by Kim Holden
I look down at my breasts. “You didn’t seem to mind me naked a few minutes ago when your mouth was between my thighs.”
He runs his hands through his hair in frustration before he pulls a handful of it and shouts, “A few minutes ago you weren’t a fucking psycho!”
I frown. “That’s no way to talk to your fiancée.”
His eyes lock with mine, and the fear is plain and transparent.
I begin gathering up the papers and putting them in a neat stack. “I’m filing for divorce as soon as I get home. Seamus will be served Monday. I’ll be moving in here the day the divorce is finalized. I’m going to hold off for the sake of appearance, we don’t need people talking.”
He huffs out a stunned laugh. “Well, aren’t you thoughtful? We certainly can’t have people talking. That’s the least of our problems, Miranda. You’re certifiable, and that’s the one I’m focused on at the moment.”
I wave him off. “This is all for the best. You just don’t see it yet. We’re good together.”
He scrubs his hands over his face repeatedly. “How in the hell did I get myself into this mess?”
“Hmm, let’s see…insider trading, money laundering—”
He cuts me off, “I didn’t do any of that. You obviously did, though, and forged my signature.”
I laugh. “I didn’t forge anything. You should know better than anyone that you shouldn’t sign anything you haven’t read over closely. That kind of oversight could lead to incarceration for the rest of your life. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
He’s shaking his head again. “My business dealings are clean. I’ve never done anything illegal.”
I cluck my tongue and raise my eyebrows. “I beg to differ. Your dick would probably back me up, too. Last time I checked, paying for sex in the state of Washington was still a no-no. I know this is a progressive state, but...” I trail off and then add in a mocking tone, “Especially the underage ones, pretty sure that’s still frowned upon.”
“The agency guaranteed me they were all over twenty-one.”
I smirk. “When did you get so naïve, Loren? People lie.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and blows out a breath, but I see by the set of his shoulders it does nothing to calm him. “They sure as hell do. What do you want? My money? I’ll pay you. Name your price.”
I shake my head. “I told you. We’re getting married. That’s what I want.”
He looks completely bewildered, but I can see the gears turning, he’s weighing his options. He knows his neck is in a noose. “Fine. But you’re fired. I’ll pay you a severance package. I don’t want you anywhere near my business. Are we clear?”
My heart shudders initially, but then I realize I can go anywhere and get a job after I move to Seattle. “Fine.”
“There will be a prenup.”
I nod, I don’t know how my ultimatums turned into negotiations, but if I’m honest I’m a bit surprised this is all going so well, so I’m participating in them. “Fine.”
“And I saw the paternity results in your pile of exploitation. I need your word that no one ever finds out Kira is mine. I don’t want children. Her father is raising her as far as I’m concerned. Your husband can have her. She’s better off with him.” He huffs. “They’re all better off with him. I hope you know that. You shouldn’t be a mother.”
I’m not a mother, I think, they’re my façade. “Okay.” I’m agreeing today. Little does he know I’m just giving him time to adjust to the idea of marriage before I move the kids in with us. I don’t want them here, but for appearance’s sake it’s necessary. I still need to be surrounded by sheep. And no one loves women who abandon their sheep. I also need Loren to bond with Kira. Eventually, he’ll soften to her and claim her and then he’ll thank me for giving that gift. That’s how I’ll redeem myself in his eyes, by giving him the one thing he didn’t know he wanted. I’ll get to Loren’s heart through Kira. Who knew sheep would make such ideal pawns?
A lovely shade of I will annihilate your soul
present
I know stress isn’t good for me. It’s a lion that prowls the recesses of my brain waiting to attack and when prodded, it’s a man-eater. It feasts on my well-being, rationality, and health like a gluttonous savage.
Sometimes stress can be backed into a corner and controlled with mental reassessment and a change of perspective. Some problems aren’t as big as I initially make them out to be. And sometimes they aren’t even problems at all.
