LJ Idol Season 9, Week 11: Recency Bias
Stephanie glanced at her phone, frowning as it buzzed on her desk. The name Jeff stood out on the screen, causing her heart to quicken in her chest. What the hell could he possibly want now? After their “discussion” that morning, she would easily go the whole day without speaking to him again.
“Yes?” she asked as she placed the phone next to her ear. She tensed as his voice came through the receiver, waiting for the inevitable backlash. What names would he call her this time? How would he twist her words?
“Hey,” he began, clearing his throat. There was an unusual note to his voice; one she hadn’t heard in quite some time. “I just wanted to talk to you about this morning. We got off on the wrong foot; I’m sorry.”
Stephanie snorted. “Wrong foot,” was an understatement. He then continued speaking, as if her lack of response was adequate enough. “You do realize I don’t mind helping you out, right? It’s just that -- that when things are as adversarial as they have been, I don’t want to help the other person out, y’know? But I want to change this.”
“Okay...?” Stephanie murmured, chewing on her bottom lip for a second. She glanced at the netbook sitting precariously in her lap. Without thinking, she began typing the words he just said to her, needing to see them on paper. “Jeff, it’s not like I don’t want to help you out, either. It’s just...” she trailed off with a sigh, closing her eyes for a moment.
“We’ve just been at each other’s throats, I know,” Jeff intercepted, his voice gaining strength. “It’s stressful, living in the same house. But if we can start working together...”
“Yeah,” she said. So many things tumbled through her mind, things she wanted to say and things she knew she shouldn’t say; things she knew were the truth and things she knew weren’t. She had been here before, had heard him apologize like this before, heard him negotiate, plead, appeal to her emotions. How was this time going to be any different?
“Thing is,” Jeff began again, clearly on a roll now as his words came through the phone faster and clearer. “Thing is, we need to stop with the personal attacks. Yes, we’ve done some heinous shit to one another in the past, but -- if we’re ever going to move forward, we need to learn to let go.”
Stephanie turned the words over internally. She thought back to that morning, how she had stood up for her boundary, how he had tried to trample all over it and rewrite it into one he deemed more acceptable. Felt her chest tighten at the memory, remembered how hard it had been to maintain her composure as he began to lose his, bit by bit.
“Think you could do that?” he asked, a hopeful lilt to his voice.
Stephanie frowned into the phone, her hand tightening its grip around it. “Yeah,” she managed, twitching her lips and shaking her head. “Yeah, as long as you try to do it, too.”
It didn’t matter whether he agreed to or not, Stephanie knew that in a matter of weeks, they’ll be right back where they started, him exerting all sorts of control over her while she struggled to keep herself out from under his grip. She could even feel it now, her sense of reality slipping as his own wants and needs began to supercede her own. Of course he wanted to play nice, now. He was losing control.
“Of course,” he said, his voice lighter than it has been so far. “Of course I would. I mean, I think those two things are our biggest obstacles right now. Whenever we start having these -- I hesitate to say ‘discussions,’ because they’ve really all been arguments -- but whenever we start having these arguments, those are the two places these arguments go: the past and tearing each other down. And then nothing gets accomplished.”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t wrong. Once again, she turned over her words from that morning, trying to figure out what it was she had said that had prompted this. Was it her saying that they would need to work together? That she was willing to compromise?
“You okay? You sound really defensive right now,” he said, and Stephanie clenched her jaw, preventing herself from responding in the way she’d prefer. “You might not believe me, but I’m speaking to you in earnest right now. Really, I am. So -- can we please stop with the personal attacks and start working together more?”
“Sure,” she said with a sigh. She relaxed her grip on her phone. “So does this mean I can go out Saturday night and you watch Charlotte?”
“Yeah, as long as you watch her for me Friday night or whatever.”
“Okay. I gotta go get her from the bus. Bye.”
Stephanie didn’t give him a chance to say bye in return, pressing the button and tossing the phone aside. With a groan, she put her head in her hands, loose strands of hair falling over her fingers. Of course. Of course, just as she had gathered the strength to move forward with getting a lawyer and move out of here, he chose now to start trying to reel her back in.
As she picked herself out of her bed, she resolved to let him do as he pleases. To play along, for the time being.
Even if it killed her to do so.
***
“I’ve already contacted one lawyer,” Stephanie said, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder. She picked up the spatula and turned the ground turkey over, in order to make it cook evenly. Anything to keep herself distracted.
