’t take you to California. But there’s a chance other parents saw it. I’m telling you all of this in case someone asks you about it, or says something to you about it. I wanted you to know what happened. I don’t want to lie to you.”
She sniffles and climbs into my lap to hug me. “Okay.”
“I’m going to take you to school in the morning and talk to the office. I need to show them the paperwork to have them take Mommy off the list of people who are allowed to pick you up. You have to promise me if Mommy tries to pick you up, and I haven’t told you ahead of time that it’s okay, you can’t go with her, no matter what she says.”
She nods. “I promise. She could lie about me, too.”
I really don’t want to go there. Not tonight. “I don’t know, sweetheart. The only people allowed to pick you up from school are me, Aunt Zoey, Uncle Arlo, and Lucas. Understand? If anyone else tries to pick you up from school, and I didn’t tell you ahead of time that it’s okay, no matter what they say, do not go with them. Run and scream and get a teacher.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Promise me.”
She nods. “I promise.”
I look at Arlo, then his phone, and he groks what I want. He stops filming. “I also need to tell you something else,” I say, “but you know how we have good secrets and bad secrets?”
She nods.
“What’s a good secret?”
Finally, the hint of a smile. “Birthday parties and presents,” she says. “Fun surprises.”
“What else did we say is a good secret?”
She thinks about it. “Money stuff. Work stuff. Family business stuff.”
“What’s a bad secret?”
Her expression darkens again. “Bad touches. Lying and hurting someone.”
“Okay. Aunt Zoey, Uncle Arlo, and I have a good secret, but someone like Mommy would want to use it in a bad way.”
She frowns. “Like what?”
“Like on that video. Mommy could try to get us fired. She might try to lie to the judge to take you away from me.”
Confusion fills her face. “What is it?”
Terror fills me but I don’t want to live a lie. I just dinged her mother for the whopper of all lies, and eventually, when the truth comes out about us, Katie won’t trust us if we’ve been hiding this from her. “I love Aunt Zoey and Uncle Arlo, and they love me.”
She looks…relieved? “Oh, I know. Aunt Zoey told me.”
Both me and Arlo look at Zoey, who looks confused. “She did?” I ask.
“The day Mommy had the business trip and Aunt Zoey picked me up. She told me she loves you.”
That’s a face-palm look if I’ve ever seen one. “Not like that,” Zoey clarifies. “Katie told me she saw you and Arlo kiss and I sort of…diverted her with the basic truth.”
“Oh.” I focus on Katie again. “You know how Aunt Zoey and Uncle Arlo are married?”
“Yeah?”
I twist the ring off my right hand and put it on my left, where it really belongs. She watches me do it. “They gave me this ring, because they love me like they love each other. Uncle Arlo and I have been in love since we were Lucas and Caine’s ages. But I was scared of what people would think. Eventually, Uncle Arlo met Aunt Zoey and married her, and I married Mommy.”
At the mention of her mother, Katie scowls. “Mommy lied about you.”
“Yeah. And, as you know, it didn’t work out with me and Mommy. But a lot of people would think it’s…wrong for me to be with Aunt Zoey and Uncle Arlo.”
“Why?”
Zoey snorts but doesn’t interrupt.
“Because a lot of people don’t understand you can love more than one person, and that it’s okay. You know how some people have a lot of kids, but they love all of them?”
She nods.
“Well, sometimes the reverse is true. Some kids have more than two parents.”
Her eyes widen as she gasps. “Are Aunt Zoey and Uncle Arlo my stepmom and stepdad now?”
I smile. “Pretty much, yeah. But,” I quickly add, “it’s okay if you want to tell people they’re like your stepmom and stepdad. The part you need to keep a family secret is that we’re sort of married to each other.”
“Why?”
Why, indeed. “For now,” I clarify, “it’s better if you don’t tell people. Once you’re older, and we know Mommy won’t try to tell more lies about us, then it won’t matter.”
She slowly nods. “You’re their husband?”
“Kind of. Yeah. Not legally, because the law is stupid.”
Back to a scowl. “It’s illegal?”
“Not the way we’re doing it,” I clarify. “There’s no law against me wearing a ring and calling ourselves married. But the law only lets two people legally get married. If I tried to legally marry one of them while they’re married to each other, that would be illegal.”
From there we end up straying into the weeds with a very basic discussion about what poly is, why some people are stupid, and what’s okay to tell people about us.
Lucas even tells her that Caine is his boyfriend, and we get into why that’s the good kind of secret to keep, because Caine could possibly be hurt if the secret came out.