But what I’m facing now with Miranda and the prospect of her taking my kids to Seattle, it doesn’t get more real than this.
I can feel the stress, physically feel it. In the numbness of my legs. In the blindness of my eye. In the loss of appetite. In the insomnia. In the fatigue of my muscles and the headache crashing like cymbals between my ears. It’s bleeding through me, too thick for my veins, filling me like a bloated balloon on the brink of bursting.
I’m sitting in the reception area of Miranda’s lawyer’s office. Everything about the room is orchestrated to scream dominance: from the masculine, oxblood leather sofas; to the dark wood paneled walls and bookshelves, to the artificial musky scent in the air. It’s a testosterone fest. I’m sure if they’re defending you it offers a sense of security, like being cocooned in Superman’s cape. But if you’re on the other side, staring down an unknown future that’s in their hands, it makes you feel two inches small…to their ten feet tall. Mission accomplished.
This meeting was called out of the blue a few days ago. It was presented to me as a civil offering with a mediator to settle the issue. I’m hoping Miranda came to her senses and is reconsidering, but my gut and the pounding in my head tell me that’s impossible.
“Mr. McIntyre?” The voice is professional. It’s the veil that cloaks the bared teeth and claws that hide underneath.
“Yes,” I answer without meeting his eyes. It’s an intentionally evasive gesture to set the tone. Bitterness has me standing at the edge of sanity looking down into the deep, dark pit of future regret. I fear my mouth may get the better of me this morning. Sleep deprivation has put my sense of decorum and tact through a grinder and left me with shredded remnants of sensibility and preservation. I need to keep myself in check. I grab my cane and stand to follow him down the hallway to a conference room.
Miranda is already sitting inside. She’s wearing a black tailored suit jacket and a crimson silk blouse. The color red represents power. It’s her favorite…color to wear and distinguishing trait.
I take a seat where I’m instructed, directly across the wide table from her. She’s five feet away, but I can feel intimidation tumbling at me in violent surges of aggression. I blaze my eyes in return to let her know I’m not taking her shit today.
Her lawyer, Dean Bergman, clears his throat to break the silent pissing match we’ve already begun, and says, “Why don’t we get started?”
I’m drunk with rage. I raise my eyebrows in challenge. “Why don’t we?”
He slides a neat stack of papers across the table toward me. They’re deliberately neat like they’ve been tapped on all sides on a flat surface several times to ensure perfection and add to the overall presentation of superiority.
I take them heavy-handedly, jostling them into disarray and erasing the posturing they’re vying for.
Revision of Custody
Kai McIntyre
Rory McIntyre
Kira McIntyre
Those are the only words I see on the page. My sight shifts in and out of focus and suddenly I can hear my headache. Hear the cymbal crashing with each beat of my heart as if the blood rushing through me is keeping time for the disaster unfolding. I defiantly squeeze my eyes shut and will the world, and everything in it, except for the names on the paper in front of me, to burst into flames and burn white hot until they’re reduced to ash.
“Mr. McIntyre?” Bergman wants my attention.
I rub my temples with my eyes still closed, silently cu
rsing his existence. “Yes.”
“Would you like me to summarize the document?”
No, I wouldn’t. “Yes.” I pry my eyes open, and Miranda is staring at me, her expression unreadable.
“Mr. McIntyre, Mrs. Buckingham is—”
I cut him off because his voice clashing with the thundering in my head creates a dissonance I can’t bear. “I changed my mind, I’d like a few minutes to read through this myself. Can I have some privacy?” Mutiny from within is upon me. I’m beginning to sweat, a light sheen that’s the predecessor to nausea. As soon as I think the word, I swallow hard and fast because my morning coffee is preparing for emergency evacuation. Backtracking the way it came in, rather than completing the journey to the traditional exit on the other side.
“Of course,” Bergman says politely.
