Dumping My Ex For His Uncle novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Joan's Garden

Frankie files, takes Tilly back from Joan's garden party in front of the guests, and learns the adoption is frozen and Ellis has ended the lease on their house.

"Did what?" I said. "What did she do?"

He let the shirt fall.

"Not tonight." He took my empty mug. "Tonight you go home to your girl."

"You don't get to show me that and send me home."

"I'll tell you all of it. I promise." He wrote a number on the back of a business card and slid it over. "One thing first. Don't let him take her anywhere. Not for a night. Not for an hour."

"He's her foster father. He can pick her up from school."

"I know," he said. "That's the problem."

I should have listened harder.

On Saturday morning Tilly had swim lessons at the Y.

I was ten minutes late because I stopped for her favorite donut.

Ellis had been there at nine sharp.

The girl at the front desk showed me the sign-out sheet with his neat signature on it.

Then my phone buzzed.

"She's with me at Mom's for the weekend. Let's let things cool down. She's having a great time."

He'd sent a picture.

Tilly on Joan's patio, wet hair, still in her swimsuit under a towel.

She wasn't smiling.

She was holding her stuffed crab in both hands, and she was looking at whoever held the phone like she was waiting to be told something.

I called him a dozen times.

He answered on the twelfth.

"Bring her home, Ellis."

"Sunday night," he said. "I'm her parent too. Check the paperwork."

Sunday night came and went.

At ten he texted that Tilly was asleep and it would be cruel to wake her.

At six on Monday morning I took the Resolute out, because a car carrier from Japan doesn't care about your marriage.

At ten I was at the courthouse in my work boots.

I filed for divorce.

I filed to go back to Mahan, my father's name.

Then I called Tilly's school.

She wasn't there.

Her father had called her in sick.

I knew exactly where she was.

Every second Monday in October, Joan throws a garden luncheon for the board of her children's charity.

Roland Park in October is a postcard: big porches, old trees, leaves on lawns nobody rakes themselves.

Joan's garden was full of white tables and women in good wool coats.

Nobody stopped me at the gate.

I found Tilly at the far end of the lawn.

She was sitting alone on a stone bench in a velvet dress I'd never seen.

Someone had put her hair in a tight bun.

She hated buns.

They pulled.

She saw me, and her whole face changed.

"Frankie!"

She ran across the grass, past three tables, and hit me at the knees.

I picked her up.

"Grandma Joan says I'm not allowed to call you," she whispered in my ear. "She says you're sick."

"Do I look sick?"

She pulled back and studied me.

"You smell like the boat."

"That's how you know I'm fine."

Every woman in the garden was looking at us.

Joan came down off the porch.

Cream suit. Pearls. Not one hair moving.

"Frances," she said softly. "This isn't the place."

"You're right." I shifted Tilly to my hip. "I'm taking her somewhere better."

"Ellis has her for the weekend."

"It's Monday, Joan. The weekend's over. She's missing a spelling test."

Ellis came out of the house with a plate in his hand.

He saw me and put it down on the porch rail.

"Frankie. Let's not do this in front of her."

"You did this in front of her," I said. "You told her I was sick."

"Mom said that, not me."

"Ellis," Joan said.

Just his name.

He closed his mouth.

Tilly put her face in my neck.

"Can we go?" she whispered. "The bun hurts."

I pulled out the pins one at a time, right there on the lawn, and dropped them in the grass.

Her hair came down in strawberry-blonde kinks.

She sighed.

"I'm her foster mother," I said, loud enough for every table. "I'm on the petition. I'm on the placement. If anyone wants to call the police, I'll wait."

Nobody called the police.

Joan walked me to the gate.

She smiled the whole way, for the guests.

"You've made your little scene," she said, very quietly. "Let me tell you how this ends."

"Go ahead."

"You push boats around for an hourly wage. Ellis is a partner. The court has a home study and a judge, and the judge plays golf." She brushed a leaf off my shoulder. "You'll never adopt that child on a tugboat wage."

"Watch me."

I put Tilly in the truck and buckled her in myself.

She was asleep before we hit the expressway, her crab under her chin.

My phone rang on the ramp.

A county number.

The caseworker.

"Ms. Clagett?"

"Mahan," I said. "As of this morning."

There was a pause while she wrote that down.

"Ms. Mahan, I've had a call from Mr. Clagett's attorney. The joint petition is frozen while the divorce is pending." She said it like she was reading off a card. "We'll need a new home study for each of you. Thirty days."

"Fine. Come see my house."

The pause was longer this time.

"That's the other thing," she said. "Mr. Clagett informed us he's ended the lease on the Locust Point house. Effective the end of the month."

I looked in the mirror at my sleeping kid.

"Where exactly," the caseworker said, "will you and Tilly be living?"

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