Lucas also tells Katie about his dad throwing him out, which makes her frown and climb into his lap to hug him.
“I’m sorry he’s a butthead, Lucas,” Katie tells him.
Zoey claps a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter while Arlo drapes an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in close.
We circle around back to the issue of our family secret.
“Do you want me to call you Mommy and Daddy?” she asks them.
“You can call us whatever you want to, sweetheart,” Arlo tells her. “That’s up to you. We love you like our daughter.”
“The way I love Lucas as if he’s my son,” I add. “We’ve already been a family for years. We just didn’t tell you the labels. So it’s not ‘bad’ secret. It didn’t hurt you not knowing, did it?”
She digests th
at for a moment before shaking her head. “No, it didn’t hurt me. I like living here. I’m glad we’re not moving. Until we get the new house,” she adds.
We finally get through that, survive dinner, and after Katie’s had a bath and we’ve put her to bed, the three of us sit on the couch, where we pass a small water glass with a couple of fingers of Fireball on the rocks between us, sharing it while we await word from Mike. Lucas sits curled up in a chair, waiting with us and texting with Caine.
Mike texts me at 8:07.
Done. On the way.
We open the garage door to await their arrival. Everything can go in there for tonight. Tomorrow night, we can help Katie organize everything.
Might as well move her into the larger room, too. There’s no reason to keep her in the smaller bedroom with our secret shared with her.
When the three men arrive, Art and Bailey’s pickup trucks full of stuff, Mike walks up to me while Arlo, Zoey, and Lucas help the other two men unload everything.
While they’re doing that, Mike pulls me aside and plays me the video he took of what happened.
He started filming from when he walked up to Jerilyn’s front door and rang the bell. There’s a guy in the condo with her, apparently trying to look mean and imposing. I recognize him as the guy from the pictures on her Facebook profile.
But then Mike offers to show him copies of the videos from today, the first one and the ones from in his office—which Mike has copies of now—and Jerilyn suddenly looks ill and banishes the guy to her bedroom while Mike, Art, and Bailey make quick work of emptying Katie’s bedroom, down to the bare walls.
Mike fast-forwards through the moving part, because apparently Jerilyn wasn’t stupid enough to interfere with the process. Then he picks up right before they leave.
While Mike’s standing outside the front door, he does something magnanimous. “Do you want to arrange a visitation with Katie before you move?”
The sneer that curls her lips looks somewhere between contempt and disgust. I don’t miss how she glances back, presumably to confirm her bedroom door is closed, before she drops her voice. “No. I’m done with them both. I don’t need either of them now. I could’ve lost my job today.”
“You weren’t thinking of Nolan or Arlo’s jobs when you threatened them. Or of Lucas and Caine.”
“Tell Nolan he fucking won. I didn’t want a kid, anyway. Kids are a royal pain in the ass once they’re not cute babies anymore.”
She slams the door in his face.
Mike turns, the video catching the stunned shock on Art and Bailey’s faces. “You both heard all of that, right?”
They both nod.
“Damn, that bitch is fucking cold, man,” Art says. “She didn’t ask about Katie once.”
Bailey’s shock seemingly turns to anger. “What kind of mother does that shit?”
The video ends as they walk down the driveway, to their vehicles, and Mike gets into his car.
Mike looks at me. “I e-mailed you the Dropbox link to download it.”
“Thanks,” I numbly say as I pull out my phone and start downloading the file.
Later, once they’re gone, after Lucas has retired to his room, and we’re now locked behind our bedroom door, I sit on the end of the bed and show the video to Arlo and Zoey.
When it finishes playing, Arlo lays his hand over mine and gently takes the phone from me. “It’s over,” he gently says.
I don’t understand why I burst into tears. I’m not sure if it’s anger or stress or relief or a combination of those emotions, and more. As my husband and wife comfort me, I realize that, for the rest of our lives, we don’t have to lie to our little girl about this one simple truth that defines the very core of who we are as a family.
That we are a family.
Chapter Fifteen
Zoey
The week after Lucas moved in with us, my attorney filed a motion to modify custody with Lucas. Because it wasn’t an emergency, like in Katie’s situation, it wound its way through normal channels. Bill didn’t respond to the motion in time, despite his attorney receiving the paperwork and my attorney having Bill served at home.
That means, ironically, we’re now at about the same place in the process Nolan is, because of his case’s expedited timeline, and we now have the same judge. The judge who originally presided over my divorce moved on years ago.
Three agonizingly tense days later, it’s all over in both cases.
That Friday morning, Nolan and I both hold in our hands signed modification orders giving us full and primary custody of our respective children.