Miranda takes her time standing to leave. I’m sure I look a mess, and she’s taking pleasure in having a front row seat to my unraveling.
The solid door shuts with an echoing click that signals privacy, and I turn in my chair just in time to grab the trashcan behind me and spill the liquefied contents of my stomach into it. My body purging it with authority like it’s trying to extract the evil I’m immersed in. My body relents and when it does I feel like the hate has been temporarily exorcised. The room smells. The unmistakable odor of undigested food mixed with stomach acid and an insufferable ex-wife. I tie off the bag and turn my attention to the papers.
My vision is blurry. I can’t see through my fury. It takes longer than it should to read them.
When Bergman and Miranda walk back through the door, I’m seething. My thoughts alone could rip them to shreds. They take a seat across from me. Bergman is on his game; he’s wearing a compassionate, but disheartened expression, just short of a predatory smile. Miranda, on the other hand, isn’t holding back. She looks triumphant and celebratory.
I know she’s waiting for me to shout and spew vengeance. I want to. I want nothing more than to crucify her to the wall behind her, driving my words through her flesh until she bleeds out and pleads for mercy. But I don’t. Because she would love that. Instead, I say the only thing that I know will speak to her power hungry attitude, “How did I ever fall in love with you?”
Miranda loved the way I loved her. My love was unconditional and absolute. She never loved me that way, she’s not capable of it, but she relished in the knowledge that she was the keeper of my heart. She treated it like a caged circus animal. Praising and feeding it just enough to make it perform despite the pain she put it through. My love fed her insatiable ego.
Miranda is the master of control, but she felt my words like a slap in the face. I saw it in the minute recoil of her body as she absorbed them and by the pinched look in her eyes as she tried to reject them. It’s confirmation that I no longer love her, something I’m sure she never thought would happen. She’s delusional enough to think my love is undying.
Bergman clears his throat. Whether he’s trying to gauge the atmosphere or prompt someone to proceed, I’m not sure.
I don’t speak. There’s nothing else for me to say. It’s all there in black and white. An intricate web of lies and a few truths spun until they mix into a damning portrayal of an unfit father…in black and white. She hired a private investigator who’s been following me since she left for Seattle months ago. There are dozens of photos: me holding Mrs. L’s joint, Faith and I half clothed making out on my couch, Kira hugging Faith. The photos are followed by affidavits confirming the decline in my health, exaggerated in large part, and time I’ve missed at work due to it; the names are all made anonymous to me, of course. Detailed lists of what my kids eat, what they wear, how they act, including a letter from an independent psychologist Miranda must’ve hired, stating his “concern for the children’s mental and physical well-being” and “signs of neglect.” This is all bullshit. How much is she paying these people to lie? But the next photo in the stack is the one that stops me dead in my tracks, it’s a photo of Faith topless on a stage. What the fuck? It’s followed by affidavits from multiple men stating, in detail, sex acts Faith has performed in exchange for money. Again, their anonymity protected, of course. My first instinct is to deny because Miranda is so damn good at fabricating untruths.
The shocking finality of my dissipated love has passed as Miranda remembers why she’s here and the crimson color of power stains her pale, stricken cheeks to a lovely shade of I will annihilate your soul. An evil smile creeps back in. “It seems you’ve been busy, Seamus. Dating a prostitute—”
“She’s not a prostitute. And we’re not dating,” I say angrily through gritted teeth. I don’t know if any of my words are true or not.
She laughs haughtily. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you paying for her services?”
I inhale deeply, and I can’t speak because I want to yell, and I feel like anything I say will dig me deeper into this imaginary hole of doom Miranda has created.
“You have my children spending time with a prostitute and a drug user.” She eyes me disdainfully. “Not to mention, you’re smoking marijuana.”
I roll my eyes because I can’t help it. “I didn’t even take the hit when she offered it to me.”
