Harrison opened the brown folder slowly enough that Wyatt had time to understand this was not an ordinary visit.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Wyatt stood beside the breakfast table with one hand still gripping the back of a chair.
The careless smile he had brought downstairs was gone.
His eyes moved from his father to me, then to the papers Harrison had arranged beside his coffee.
“What is he doing here?” Wyatt asked.
The question was directed at me, not Harrison.
That mattered.
Even with his father sitting six feet away, Wyatt still expected me to answer to him.
I poured coffee into my own cup.
“I called him.”
Wyatt stared at me.
“You called him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Harrison answered before I could.
“Because you hit your mother.”
Wyatt’s expression changed instantly.
Not into shame.
Into anger.
“She told you that?”
I watched him carefully.
Those words confirmed something I had already begun to understand during the long hours before dawn.
Wyatt was not horrified that Harrison knew what he had done.
He was furious that I had told someone.
He looked at me as though my phone call were the betrayal.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said.
Harrison leaned back in his chair.
“What was it like?”
Wyatt folded his arms.
“She got in my face.”
I almost laughed.
I had been standing beside the kitchen counter when it happened.
I had not moved toward him.
I had barely raised my voice.
Harrison looked at me.
“Did you get in his face?”
“No.”
Wyatt slapped one hand against the table.
“Of course she’s going to say no.”
The dishes rattled.
I flinched before I could stop myself.
Harrison saw it.
So did Wyatt.
For the first time that morning, my son seemed to realize his father was not there for a family discussion.
Harrison placed one hand on the folder.
“Sit down.”
Wyatt gave a bitter laugh.
“You don’t live here.
You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“No,” Harrison said.
“But your mother does.”
Wyatt looked at me again.
I had spent years dreading that look—the narrowed eyes, the tight mouth, the silent promise that making him angry would cost me later.
That morning, something had changed.
He could still glare at me.