“Good,” her best friend, Carla, said. “I was supposed to be up your butt tomorrow if you didn’t do it today.”
“Yeah...” Stephanie cleared her throat and ignored the way her stomach jumped into it yet again. “I’m gonna send an email to the other one -- y’know, the one my mom suggested? So maybe I can get a consult in the next week or so.”
“Even better,” Carla said. “So, is he still trying to play nice?” she asked, her voice all business on the other end of the phone. “It won’t last, you know. It’s all just part of the game. He’s trying to suck you back in.”
“I know,” Stephanie murmured, chewing on her bottom lip. She glanced out the window, noticing the large, white van backing up into the driveway. “Hey, look, I should go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay. Don’t let him get to you, Steph.”
Stephanie snorted at that, shaking her head. Too late, a voice whispered at the back of her skull. “I won’t,” she said instead. “Bye, Carla.”
“Bye, Steph.”
As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, the side door opened and slammed shut, as it always did whenever Jeff came home. Stephanie tried to keep her expression neutral, her eyes on the food in front of her and her ears on Charlotte, who currently sat at the dining room table, crayons scattered all over it and discarded paper littering the floor. She waited for the inevitable comments about the mess, but they never came.
“What’re you making?” Jeff asked instead, his tone light and friendly.
“Hamburger helper,” Stephanie answered, keeping her words tight and clipped. She didn’t turn to Jeff, instead pouring the sauce packet and noodles into the pan. Anything to keep her eyes off him.
“You alright? You seem perturbed.”
She clenched her jaw, her shoulders tightening as she continued to avoid his eyes. It’s fake concern, she reminded herself. He doesn’t actually care. Did it even matter why she was upset? And it wasn’t as though she wasn’t upset -- she’d spent the day in and out of tears, weighing whether a lawyer was even an option due to cost and limited aid available to her.
“You know I can’t fix anything if I don’t even know what it is I did wrong, right?”
Her fingers curled around the spatula, her nails biting into her palms as her teeth grit together. “It’s not anything you did,” she lied, finally glancing up at him. She hated the concern that swam in Jeff’s eyes; hated the sincerity that seems to ooze from him, even if she knew it was fake. “I just don’t want to talk to you about it.”
Jeff’s eyes widened, and his lips pressed together in a thin, straight line. He then shrugged and turned away from her, his attention now on Charlotte. “Did you have fun at school today?” he asked, relief flooding Stephanie now that his attention was focused on their child and not her.
“You’re not going to eat?” Jeff asked once Stephanie dished out dinner. He raised an eyebrow as Stephanie picked up her netbook and began to move towards the stairs.
“I’m not hungry,” she murmured. She avoided Jeff’s eyes as she wandered over to Charlotte’s chair, giving the little girl a brief hug. “G’night, Charlotte. Mommy’s going to bed, now.”
“‘Night, Mommy!” Charlotte chirped, a wide grin spreading across her face. Her eyes, the same color as her father’s, lit up with mirth. “Thank you for dinner!”
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” Stephanie said, ruffling Charlotte’s hair. “You be good for Daddy, okay?”
“Okay!”
As Stephanie climbed her way up the stairs, the knot in her stomach began to unravel. That was, of course, until Jeff spoke again, his words following her up the stairs. “Have you been practicing your letters and your reading with Mommy?”
Stephanie didn’t have Charlotte practice -- instead opting to let the little girl play as she saw fit. Should she have focused on Charlotte’s studies, instead? The girl was only in kindergarten -- and was adjusting just fine to the classroom, but...
What if she really was the deficient parent?
***
Saturday came all too quickly, Jeff stumbling back home that morning after his own night out, as they had agreed upon. He looked every bit hungover, his eyes glassy and his skin tinged slightly green.
“What time’s your thing?” he asked, his voice gravelly.
“It’s at three,” Stephanie answered, guiding Charlotte over to her art desk and giving her a handful of crayons.
“That early?” he groaned, flopping onto the couch and putting a hand to his forehead. “You think you could do me a favor...?”
“What is it?” she asked, sitting down on the couch as far away from him as she physically could. Her whole body tensed as she waited for his response.
“Think you could watch Charlotte a bit longer for me so I could take a nap?” he asked. “I feel like shit.”
