Heather did not call the house. She texted the phone Lisa still had: I didn’t know he had a kid home. Lisa wrote back: you knew he had a wife. Then she stopped. A fight with Heather was a second game she did not need. The first game had already been lost in silence when the crowd scored. She put the phone in a drawer. Rick could get a new one. The thread could live in the drawer until a lawyer or a trash day. She would decide which.
The lawyer was a woman named Joan who kept the tissues on the other side of the desk so clients had to ask. Lisa asked. Joan said Sunday with a child in the room was a fact, not a mood. Lisa said the child had heard one time. Joan said write down what he heard. Lisa wrote it. The writing made the family room into a record. She did not want the family room to be only a record. She also did not want it to go back to wings and a lie. Both wants stood. Joan said they could stand while the paperwork started.
Rick signed a separation that gave Lisa the house for the school year and him the truck and a schedule with Cole that was not Sundays at first, because Sundays were contaminated. Saturdays became the day. Cole went. He came back quiet. Lisa did not interrogate the quiet. She asked if he had eaten. He said pizza. Pizza was a report. She took it. She slept without the broadcast on. The house kept the score.
Pam’s flute concert happened the next week without being an alibi. Lisa went. She sat in a folding chair and listened to a child who was not hers miss notes and continue. Continuing was the skill. She cried at a wrong note and Pam pretended not to see and then saw. In the parking lot Pam said, “You don’t have to forgive the camouflage.” Lisa said, “I’m not forgiving the camouflage. I’m hearing the flute.” They got coffee that was bad and sufficient.