Page 12 of Grumpy Girl and Amaryllis

“Sure.”

Iris’s soft excited voice says, “I’ll help, Mr. Young.”

“You both can call me Croix outside of school.”

The kids have puzzled looks on their faces, and they eye each other. It didn’t last long, though.

Ash’s shoulders shrug. “Cool, Croix!”

I pat their shoulders as I walk by them, and they start setting the table. At the front door, I look out, and Mari is folding in on herself. Her arms are wrapping around her front, and her face is despondent.

Anger builds inside of me, and I hate seeing her this way. There is no reason for her to be like this.

I step out of the house. I don’t want her to think she is alone anymore because she’s not. I’ll always be at her back.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

Mr. Thomas looks at me and mumbles what sounds like, “Oh, it will be.” Then he leans over to Mari, they are almost the same height, and he says something.

Her body stiffens and her ex marches to his truck, gets in, and peels out of the driveway.

Mari walks to the porch, keeping her head down until she reaches me, then looks up.

Her eyes have deadened in the moments she spent with her ex. Her voice falls flat. “I need you to leave. I can’t do this.”

My heart slams against my ribcage, and panic races through my bloodstream.No. No. No.

“Mari, wait, we can work through whatever he said. Let’s talk it out.”

Tightening her arms around her middle, she shakes her head. “He’s going to try for full custody.”

I want to punch a wall. “On what grounds?”

“Whatever he fucking makes up,” she lashes out. It’s good to see a little fight in her, but I wish it weren’t against me, and it was aimed at her low life of an ex-husband.

Not wasting a second, I wrap her in my arms. The safest place I could ever keep her. I would always work to keep her safe. Her body jerks in such a different way that last night and this morning, full of tension and tightness.

“Shhh, hey, it’s going to be okay.” I kiss her forehead.

A slight sniffle leaves her. “Please, Croix, just go. My kids are all I have. I can’t lose them. I won’t lose them.”

I get in one last squeeze, then back away. “Okay, but we’re not over. We just started. This isn’t the end of us. Please promise me, Mari.”

Her eyes drop to the ground. She must have thought I didn’t catch the tear that dripped down, but I caught it.

“I’m afraid we have to be.”

Unfortunately, I heard that.

Mari

The weekend’s over,and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it. Going to work is a great way to distract me from all the thoughts zooming around in my mind like a NASCAR race, around and around and…

Anxiety gripped me so deeply over the weekend that I couldn’t be apart from my children. The possibility of losing them shatters me. If that day ever comes, I won’t be able to recover. There would be no point.

I try grabbing a pot buried under several others for a plant I need to create a display for. It won’t budge.

Yanking and pulling, I grunt, and with too much force, all the pots fall from the shelf, and I curse. The saving grace is that they were all plastic and none of our clay or ceramic, so nothing is broken, only a mess that I created.

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