“Maybe you should have kept a better eye on how much you were drinking, then,” she snapped before she could stop herself, frowning. “What’s going to happen when you decide you still don’t feel well when it’s time for me to get ready to go? You going to ask me to stay?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he grumbled, his lips twisting into an ugly frown of his own. “And what the fuck? I thought we agreed to start trying to work together? And to stop with the personal attacks?”
She sucked in a breath, raking her hair out of her eyes for a moment before shaking her head and looking away from Jeff. “You had an agreement with me to watch Charlotte today so I could go out with Carla and a few others,” she began, carefully choosing her words. “If it had been me, I would have been careful with the amount I was drinking, because I would have known I’d be watching Charlotte the next day and couldn’t afford to be hungover.” She wouldn’t have drunk so much in excess, to begin with, but she kept those words to herself.
Jeff pushed himself upright and off the couch, shaking his head. “Whatever,” he muttered, heading towards the bathroom. “Wake me up when you need to get ready. I don’t have to sit here and fucking listen to this.”
Stephanie’s brow furrowed, her whole body tensing at his tone. “Wait a second, I didn’t agree to anything.”
“She’s your daughter just as much as she is mine. Just because you don’t want anything to do with her --”
“First of all, I love Charlotte,” Stephanie began, swallowing some of her anger as she stood up from the couch as well. She followed Jeff, crossing her arms over her chest. “Second of all, this isn’t us working together. I understand that you don’t feel well, but that’s not my fault. Not to mention we had an agreement that you’d watch Charlotte for me today if you got to go out last night.”
“I agreed to letting you go out Saturday night. Not to you having all of fucking Saturday off,” Jeff growled, spinning on his heel and glaring at her.
“It’s almost noon, Jeff,” Stephanie pointed out, keeping her voice low. “I agreed to watch her for you Friday night. You didn’t even come home from work, just went straight to wherever it was you went. If we’re going to go by equal hours, you probably arrived there at around six last night. That’s --” She paused, quickly doing the math in her head, “--almost eighteen hours of time out of the house.”
“So?” Jeff barked, crossing his arms over his chest, as well. “I spent part of that time fucking sleeping it off.”
“Still, I don’t plan on being out any later than eleven,” Stephanie said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t see how asking for another couple of hours to myself is wrong of me.”
“And I don’t see why it’s such a big fucking deal that I take a nap for another couple of hours?” Jeff countered, narrowing his eyes at Stephanie. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“She’s still at her art desk,” Stephanie answered, glancing towards her daughter. She straightened her back, uncurling her arms and sticking her hands in her pockets. “Look, I had a couple of things I wanted to do before hanging out with Carla. I’ve been up with Charlotte since five-thirty this morning. I’m tired. Can we not do this?”
“Oh, no, we’re doing this,” Jeff muttered, continuing to glower at Stephanie. “So why is your being tired any more relevant than my being tired? Why should I have to watch Charlotte when I don’t feel well?”
“I watch Charlotte all the time when I don’t feel well,” Stephanie pointed out. “It’s part of being a parent.”
Jeff scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t resent the hell out of me for ‘not helping you more’ with raising her?”
Her fingers curled into fists inside her pockets, and she forced herself to breathe through the tightness consuming her chest. “I raised Charlotte essentially by myself for four years,” she said, thankful that her voice remained even despite the way her throat began to close and her eyes began to sting. “Of course I felt a little resentful.”
“And you didn’t even want her, right?” Jeff drawled, a snide smirk on his face. He shook his head. “Always have to be the fucking martyr, don’t you? Just like my fucking mom. Tell me, was living with me really that fucking awful? Getting everything you fucking wanted while sitting around doing fuck-all all day while I went out and risked my life for my fucking country?”
“Jeff, please,” Stephanie said, glancing in Charlotte’s direction again. Their daughter stared at the both of them, eyes wide and bottom lip quivering. Stephanie approached her slowly before picking Charlotte up from the floor and holding her close. “Can we have this conversation later? You’re scaring Charlotte.”
“There’s no conversation to be had,” Jeff said with an exasperated shrug of his shoulders. “You’re just gonna accuse me of whatever you fucking want and expect me to just sit here and fucking take it. I’m not having it. I’m gonna lie down and you can fucking figure out a babysitter and pay for it yourself if you want to get away from your daughter that badly. Later.”
Before Stephanie could respond, Jeff had already made it to his bedroom, slipped inside, and slammed the door shut behind him. Stephanie winced, and Charlotte wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and sobbed quietly into Stephanie’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Stephanie whispered into the crook of Charlotte’s neck. “Mommy’s got you, okay?”
