After ten days, Miriam told me we needed to return to Chicago for a hearing.
My stomach dropped.
“I don’t want Fiona walking through an airport with reporters.”
“There may not be reporters.”
“There were people filming Luca on the first flight.”
“That is a Luca problem, not a Blaire problem,” Miriam said. “And I mean that kindly.”
I laughed despite myself.
She continued.
“You need to be careful not to let his world swallow your case. Your case is about you, David, and Fiona.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Luca offered his plane.
My first instinct was to refuse simply because accepting felt too large.
Then I asked myself a better question.
Would private travel make the day easier for Fiona?
Yes.
So I accepted.
Not because Luca was a billionaire.
Because I was beginning to understand that independence did not mean refusing every kind thing offered to me.
It meant knowing why I was saying yes.
Chicago felt different when I returned.
The buildings were the same.
The roads were the same.
But I was no longer arriving as David’s wife trying to get back into her house.
I was arriving with my own attorney.
The hearing was closed.
Luca waited elsewhere.
I insisted on that.
David entered with his lawyer and looked at me as though he had expected to find a completely different woman.
He looked tired.
Angry too.
But underneath the anger was confusion.
He had expected me to come back frightened.
Maybe I had trained him to expect that.
His attorney argued that I had abruptly removed Fiona from Illinois.
Miriam presented my text notifying David that Fiona was safe and staying temporarily with family.
Then she presented the doorbell footage.
The locksmith.
My bags outside.
My failed key.
David’s attorney asked for a break.
I watched David lean toward him, whispering hard.
For years, David had been able to control our arguments because they happened in private.
He remembered what he wanted.
He denied what he did not.
