Chapter 27
Then came that rainy night when everything changed.
The doorbell rang urgently at 11 PM. I peered through the peephole to see a soaked woman clutching a small boy, both shivering in the cold.
“Julian!” the woman cried when he opened the door. “Please, I didn’t know where else to go.”
I watched Julian’s face drain of color as he recognized the woman. “Cathy?”
“Marcus is dead.” Cathy sobbed, falling to her knees. “Car accident three days ago. They’re going to foreclose on our apartment. Tyler and I have
nowhere to go.”
The little boy-Tyler-couldn’t have been more than four, with wide, frightened eyes that reminded me painfully of my own childhood trauma.
“Oh god, Cathy,” Julian immediately knelt beside her, his hands shaking as he helped her up.
“Come inside, both of you. You’re freezing.”
As we helped Cathy and Tyler into the house, I noticed the way Julian’s hands lingered on Cathy’s shoulders, steadying her with an intimacy that made my stomach tighten.
“Who is she?” I asked quietly once we’d settled Cathy and Tyler in the guest room.
Julian ran his hands through his hair, avoiding my gaze. “An old friend from college. She married my best friend Marcus five years ago.”
“Your best friend?”
“Was my best friend,” Julian corrected, his voice tight. “We had a falling out when they got together. I haven’t spoken to either of them since their wedding.”
I studied his profile. “What kind of falling out?”
“Just… complicated stuff. Old history.” Julian’s jaw tightened. “The important thing is that Marcus is gone, and they have nowhere to go. I can’t just turn them away.”
What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement stretched into weeks. Julian threw himself into helping Cathy with insurance paperwork, job applications, and Tyler’s emotional needs. He would wake up early to make Tyler’s favorite pancakes while Iris ate cereal alone, and spend evenings helping Tyler with bedtime stories while I tucked Iris in by myself.
The first real warning sign came on a Tuesday night. Iris developed a fever of 102°F, her small body burning hot as she called weakly for her daddy.
“Julian, I think we need to take her to the hospital,” I said, panic creeping into my voice as I felt Iris’s scalding forehead.
“What? Oh, god, yes, of course,” Julian said, but he was looking toward the guest room where Tyler’s muffled crying could be heard. “Can you… can you just give me five minutes? Tyler’s having another nightmare about the accident, and Cathy can’t calm him down. She’s hyperventilating again.”
“Julian, Iris has a 102-degree fever-”
“I know, I know,” he said, already heading toward Tyler’s room. “Just get her ready, and I’ll drive you both there in a minute.”
Twenty minutes later, I was still waiting. I could hear Julian’s soothing voice through the wall: “It’s okay, buddy. I’m here. Nobody’s going anywhere, I promise.”
I bundled Iris into the car and drove to the emergency room alone.
I spent the entire night in the pediatric wing, holding my daughter’s hand as doctors ran tests and administered IV fluids. At 3 AM, I texted Julian: “Still at hospital. Iris needs IV fluids. Where are you?”
His response came an hour later: “So sorry. Tyler had a complete meltdown. Cathy couldn’t handle it alone. How is Iris? Is she okay?”
I stared at the text, watching my daughter sleep fitfully with tubes in her tiny arm, and didn’t respond.
When Julian finally appeared the next morning with coffee and flowers, I was exhausted and hollow-eyed.
“How is she?” Julian asked, reaching to stroke Iris’s sleeping face.
“Her fever broke at 4 AM,” I said, my voice flat.
“Thank god,” Julian sighed with relief. “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. Cathy was having a complete breakdown, and Tyler was screaming about monsters and car crashes. I couldn’t just abandon them-”
“But you could abandon us.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. “That’s not fair. You know I wanted to be here. But you’re strong, Elizabeth. You can handle these situations. Cathy is barely holding it together, and that little boy just lost his father-”
“And your little girl nearly ended up hospitalized with a dangerous fever while you were playing house with another woman.”
“Playing house?” Julian’s voice rose. “I’m trying to help a widow and an orphaned child. I thought you’d understand compassion.”
I stared at him. “And I thought you’d understand that your wife and daughter should come first.”
“They do come first,” Julian insisted, but his phone buzzed with a text from Cathy, and his attention immediately shifted to the screen.
The pattern continued relentlessly. Julian missed Iris’s dance recital because Tyler had a panic attack. He forgot our anniversary dinner because Cathy needed help with job interviews. When my company won a major contract, Julian arrived three hours late to our celebration because Tyler had scraped his knee at the playground.
“You have to understand,” Julian said during one of our increasingly frequent arguments, “Tyler doesn’t have a father anymore. Sometimes I’m the only male figure who can calm him down.”
“What about being a father figure to your own daughter?” I shot back.
“Iris has me every day. She’s not going anywhere. But Tyler and Cathy-they’re fragile right now.
Once they get back on their feet, things will go back to normal.”
But I was beginning to doubt that Julian wanted things to go back to normal, I noticed how his eyes softened when he looked at Cathy, how he remembered exactly how she liked her coffee, how he would spend hours talking with her about Marcus and their shared memories.
Two weeks later, Julian missed Iris’s first day of preschool.
“Tyler had a panic attack this morning,” he explained over the phone while I sat alone in the tiny classroom chair, watching other fathers take pictures of their children. “He’s terrified that if he goes to school, something will happen to Cathy while he’s gone. The therapist says we can’t force it.”
“What about Iris?” I asked. “She’s been looking forward to this for weeks.”
“She’ll understand. She’s resilient like her mother. Besides, you’re there taking pictures, right?”
I hung up without answering and looked at my daughter, who was scanning the room full of parents with confused eyes.
“Where’s Daddy?” Iris asked, her small voice barely audible over the chatter of other families.
“He got stuck at work, sweetheart,” I lied, kneeling down to take my daughter’s picture alone.
But as I looked through the camera lens at Iris’s disappointed face, I realized something was shifting inside me. I had told myself I could endure Julian’s divided attention, that I could handle being second priority as long as he was still a good father to Iris. I had convinced myself that our family could weather this storm, that his compassion for Cathy and Tyler didn’t have to destroy what we had built.
I thought I could bear it all, as long as Iris wasn’t hurt.
Until that day-