As she swallowed back her own tears and held her daughter tightly, she could only think one thing:
He couldn’t even play nice for a whole week.
“Yes?” she asked as she placed the phone next to her ear. She tensed as his voice came through the receiver, waiting for the inevitable backlash. What names would he call her this time? How would he twist her words?
“Hey,” he began, clearing his throat. There was an unusual note to his voice; one she hadn’t heard in quite some time. “I just wanted to talk to you about this morning. We got off on the wrong foot; I’m sorry.”
Stephanie snorted. “Wrong foot,” was an understatement. He then continued speaking, as if her lack of response was adequate enough. “You do realize I don’t mind helping you out, right? It’s just that -- that when things are as adversarial as they have been, I don’t want to help the other person out, y’know? But I want to change this.”
“Okay...?” Stephanie murmured, chewing on her bottom lip for a second. She glanced at the netbook sitting precariously in her lap. Without thinking, she began typing the words he just said to her, needing to see them on paper. “Jeff, it’s not like I don’t want to help you out, either. It’s just...” she trailed off with a sigh, closing her eyes for a moment.
“We’ve just been at each other’s throats, I know,” Jeff intercepted, his voice gaining strength. “It’s stressful, living in the same house. But if we can start working together...”
“Yeah,” she said. So many things tumbled through her mind, things she wanted to say and things she knew she shouldn’t say; things she knew were the truth and things she knew weren’t. She had been here before, had heard him apologize like this before, heard him negotiate, plead, appeal to her emotions. How was this time going to be any different?
“Thing is,” Jeff began again, clearly on a roll now as his words came through the phone faster and clearer. “Thing is, we need to stop with the personal attacks. Yes, we’ve done some heinous shit to one another in the past, but -- if we’re ever going to move forward, we need to learn to let go.”
Stephanie turned the words over internally. She thought back to that morning, how she had stood up for her boundary, how he had tried to trample all over it and rewrite it into one he deemed more acceptable. Felt her chest tighten at the memory, remembered how hard it had been to maintain her composure as he began to lose his, bit by bit.
“Think you could do that?” he asked, a hopeful lilt to his voice.
Stephanie frowned into the phone, her hand tightening its grip around it. “Yeah,” she managed, twitching her lips and shaking her head. “Yeah, as long as you try to do it, too.”
It didn’t matter whether he agreed to or not, Stephanie knew that in a matter of weeks, they’ll be right back where they started, him exerting all sorts of control over her while she struggled to keep herself out from under his grip. She could even feel it now, her sense of reality slipping as his own wants and needs began to supercede her own. Of course he wanted to play nice, now. He was losing control.
“Of course,” he said, his voice lighter than it has been so far. “Of course I would. I mean, I think those two things are our biggest obstacles right now. Whenever we start having these -- I hesitate to say ‘discussions,’ because they’ve really all been arguments -- but whenever we start having these arguments, those are the two places these arguments go: the past and tearing each other down. And then nothing gets accomplished.”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t wrong. Once again, she turned over her words from that morning, trying to figure out what it was she had said that had prompted this. Was it her saying that they would need to work together? That she was willing to compromise?
“You okay? You sound really defensive right now,” he said, and Stephanie clenched her jaw, preventing herself from responding in the way she’d prefer. “You might not believe me, but I’m speaking to you in earnest right now. Really, I am. So -- can we please stop with the personal attacks and start working together more?”
“Sure,” she said with a sigh. She relaxed her grip on her phone. “So does this mean I can go out Saturday night and you watch Charlotte?”
“Yeah, as long as you watch her for me Friday night or whatever.”
“Okay. I gotta go get her from the bus. Bye.”
Stephanie didn’t give him a chance to say bye in return, pressing the button and tossing the phone aside. With a groan, she put her head in her hands, loose strands of hair falling over her fingers. Of course. Of course, just as she had gathered the strength to move forward with getting a lawyer and move out of here, he chose now to start trying to reel her back in.
As she picked herself out of her bed, she resolved to let him do as he pleases. To play along, for the time being.
Even if it killed her to do so.
***
“I’ve already contacted one lawyer,” Stephanie said, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder. She picked up the spatula and turned the ground turkey over, in order to make it cook evenly. Anything to keep herself distracted.
“Good,” her best friend, Carla, said. “I was supposed to be up your butt tomorrow if you didn’t do it today.”
