Chapter 7 - The Coat
The Camille situation came apart more slowly and more completely than I expected. Diane's letter, it turned out, forced a conversation between the two of them that I wasn't part of and didn't need to be.
What I pieced together later, through Trevor, was that the arrangement with her mother had been running for more than a year. Camille had explained it to herself as balancing the help coming from my side — her parents had chipped in on the down payment once, so in her mind it was only fair that some money flow back to them now. She had just never mentioned that reasoning to Trevor. Or to me.
The two of them spent January and February working through something I had no part in and no wish to interfere with. Their marriage was theirs to sort out.
In March, Camille sent me an email. Carefully worded. More acknowledgment than apology, but an acknowledgment all the same. I read it once and answered with six sentences that were polite and completely without warmth, because some things take more than a well-composed email, and I was done pretending otherwise.
I never heard from her mother. I didn't expect to.
January was the quietest month I'd had in years, and I mean that as a compliment.
I booked two weeks at a small inn on the Oregon coast for April — a trip I'd been putting off for three years because there was always something that needed the money more. I met with Diane and rebuilt my finances from the ground up, moving what used to be the family fund into a retirement account I'd been underfunding for over a decade.
And I had my coat relined.
I keep bringing up the coat, so let me tell you why.
For six winters I wore a coat with a lining coming apart at the seams because buying a new one felt selfish when there were transfers to make. Getting it properly relined in January cost less than one month of the emergency fund I'd been keeping topped up for Camille's mother's home renovation.
I stood in my hallway after I picked it up. I put it on. I stood there a minute.
It fit exactly the same.
It just felt completely different.
I started cooking for myself again, the way I had before double shifts wore me down to whatever was fastest. I started walking in the mornings. I called a friend I hadn't really talked to in four years, because I'd always been too tired, too distracted, too needed somewhere else.
In February I asked Trevor if I could see Ella and Owen. He set it up without hesitating.
They came to my house on a Saturday. We baked sugar cookies with blue frosting. Owen fell asleep on my couch under my grandmother's quilt, and I sat next to him a long while just watching him breathe. Ella helped me clean the kitchen and asked me, with the blunt curiosity of a ten-year-old, why I hadn't come to Christmas.
I told her that sometimes grown-ups have disagreements, and that it had nothing to do with how much I loved her.
May you like
She took that the easy way secure kids take things and said, "Okay. Can we make hot chocolate?"
I drove them home in the late afternoon. I hugged them on the porch before Trevor opened the door. I didn't go inside. I wasn't ready for that yet, and I'd finally learned to stop doing things I wasn't ready for just because somebody expected them.
