Chapter 5: The Perimeter
By the second week the wider family had begun to sort itself into people who wanted details and people who preferred the comfort of not knowing.
One cousin sent a carefully worded text suggesting that family should not use money as a weapon. I answered with a single sentence: I had stopped using my money as her subsidy. The cousin did not continue the thread. An uncle left a message urging me to consider the optics of punishing children for a parent’s joke. I did not return that call either. Optics had been Drew’s concern when she slow-clapped in the party room. Optics were not a debt I owed the rest of them.
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I kept Theo’s routine steady—school, the small park near the bakery, the library on Wednesdays. Stability was the apology I could still offer him for the afternoon that had been taken from him. We did not discuss Cody or iPhones. When the subject of the party arose naturally, I let him control the version he told. His version was short and accurate. I did not expand it.
Drew attempted one in-person approach outside Theo’s school. I saw her across the street, turned Theo toward the bakery entrance instead, and kept walking. There was no confrontation to film, no raised voices for later paraphrase. The absence of drama was deliberate. Drama had been the currency of the old arrangement—my silence purchased by her crises. The currency was no longer accepted.
