What Came After
Rocky Mountain Air Solutions placed Ethan on unpaid leave pending a formal investigation into benefits misuse. Jamie said there was talk he might have to repay a portion of what he’d drawn under Diane’s dependent claim, on top of losing the regional promotion he’d been angling for all summer.
Bailey didn’t just leave the apartment. According to Jamie, she left the relationship entirely once it became clear Ethan’s income was about to shrink and his standing at the company had taken a real hit. Ethan had used someone’s body and someone’s trust to build a “fresh start” for himself, and it turned out he’d built that fresh start on exactly the kind of ground that gives way the moment you actually need it to hold you.
I didn’t gloat when he called, asking if I’d “heard anything.” I just told him the truth. “I heard enough. I filed for child support last week. We’ll let the court sort out the number instead of you.”
He didn’t argue. I think he didn’t have much left to argue with by then.
The one time I saw him in person that month, dropping Dylan off after a Saturday visit, he stood on the porch a little too long, like he wanted to say something bigger than “thanks” for having Dylan ready on time. He didn’t say it. I didn’t ask him to. Some conversations aren’t owed to the person who never had one with you when it mattered.
Diane drove out to Aurora the following Saturday and sat at my kitchen table—the same kind of table where Ethan had once shown me a spreadsheet and called it our future. She brought a folder of bank statements and laid them out without being asked, like she needed me to see them almost as much as I needed to.
“I want to give you the twelve thousand back,” she said. “Not all at once. But it’s yours. It always should have been yours.”
I thought about it longer than she probably expected me to.
“I don’t want your house payment money, Diane,” I said finally. “You’re on a fixed income. That’s not fair to you either, not after everything. What I actually want is for you to be in Dylan’s life. Directly. Not filtered through whatever Ethan decides to tell either of us.”
She cried a little, right there over her coffee, both hands wrapped around the mug like she needed something to hold onto. “I can do that,” she said. “I’d like that more than you know.”
We agreed she’d cover Dylan’s swim lessons, forty dollars a month, something concrete and small instead of a lump sum meant to smooth things over. She’d have him every other Sunday afternoon, on her own, no longer arriving only when Ethan happened to bring him by.