Bergman speaks up, and his voice carries an air of authority that I’m sure is convincing in the courtroom when he’s defending something that a high-priced fee for his representation has justified into defendable and right. “Seamus, Miranda is only looking out for the children and their best interest. She has hired a caretaker, who’s already moved into their home, and has registered them at a private Catholic school with an excellent reputation as one of Seattle’s finest educational institutions.”
“The kids aren’t even Catholic. Neither are you,” I pronounce in stunned confusion.
“They begin their studies Monday,” Bergman continues as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Monday?” I question. The shock is so heavy I don’t sound like myself. Today is already Friday.
“My flight leaves this evening. I’m picking the children up from school and taking them with me,” Miranda clarifies, sinking the knife in deeper.
“What?” It’s a word released on a punch to the gut, a pained gasp of breath.
Miranda looks at Bergman, who nods, and then returns her gaze to me. “Don’t fight me on this, Seamus.” That was a threat, bold and immoral.
“Why not?” I challenge.
She picks up her cell from the table and looks at it thoughtfully. “It’s hard to parent, even on your limited holiday schedule, from prison.”
“What?” The pounding in my head is all-encompassing, it’s trying to blot out reality, to dampen her words out of existence.
She raises her eyebrows. “There’s enough marijuana in your bottom dresser drawer to put you away for twenty years, my dear. All I need to do is make a call, and the police will have your apartment searched before you can limp out to your piece of shit car.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “You set me up?”
She smiles. It’s broad and bright and toothy, and all I see are rows of shark teeth gleaming razor sharp and deadly back at me.
Anger is rising in me, pure and irrationally dangerous. I picture myself leaning across the table and strangling her with my hands. Delighting in the sensation of life draining out of her beneath my grip. My body is vibrating with an undeniable need to exact retribution. And when the anger is so strong that it’s erased ethics everything goes quiet. Everything goes black.
I wake lying crumpled on the floor like a balled up, discarded piece of trash. Bergman and Miranda are standing over me like royals ruling over a peasant.
“Mr. McIntyre?” Bergman asks.
I side-eye him in response and have the urge to punch them both in the ankles.
“Are you all right, Mr. McIntyre? You passed out. Do you need me to call paramedics?” The amplification of his words hints toward genuine concern.
I heave my body into a sitting position and test out my failing faculties. Everyt
hing’s in order though I feel like throwing up again. “Get her out of my sight,” I grind out through gritted teeth.
Miranda leaves the room.
I sign the papers under duress blinking back tears and gather them up into a neat pile. I hold them in my hand and look at Bergman standing across the table from me. “You just handed three precious lives over to the devil herself. I hope your conscience eats you from the inside out, you bastard. This isn’t the last you’ve heard from me. I’ll get them back or die trying.” I throw the papers up into the air and watch them flutter down in a flurry. I look him hard in the eye. “Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing. Fuck you.”
I march out stabbing at the ground with my cane.
I drive straight to the kids’ school and park in the lot in a visitor’s space near the front doors. School doesn’t get out for another forty-five minutes, but I’ll be standing here waiting for them.
When they exit, Miranda is standing twenty feet behind me with her arms crossed. It feels like she’s hovering over me. I pull my kids aside and explain to them that they’re going to have to go live with their mother for a while. I break it to them as gently as I can and try to put a positive spin on it despite the words burning like acid on their way out. It kills me to watch their reactions. Kai goes stone-faced. Unblinking. He’s shut down and crawled into his cave where he mulls over things that kids his age shouldn’t have to contemplate. Internalizing them until they’re a cancer on his soul. Rory pins Miranda with a stare that’s contempt. He’s already blaming her with his eyes for an unwelcome future and then he yells, “No!” That’s all he says. And my little girl, she cries. She cries like I’ve never seen her cry.
And my heart shatters for the second time today. It’s blown apart into so many pieces, the shrapnel spread so far and wide, I know what remains will never fit back together again. Puzzles don’t work when you only have half of the pieces. Same goes for hearts.
