I do not know whether she meant me or us. Maybe at seven there was no difference. Maybe she understood something I was still too shattered to name: that safety for a mother and child is braided together so tightly that one can hardly be separated from the other.
Outside the courtroom the hallway felt brighter, louder, thinner somehow, as if reality had been peeled back a layer. Margaret handled the formalities with the clerk while I sat on a bench with Lily curled against me. People passed. Shoes tapped. Phones buzzed. Life resumed its rude motion. A young couple argued quietly near the elevators. An older man in overalls carried a stack of forms and looked lost. Somewhere down the corridor someone laughed at something entirely unrelated to the implosion of my marriage.
Mark came out a few minutes later with Hensley, both of them tight-faced and speaking in harsh undertones. He stopped when he saw us. For one terrible second I thought he might come over. I didn’t know what I would do if he tried to speak to Lily in that moment.
But he only stood there.