Chapter 8
Ethan agreed to the plea deal.
Six months in an inpatient rehab facility, followed by two years of outpatient treatment and random drug tests. No jail time, but if he violated any term of the deal, he’d serve three years in prison.
He checked into rehab the day after he was released from jail.
Margaret called me crying.
“He actually went,” she said. “I didn’t think he would. Harold drove him. He didn’t argue. He just got out of the car and walked in. Thank you, Natalie. You gave him his life back.”
I didn’t tell her I hadn’t done it for him. I’d done it for Jax and Mia. For the small part of them that still hoped their dad could be good again.
The holidays came and went.
We had Christmas at the house. Margaret and Harold came over. They brought so many presents the tree almost collapsed under the weight. Mia got a laptop for college. Jax got a new bike. I got a new KitchenAid mixer—something I’d wanted for ten years but Ethan had always said was “a waste of money.”
It was the best Christmas we’d ever had. No yelling. No passive-aggressive comments. No Sienna rolling her eyes at everything. Just us. Laughing. Eating too much. Watching bad Christmas movies.
January was cold. Gray. Miserable.
Work slowed down. I spent my free time fixing up the house. Painting the kitchen yellow. Planting bulbs in the yard that would come up in the spring. Mia helped me. Jax built a new fence with Harold.
We were healing. Slow. But steady.
Then the letters started.
At first, they were nice. Apologetic. Ethan wrote from rehab. He talked about the things he was learning. About how he’d been selfish. About how he missed the kids. About how he was sorry for everything he’d done to me.
I didn’t write back. But I showed the letters to Mia and Jax, if they wanted to read them.
Mia read one, then threw it in the trash.
“Too little, too late,” she said.
Jax read every single one. He kept them in a shoebox under his bed. He wrote back once a week. Short letters. About soccer. About school. About the new fence.
I let him. It was good for him. Even if Ethan never changed, Jax needed to know he’d tried.
Then the letters got weird.
Ethan started writing about us getting back together. About how rehab had showed him what he’d lost. About how we could be a family again. The four of us. Like it was before.
I threw those letters away. I didn’t show them to the kids.
Then he started calling. The rehab center let residents make supervised calls once a week. He called my phone. I blocked the number. He called the house. I didn’t answer. He called Margaret. She told him to stop. That it was over.
He didn’t listen.
One night, he called Jax’s cell phone. I don’t know how he got the number. Jax was in his room talking to him for an hour before I found out.
I took the phone away.
“You can’t talk to him unsupervised,” I told Jax. “You know the rules. The court order says—”
“The court order is stupid!” Jax yelled. “He’s my dad! He’s better now! He said he’s sorry! Why won’t you give him a chance?”
“Because I know him, Jax! I was married to him for eighteen years! People don’t change that fast. Not really. He’s just saying what he thinks you want to hear so he can get what he wants.”
“What he wants is his family back!”
“What he wants is control!” I yelled back. “He wants to feel powerful again. He wants to make me pay for winning. Don’t you see that?”
Jax ran to his room. He slammed the door.
I leaned against the wall. I was shaking.
I knew Ethan. Knew how he worked. He’d never changed. He’d just gotten better at hiding who he was.
I was right.
He got out of rehab in early May. Six months clean. The program gave him a certificate. They called him a “success story.”
He moved into a halfway house in town. He got a job at a car wash. He started going to church. He posted pictures on Facebook of him holding a Bible, working out, smiling like he’d never been happier.
People started talking again.
Look at Ethan. He turned his life around.
Natalie should give him another chance. For the kids.
He paid his child support on time. Every month. He asked for supervised visitation. The court granted it. Once a month, at the family center. Two hours.
Jax was ecstatic. Mia was wary. I was terrified.
The first visit went fine.
Jax came home talking about how great Dad was. How he’d apologized. How he was going to come to his next soccer game.
Mia rolled her eyes.
“He’s acting,” she said. “I can tell. He’s just putting on a show so everyone will feel bad for him.”
I hoped she was wrong. I really did.
The second visit was the last one.
Ethan showed up drunk.
The supervisor called me. She said he’d stumbled in. Slurred his words. Smelled like whiskey. Jax had started crying. Ethan had gotten angry. Yelled that everyone was against him. That I was “poisoning” his kids against him.
The police were called. They took him back to jail.
His probation was revoked. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Jax didn’t talk to anyone for three days.
He sat in his room. He didn’t eat. He didn’t go to school. He threw the shoebox of letters in the trash.
I didn’t push him. I just left food outside his door. I told him I loved him. That I was there whenever he was ready.
On the fourth day, he came out. His eyes were red. Puffy.
He walked over to me. He put his head on my shoulder.
“You were right,” he mumbled. “He never changed. He never will.”
I held him.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I said.
“I hate him,” Jax whispered. “I hate him so much.”
May you like
I stroked his hair.
“It’s okay to hate him,” I said. “It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. All of it is okay. I’m here. We’re all here. We’re going to get through this together.”
