Lydia added, “Her lawyer is underpaid.”
Olivia simply drank her tea.
She was discovering that silence could become a tool.
Andrew tried other approaches.
He sent flowers. Olivia donated them to the lobby without reading the card.
He mailed Ethan a model aircraft carrier. Olivia allowed Ethan to keep it after inspecting the package herself.
He sent an email titled For Our Family.
He wrote about stress, loneliness, command expectations, temptation, and regret. Ethan appeared in the seventh paragraph.
Serena was mentioned six times before that.
Olivia forwarded the email to Lydia.
Lydia replied with one word:
Useful.
Ethan struggled more quietly.
He stopped asking to call Andrew every evening. Then suddenly he asked three times in one afternoon. He drew houses split into two halves. At school, he told his teacher that his father was “in trouble with grown-up rules.”
One night Olivia found him sitting on the bathroom floor holding the model aircraft carrier.
