Chapter 13: Terms Again

The custody petition lay on my kitchen table all Sunday morning, and Tate's last words sat in the room with it.

Hello, Jerome. Bring your sister.

Tate had known exactly who Jerome was, and I had no idea for how long.

I found Jerome awake on the couch with his boots already on.

"You haven't slept," I said.

"I wrote something down."

He held out a sheet of Dot's recipe paper.

It said: Truth first. Her call.

"That's the rule," Jerome said. "If you want a different one, I'll write that down instead."

I read it twice.

"Truth first," I said. "Before I ask. Before I find out."

"Before you find out."

"And I decide what we are. You don't get to decide it for me by staying quiet."

"Your call," he said.

Then he took his phone out of his pocket, typed in the code, and put it in my hand.

"Everything is on it."

"Fifteen months of voicemails to Linnea that nobody picked up. Every message I sent Tate. Every text with Margo."

"I'll never delete a thing."

I held it and felt how heavy it was.

"Why give me this?"

"Because last night I told you I wouldn't be one more man who took what he needed and left."

"I'm not going to just say it again. I'm going to hand you the proof and sit here."

He sat down on the floor with his back against the couch.

I took the phone and scrolled.

There was a message to his sister from the night before the luncheon.

It said: There's a woman in that house I'd stand in front of a train for. I can't tell her about you yet.

I put the phone face down on the table.

My eyes were wet, and I let them be.

"All right," I said.

"All right what?"

"All right, I heard you."

At the foot of the stairs, Dot was in her gardening apron with a skillet in her hand.

She had heard every word through the floor.

"Young man," she said. "Come down and eat."

He went down with his head bowed.

I heard the skillet hit the table.

"If you ever lie to that girl again," Dot said, "I will put you on the record myself."

On Monday morning the judge looked at us over his glasses.

He was the old man's judge, and he sat very high.

Tate's lawyer stood up and said I was unemployed, that my income had stopped, and that I lived with a man I had known for a week.

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