“Yeah...” Stephanie cleared her throat and ignored the way her stomach jumped into it yet again. “I’m gonna send an email to the other one -- y’know, the one my mom suggested? So maybe I can get a consult in the next week or so.”
“Even better,” Carla said. “So, is he still trying to play nice?” she asked, her voice all business on the other end of the phone. “It won’t last, you know. It’s all just part of the game. He’s trying to suck you back in.”
“I know,” Stephanie murmured, chewing on her bottom lip. She glanced out the window, noticing the large, white van backing up into the driveway. “Hey, look, I should go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay. Don’t let him get to you, Steph.”
Stephanie snorted at that, shaking her head. Too late, a voice whispered at the back of her skull. “I won’t,” she said instead. “Bye, Carla.”
“Bye, Steph.”
As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, the side door opened and slammed shut, as it always did whenever Jeff came home. Stephanie tried to keep her expression neutral, her eyes on the food in front of her and her ears on Charlotte, who currently sat at the dining room table, crayons scattered all over it and discarded paper littering the floor. She waited for the inevitable comments about the mess, but they never came.
“What’re you making?” Jeff asked instead, his tone light and friendly.
“Hamburger helper,” Stephanie answered, keeping her words tight and clipped. She didn’t turn to Jeff, instead pouring the sauce packet and noodles into the pan. Anything to keep her eyes off him.
“You alright? You seem perturbed.”
She clenched her jaw, her shoulders tightening as she continued to avoid his eyes. It’s fake concern, she reminded herself. He doesn’t actually care. Did it even matter why she was upset? And it wasn’t as though she wasn’t upset -- she’d spent the day in and out of tears, weighing whether a lawyer was even an option due to cost and limited aid available to her.
“You know I can’t fix anything if I don’t even know what it is I did wrong, right?”
Her fingers curled around the spatula, her nails biting into her palms as her teeth grit together. “It’s not anything you did,” she lied, finally glancing up at him. She hated the concern that swam in Jeff’s eyes; hated the sincerity that seems to ooze from him, even if she knew it was fake. “I just don’t want to talk to you about it.”
Jeff’s eyes widened, and his lips pressed together in a thin, straight line. He then shrugged and turned away from her, his attention now on Charlotte. “Did you have fun at school today?” he asked, relief flooding Stephanie now that his attention was focused on their child and not her.
“You’re not going to eat?” Jeff asked once Stephanie dished out dinner. He raised an eyebrow as Stephanie picked up her netbook and began to move towards the stairs.
“I’m not hungry,” she murmured. She avoided Jeff’s eyes as she wandered over to Charlotte’s chair, giving the little girl a brief hug. “G’night, Charlotte. Mommy’s going to bed, now.”
“‘Night, Mommy!” Charlotte chirped, a wide grin spreading across her face. Her eyes, the same color as her father’s, lit up with mirth. “Thank you for dinner!”
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” Stephanie said, ruffling Charlotte’s hair. “You be good for Daddy, okay?”
“Okay!”
As Stephanie climbed her way up the stairs, the knot in her stomach began to unravel. That was, of course, until Jeff spoke again, his words following her up the stairs. “Have you been practicing your letters and your reading with Mommy?”
Stephanie didn’t have Charlotte practice -- instead opting to let the little girl play as she saw fit. Should she have focused on Charlotte’s studies, instead? The girl was only in kindergarten -- and was adjusting just fine to the classroom, but...
What if she really was the deficient parent?
***
Saturday came all too quickly, Jeff stumbling back home that morning after his own night out, as they had agreed upon. He looked every bit hungover, his eyes glassy and his skin tinged slightly green.
“What time’s your thing?” he asked, his voice gravelly.
“It’s at three,” Stephanie answered, guiding Charlotte over to her art desk and giving her a handful of crayons.
“That early?” he groaned, flopping onto the couch and putting a hand to his forehead. “You think you could do me a favor...?”
“What is it?” she asked, sitting down on the couch as far away from him as she physically could. Her whole body tensed as she waited for his response.
“Think you could watch Charlotte a bit longer for me so I could take a nap?” he asked. “I feel like shit.”
“Maybe you should have kept a better eye on how much you were drinking, then,” she snapped before she could stop herself, frowning. “What’s going to happen when you decide you still don’t feel well when it’s time for me to get ready to go? You going to ask me to stay?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he grumbled, his lips twisting into an ugly frown of his own. “And what the fuck? I thought we agreed to start trying to work together? And to stop with the personal attacks?”
