I felt no satisfaction about the girlfriend. She was a symptom. Eric was the disease, and Barbara had just performed the cure.
The child support was garnished, formally, because Eric fought it, because of course he did, and lost, because you can't argue your way out of being a parent. The emptied savings came back, with a judge's help. For the first time since the pregnancy, Chloe and I were financially stable — not rich, but safe.
And Barbara.
Barbara, the cold mother-in-law I'd never gotten along with, the woman I'd never once complained to, became the grandmother my daughter needed and the friend I didn't know I'd lost by never reaching out sooner.
"I'm sorry," she told me, weeks later, over coffee, with Chloe asleep between us. "For all the years I was cold to you. I believed Eric's version of everything. That you'd trapped him, that you were difficult, that you were beneath us. He told me stories, and I believed them, because he was my son and I wanted to.
