The layered fruit cream cake Harry had brought home the night before had already turned. My son dropped it in the trash without a word, his face giving nothing away.
At nine sharp, the Fox family attorney placed the signed divorce agreement in my hands.
The property split was clean, and in the line for our son's custody, the wording left no room for doubt.
While I read, I refreshed my feed out of habit.
Vivien had posted five minutes earlier:
【Rushed the family portrait through, and the composition is perfect. Howie says it's the best gift he's gotten all year and that it has to hang above his bed.】
The attached photo was the one they'd taken at the studio yesterday. Their “family” shot.
My son sat at the table, folding a paper airplane out of his special stationery.
He gave my screen a glance. Nothing moved in those bright dark eyes. He only said, quietly,
“Mom, put the agreement away. It's time to go.”
At noon we didn't trouble the James bodyguards or driver. We called an Uber to the airport ourselves.
The whole way there, my son held his tablet and scrolled through the album in silence.
It held the few tender moments he and Harry had ever shared.
The profile of Harry the day he was born, cradling him so carefully in the hospital.
The two of them at the company gala when he was five, Harry taking his little hand in front of all those watching eyes.
A video, from before Vivien and her son turned up, of Harry on the lawn guiding his hands through a golf swing.
He watched them over and over. He didn't cry. He didn't fuss.
But a suffocating disappointment, a quiet grief, spread through the car all the same.
I reached over and folded his cold little hand in mine.
At one o'clock the boarding call came over the airport speakers.
Harry's call landed at exactly that moment.
“Deborah, tell our son I'm sorry. Howie just fell from the stands at the riding club and broke his shin. Vivien nearly fainted. I have to get him to the hospital right now.”
“There's no way I'll make it by two. If it's windy at the club, take our son home to rest first. Tell him Dad will make it up to him another day.”
His voice was clipped and anxious, and he hung up before I could get out a single word.
“Let's go.”
I put my phone away and took my son's hand.
He nodded, good as ever.
Then he looked down, opened the album, and with one small motion of his fingertip, selected all and deleted them.
At two o'clock the great roar rose and the plane drove up into the clouds.
I fitted his noise-canceling headphones over his ears, shutting out everything outside.
Watching the city's buildings shrink to black specks past the window, I let out the long breath I'd held in my chest for so long.
Goodbye, Harry.