This calls for a celebration.
But we’ll have to delay that for a little while, because next week is the last week of school before summer vacation for both kids, and things are somewhat hectic.
At least now we can enjoy summer vacation and make plans without worrying about juggling logistics with Jerilyn. Especially after she’d griped a few weeks back that Nolan had enrolled Katie in a STEAM-focused day camp program that would teach her coding, robotics, and other skills.
A day camp we had paid for completely, and didn’t ask Jerilyn to chip in for at all.
Fortunately for us, we have two dependable teen boys with driver’s licenses who can take Katie to day camp and watch her in the afternoons while the three of us are at work.
They can also babysit for us at the evenings. Meaning we delay our celebration until the Saturday night after school ends, when the three of us can relax and enjoy things.
Meanwhile, as a result of the video being posted, Caine found the courage to come out to his parents over dinner at our house last weekend. As we’d hoped, they were fine with it and hugged both boys, meaning the final “big” secret weighing us and Lucas down has evaporated, along with fear and dread.
I let Lucas, Caine, and Katie put in an online order for dinner. Katie wanted pasta and pizza, so I told her to go for it and pick whatever she wanted. The pizza place has both, and they deliver.
Tonight is special. The kids have a loaded Crunchyroll queue that Nolan’s already signed off on to start Katie’s big-brother education about all things anime, and both boys are looking forward to spending time with her and each other.
I trust them to take care of her.
Meaning the three of us can take a night off for us. We can focus on making sure we’re solid and stay that way.
We need time like this to nourish us and our relationship.
There’s nothing standing in our way now except us.
No one to blame if we fail except us.
I want to set a good example for our kids. I want them to see a healthy dynamic between the three of us, and between each of us as three couples.
I want Lucas and Caine to see a healthy relationship between Arlo and Nolan, something to emulate and aspire to.
I want Katie to understand what’s healthy and to stand up for herself regardless of what she discovers about herself as she gets older. I want her to love herself first so she doesn’t make the same mistakes Nolan and I did with our first spouses.
I don’t want her to get stuck in a relationship because she feels she has to be in it.
If there’s any takeaway we can give them, it’s how to love honestly, authentically, and to put themselves first in healthy ways. To learn to set boundaries.
Once the food arrives, we get in the car and head out. Tonight, we have reservations at a restaurant on Manasota Key, across the road from the beach. It’s supposed to be a nearly full moon tonight, and I’ve been promised a walk on the beach after dinner.
I want to walk in the surf and hold my men’s hands. I decided tonight to wear a fun and flirty, full, red three-tiered skirt that swirls around me with every step, and strappy, heeled sandals I know make my men hard when they watch me walk in them.
Tonight, Nolan’s taken charge—of deciding where we’ll eat, of the reservations, of our plans. There’s a gentle fluidity between us that ebbs and flows like the tide. If one or m
ore of us needs a mental break, there’s one—or more—of us to step into a leadership role and take charge of our family’s rudder. But there’s no dictator, no Captain Bligh.
Nolan drives tonight. I opt for the backseat because I love watching my men together. I love the way they hold hands while Nolan’s driving, the way Arlo watches him and smiles as they talk. I never feel left out. I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of their past, a time capsule, an honest look of their history that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible to me.
I can picture them as boys, fumbling and stumbling their way around a relationship and keeping their secrets. I can imagine them in college, frustrated over life and yearning to be together despite what they thought was “right.” Especially Nolan.
These two men are my bedrock and my foundation, unshakeable even in the face of the most devastating earthquakes.
They’ve proven that to me.
More importantly?
They’ve proven it to our children.
We arrive at the restaurant, a fantastic seafood place on Manasota Beach, just across the road from the public beach. When we park, it’s Nolan who helps me out of the car and leads the way upstairs, holding my hand while Arlo holds my other and follows us. There’s not a hint of hesitation or nervous tension in either of them.
Even when we enter the restaurant and walk up to the hostess station, they’re both still holding my hands.
Me?
I’m sure I’m grinning like a maniac.
We’re led to our table, where both my men hold my chair for me and help me scoot it in.
They talk about our progress with the house, about our next scheduled visit with the builder this coming week, where we’re going to nail down the final details of the new house’s actual layout so the architect can start working on them, about the surprise weekend trip to Disney for the kids—including Caine—that we’re going to take next month.
I sit back, smiling as I peruse the menu and listen to my men talk.
This is a sweet perfection, my dreams come true.
You know what?
It’s even better than I could have ever hoped for.
* * * *
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