At the glass doors, he turned his head one last time.
“You can’t keep me from my girls,” he said.
“Nobody’s keeping you,” said my mother.
“A schedule is.”
The doors slid shut behind him.
The breath I’d been holding for an hour finally left me, and my knees went to water.
My mother was beside me before I fell.
She put an arm around my back, and I felt, absurdly, nine years old again, with a scraped knee and a dock beneath me and a woman in white who smelled of the sea.
“Shannon,” she said, quietly, just for me.
“I need to tell you something.”
“It’s the reason I wanted to be here this morning.”
“It isn’t about him.”
PART 5 — FINAL
My mother led me to a bench near the pillar, and Ridley appeared out of nowhere with my diaper bag and set it at my feet without a word.
