Thornton and Babette, though, stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Thornton had his hand stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and Babette was fussing with her hair.

“I think they’ve got everything,” I said, unsure as to why they were still in my house when all three kids were already in the car. “Let me know if they forgot anything. Jake and I should be around all weekend.”

Babette elbowed Thornton in the side and he winced.

“Uh, right, okay,” he said. “Hey, uh, we wanted to, uh, ask you about the play. That Grace is in.”

“Sophie’s in it, too,” I reminded him. “Didn’t I email you all of the dates and times and info?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got that,” he said, his eyes flitting between Babette and me. “Uh, we heard about the girl that got kidnapped.”

“Well, no one really knows what actually happened to her yet.”

“My friend, Myra, told me that it’s definitely a kidnapping,” Babette said, her eyes wide. She nodded her head, as if affirming this knowledge to herself.  “She knows someone who’s also in the play.”

“I just talked to the police this morning,” I told her. “They aren’t sure what happened to her. So I’m not sure where that information came from.”

She pursed her lips and looked at Thornton.

He cleared his throat. “Well, um, yeah. Whatever happened, it sounds like it’s kind of dangerous over there right now.”

“Dangerous?” I repeated, arching my eyebrows.

“Well, if people are being kidnapped, that doesn’t seem like the safest thing.”

My temple began to throb. “I just told you,” I said slowly, as if I were speaking to an eight-year-old and not the father of my children. “No one knows what happened to Amanda or where she is. No one walked into the theater and put a gun to her head and walked her out. No matter what you heard.”

“Right,” he mumbled. He glanced at Babette and she frowned and nodded her head again. “But we were wondering if maybe it might be best if she dropped out of the play.”

I took a deep breath. Since our divorce, Thornton had awkwardly at times tried to act like a parent. But he genuinely didn’t know how to be one. When we were married, he worked long hours and was rarely at home and when he was, he wanted to do his own thing. So the kids had been my job. I’d resented it for years, but when we’d divorced, I realized I was in a fortunate position. The kids knew me as the parent. The kids had come to see Jake as a parent. But they didn’t have the same impression of Thornton. So when he, for whatever reason, decided to attempt to wade into the parenting waters, it nearly always rubbed me the wrong way.

“Neither Grace nor Sophie are dropping out of the play,” I told them. “Jake or I have been at nearly every rehearsal and we know a good portion of the parents and families in the play. Whatever happened to Amanda is a personal thing. It wasn’t random.”

“You don’t know that,” Babette said, folding her arms across her chest. She pursed her lips. “And we don’t think it’s a wise choice to put our daughter in danger.”

The throbbing in my temple picked up pace. I took another deep breath. “I appreciate your concern, but both girls are fine and will continue in the play.” I looked at Babette. “And if you so much as mention the idea that it might be dangerous for them to be in the play while they are with you this weekend, I’ll make sure that you are barred from the theater during the productions.” I smiled. “Just to keep you safe.”

“No, we just—” Thornton stumbled.

I held up my hand. “Just stop. Anytime we go near this kind of stuff, it goes poorly. They live with me. I make the decisions about their lives. That was the deal. You haven’t spent a second in the theater at a rehearsal or an information session or anything else, even though you were absolutely welcome to attend.” I paused. “So don’t come in here with an opinion formed on something you heard from some random person.”

Babette sniffed and lifted her chin. “It wasn’t a random person. It was someone who is friends with someone I know.”

“So, third-hand,” I said. “Yeah, that’s not going to influence me in any way.”

“And to be fair, I would’ve been there, but we’ve been pretty busy with the band,” Thornton said.

“We would’ve been there,” Babette snapped at him.

They were both in a band that featured Babette as the lead singer. Thornton’s lifelong dream had been to make it as a musician and he’d been trying ever since I’d met him, rotating through different bands. Now, he and Babette had bonded over their shared passion of music.

“We finally got a gig,” Thornton said. “We’re playing at the feed store.”

“The feed store?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “They’re gonna do a grand re-opening. It burned down last year and they finally got it rebuilt and they’re doing this big re-opening thing and they asked us to play. So rehearsals have been intense.”

“Great,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

Babette grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, Thornton. The children are waiting.” She gave me a fake smile. “Daisy.”

“Babette,” I said, returning the fake smile.

Thornton gave me the same half-wave he’d given me when he walked in and pulled the door behind him as they left.

I walked to the window and exhaled. Babette was already giving him an earful as they walked to the car, her head bobbing and her gloved hands gesticulating wildly. Thornton just shrugged as he untangled himself from her and made his way to the driver’s side.

I genuinely hoped they would keep their ridiculous opinions to themselves.

Because if they didn’t, I would show them both what dangerous looked like. In the form of one really ticked off mom.

EIGHTEEN

It was date night.

With all of the kids gone for the night, I’d considered numerous options for the evening.

Dinner down in St. Paul.

A movie.

A museum.

But what I really wanted was just time with Jake.

We so rarely got time to just ourselves, where we didn’t have to worry about doors opening, or being home at a certain time, or coordinating schedules to pick up kids from various activities. Time for just the two of us felt like something we had to be careful with and not waste. I’d lost count of how many times we’d turned down opportunities to go out and do something without the kids when they were home with us. The guilt of divorce weighed on each of us, and while we were both happy with what our family had become, we also knew that the kids hadn’t asked for divorce and multiple families and splitting time. We were hyper-aware of this.

And we’d chosen to have them live with us. We wanted to be parents. So we never wanted them to think that we needed to get away from them or that we were sorry we’d made that choice. We always tried to be available to them and to do things as a family when they were around.

When we finally did get some time just to ourselves, I always came up with a million things to do. But I really just wanted to spend an evening with my husband.

So I nixed all of the ideas that involved leaving the house and planned for a night in.

I did a quick cleanup of the house and then hopped in the shower. I dried my hair and reapplied makeup. I went upstairs and found some lacy lingerie that I kept shoved in the back of my dresser drawer, right behind all of the wool socks. It was a red satin camisole with a matching bikini bottom. I couldn’t recall if I’d ever worn and it vaguely remembered buying it for a date night that never happened. I pulled everything on and then assessed myself in the mirror.

I immediately focused on all of the things I didn’t like about myself. My stomach wasn’t tight enough. My thighs and rear end were bigger than they’d been twenty years earlier. More wrinkles and bumps than I’d ever hoped I’d have, a product of having kids and simple aging. I absolutely did not look like the model wearing the lingerie in the catalog I’d purchased it from.