She sucked in a breath, raking her hair out of her eyes for a moment before shaking her head and looking away from Jeff. “You had an agreement with me to watch Charlotte today so I could go out with Carla and a few others,” she began, carefully choosing her words. “If it had been me, I would have been careful with the amount I was drinking, because I would have known I’d be watching Charlotte the next day and couldn’t afford to be hungover.” She wouldn’t have drunk so much in excess, to begin with, but she kept those words to herself.
Jeff pushed himself upright and off the couch, shaking his head. “Whatever,” he muttered, heading towards the bathroom. “Wake me up when you need to get ready. I don’t have to sit here and fucking listen to this.”
Stephanie’s brow furrowed, her whole body tensing at his tone. “Wait a second, I didn’t agree to anything.”
“She’s your daughter just as much as she is mine. Just because you don’t want anything to do with her --”
“First of all, I love Charlotte,” Stephanie began, swallowing some of her anger as she stood up from the couch as well. She followed Jeff, crossing her arms over her chest. “Second of all, this isn’t us working together. I understand that you don’t feel well, but that’s not my fault. Not to mention we had an agreement that you’d watch Charlotte for me today if you got to go out last night.”
“I agreed to letting you go out Saturday night. Not to you having all of fucking Saturday off,” Jeff growled, spinning on his heel and glaring at her.
“It’s almost noon, Jeff,” Stephanie pointed out, keeping her voice low. “I agreed to watch her for you Friday night. You didn’t even come home from work, just went straight to wherever it was you went. If we’re going to go by equal hours, you probably arrived there at around six last night. That’s --” She paused, quickly doing the math in her head, “--almost eighteen hours of time out of the house.”
“So?” Jeff barked, crossing his arms over his chest, as well. “I spent part of that time fucking sleeping it off.”
“Still, I don’t plan on being out any later than eleven,” Stephanie said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t see how asking for another couple of hours to myself is wrong of me.”
“And I don’t see why it’s such a big fucking deal that I take a nap for another couple of hours?” Jeff countered, narrowing his eyes at Stephanie. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“She’s still at her art desk,” Stephanie answered, glancing towards her daughter. She straightened her back, uncurling her arms and sticking her hands in her pockets. “Look, I had a couple of things I wanted to do before hanging out with Carla. I’ve been up with Charlotte since five-thirty this morning. I’m tired. Can we not do this?”
“Oh, no, we’re doing this,” Jeff muttered, continuing to glower at Stephanie. “So why is your being tired any more relevant than my being tired? Why should I have to watch Charlotte when I don’t feel well?”
“I watch Charlotte all the time when I don’t feel well,” Stephanie pointed out. “It’s part of being a parent.”
Jeff scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t resent the hell out of me for ‘not helping you more’ with raising her?”
Her fingers curled into fists inside her pockets, and she forced herself to breathe through the tightness consuming her chest. “I raised Charlotte essentially by myself for four years,” she said, thankful that her voice remained even despite the way her throat began to close and her eyes began to sting. “Of course I felt a little resentful.”
“And you didn’t even want her, right?” Jeff drawled, a snide smirk on his face. He shook his head. “Always have to be the fucking martyr, don’t you? Just like my fucking mom. Tell me, was living with me really that fucking awful? Getting everything you fucking wanted while sitting around doing fuck-all all day while I went out and risked my life for my fucking country?”
“Jeff, please,” Stephanie said, glancing in Charlotte’s direction again. Their daughter stared at the both of them, eyes wide and bottom lip quivering. Stephanie approached her slowly before picking Charlotte up from the floor and holding her close. “Can we have this conversation later? You’re scaring Charlotte.”
“There’s no conversation to be had,” Jeff said with an exasperated shrug of his shoulders. “You’re just gonna accuse me of whatever you fucking want and expect me to just sit here and fucking take it. I’m not having it. I’m gonna lie down and you can fucking figure out a babysitter and pay for it yourself if you want to get away from your daughter that badly. Later.”
Before Stephanie could respond, Jeff had already made it to his bedroom, slipped inside, and slammed the door shut behind him. Stephanie winced, and Charlotte wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and sobbed quietly into Stephanie’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Stephanie whispered into the crook of Charlotte’s neck. “Mommy’s got you, okay?”
As she swallowed back her own tears and held her daughter tightly, she could only think one thing:
He couldn’t even play nice for a whole week.