“Ma’am, this’ll be easier if you cooperate. We have a court order to examine your living conditions. You don’t want to make this worse than it needs to be.”
Tears spring to my eyes and I hate myself for being weak. I’ve never imagined this scenario. Everything I do revolves around Griffin.
All the while, he’s crying and fussing in my arms, his nose is running, and he’s inconsolable. My voice cracks as I wipe his face with my bare hand and swipe it across the front of my dress. “Who would make a report against me?”
The officer looks at the woman holding the files. “Paula?”
Paula. That’s her name.
Paula looks down at her paperwork. Just when I thought the chapter of my life with Robert was closed, it reignites itself into an inferno. “Carl and Teresa Ketteman.” She looks up at me and tells me something I know, and at the same time, despise almost as much as my dead husband. “The child’s paternal grandparents.”
Holy shit.
* * *
My in-laws hated me.
Wait. I stand corrected.
They still hate me and the feeling is mutual.
Robert grew up in Connecticut in an upper-class family. His father is a physician and his mother is a socialite. The older she gets, the harder she works at being a stuck-up, pompous, country-clubbing bitch. Sure, I’m not blind to the fact my parents have their issues—they do. Kipp and Hattie Montgomery are far from perfect, but standing beside the Kettemans, they look like an after-school-special, picture-perfect mother and father.
Robert’s parents were friendly enough until after Robert and I were married. Teresa was like a green-eyed witch from the west when it came to my family, to Montgomery Industries, and scrutinizing net worths. I know I grew up privileged, but I can’t help who my parents are, what they have, or the big, fat trust fund sitting in the bank with my name on it. I also can’t help that they couldn’t come close to providing the same for their son.
Robert and I were married for three years and I wonder every single day why I said I do. How could I have not seen him for what he was when everyone around me did? They even warned me of everything that made up my late husband.
And they were right. Every last one of them. In the months after our picturesque wedding at the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park, he changed and became what everyone said he was. A distant asshole who disregarded me in everything unless he needed me on his arm, especially around his parents. Since we lived in Manhattan, we saw them oftenish. When we did, Robert would turn into the perfect, doting husband I thought I married.
When he wanted to take a job in Dallas, it wasn’t hard to give in to everyone—Jen, my parents, even Cam, who, despite his own marital issues with his first wife, thought it would be a good idea for me to live close to my family.
Had I known… Robert was only interested in having an in with Montgomery Industries.
And the ill-will he planned to rain down on my family.
And that he’d cheat on me.
And—the biggie—that he’d turn out to be a murderer and almost killed Jen and me.
So, no, I haven’t had any contact with Robert’s parents, Carl and Teresa, since shortly after Robert’s death. They barely pretended to like me when Robert was alive—especially Teresa. Why would I put myself through her judgmental, passive-aggressive bullshit?
Jen’s fiancé, Eli, was the one who saved us by putting a bullet through Robert’s head—he was an FBI agent at the time. But it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. In the end, Carl and Teresa found reasons to blame me. It was ugly. I could barely function for weeks, let alone deal with my dead husband’s parents. I don’t know what I would have done without Jen and the rest of my family, who acted as a barrier between me and my in-laws.
That was only four short months ago. I’m consumed with my ballet and dance studio, En Pointe, and am focusing on my son. Basically, I’m faking it daily for everyone because life right now sucks.
So, as my dead husband is still finding ways to heckle me from the grave through his damn parents on the day I had to bid goodbye to Faye, I wonder if this is finally my lowest low.
I’m not sure what more I can handle at this point.
* * *
“How many times do you leave him throughout the week?”
After I coaxed Griffin into taking ibuprofen, he cried himself into a fit and passed out. He’s asleep, lying on my chest with his head lolled on my shoulder and the front of my dress is now covered in dried tears and snot.
I lower my voice despite the overwhelming need to scream them out of my house. “I don’t even work forty hours a week. I’m starting a business, but some days I take him with me—he’s not with a sitter every day. I don’t understand, kids are in daycare all across the land. There’s nothing wrong with me having a job.”
“That’s not exactly what was reported to us, Mrs. Ketteman.” Paula, who looks like she’s sitting with a stick up her ass in her frumpy, floral dress, peers at me over her reading glasses. “That doesn’t come close to what was described by the child’s paternal grandparents.”
