I wore a navy blazer, flat boots, and braided my hair back.
My mother stayed with Leo.
On the way there, I expected to feel sick.
Instead, I felt strangely steady.
Wade arrived looking thinner than I remembered.
Tired too.
The easy confidence he had once carried seemed gone.
For a few seconds, seeing him like that made something twist in my chest.
Not love exactly.
Not anger either.
Maybe the memory of both.
Mr. Okafor stayed focused on the proceeding.
The terms were addressed.
The condo remained with me.
I received full legal and physical custody of Leo.
Wade agreed.
When it was time to sign, his hand shook slightly.
I watched him write his name where he was instructed.
Months earlier, I might have imagined that moment as some huge emotional victory.
It wasn’t.
It was paperwork.
Important paperwork, yes.
Life-changing paperwork.
But still just ink on a page formalizing what had already become true.
We were no longer a family living together.
I was no longer responsible for saving him.
When the proceeding ended, I looked at Wade once.
He met my eyes.
There was no smirk.
Outside the courthouse, he caught up with me on the steps.
“Ivy.”
I stopped.
Mr. Okafor was nearby, but I turned to Wade.
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
For several seconds, he stared toward the street.
“I’m leaving.”
“Where?”
“Alberta.”
I waited.
“My brother knows someone hiring for work camps. A crew.”
He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck.
“I need to get out of here.”
I said nothing.
“I need to pay down what I owe. And I need to be somewhere I don’t owe everybody something.”
The irony of that sentence could have made me laugh once.
I didn’t.
Wade looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
There was no long explanation afterward.
No sentence beginning with but.
No reason why it hadn’t really been his fault.
Just those words.
I’m sorry.
It was the first apology from him in a long time that sounded like one.
He looked down the courthouse steps.
“When Leo gets older…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“When he asks about me.”
My throat tightened slightly.
“Tell him I tried to get better.”
I held his gaze.
Wade continued.
“Tell him I didn’t start out planning to become… this.”
For a few seconds, I saw the man I had married underneath everything that had happened.
That didn’t erase anything.
It didn’t make him safe.
It didn’t turn the last two years into a misunderstanding.
But I could see him.
“I’ll tell Leo the truth when he’s old enough to hear it,” I said.
Wade nodded.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
That included the parts that were unflattering.
It also meant I wouldn’t invent worse ones.
I wouldn’t need to.
He nodded again.
Then he turned and walked down the courthouse steps.
I watched him reach the sidewalk.
Then I turned the other way.
I haven’t heard from him since.
Leo’s first Christmas was in the condo with my mother and me.
Mom made a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey because there were only three of us and one of us was too young to eat any.
She made scalloped potatoes and cranberry loaf.
We opened a bottle of sparkling water and toasted over Leo, who was sitting in his bouncy chair wearing a little plaid onesie.
He grabbed at wrapping paper with complete determination.
Every time he managed to catch a piece, he stared at it as though he had personally discovered paper.
Mom laughed until she had tears in her eyes.
I laughed too.
It was a small Christmas.
No complicated guest list.
No tension in the kitchen.
No watching someone’s mood.
No wondering whether money had disappeared.
Just us.
I returned to work in January.
Slowly.
I wasn’t ready for a full calendar, and Leo wasn’t exactly interested in respecting client deadlines.
I accepted a few smaller projects and worked while he napped.
Some days I managed several productive hours.
Other days, I opened a design file, adjusted one thing, and heard him wake up.
My mother stayed for another two months.
I will never be able to fully explain what that meant to me.
She bought groceries.
Did laundry.
Cooked dinner.
Held Leo when I had calls.
Took the occasional four-in-the-morning wake-up so I could sleep longer than ninety minutes.
At first I kept trying to help her.
“I can do that.”
“I know,” she would say.
Or, “I’ll get it.”
“I know.”
Eventually I understood what she meant.
Being capable of carrying everything didn’t mean I was required to carry everything.
By March, I was working more regularly.
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