“You’ll have a great time,” she told him, smoothing down his hair and hoping it was true. Hoping she wasn’t dooming him to something they were both going to regret.
Once the door shut again, Saylor met David’s gaze. A well-trimmed beard hugged his chin now, and his head was half-shaved while the rest was combed to one side. A very posh guise, no doubt something Amanda forced on him considering her perfectly put-together façade. He’d always been messy casual when they were—
Don’t think about that.
“Please be sure the tooth fairy remembers to come,” she said, feeling like a nag and not caring in the slightest. “And make sure you read that nativity story to him tonight. I put the book in his bag.”
“Amanda’s family isn’t really into that kind of thing.”
“So just because they aren’t, that means you can’t read your son a book? That’s what Christmas is all about in the first place.”
Amanda knocked on the windshield, obviously avoiding Saylor but glaring at David and pointing to an invisible watch on her wrist.
“Can we not argue?” David said. “I need to go.”
“You will have cell service, right?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded exasperated. He crossed toward the front of the car, his breath ghosting out in little puffs. The sun streaming down on them did absolutely nothing to warm her trembling frame.
“Saylor,” he said at the scowl she gave him. She hated the tug from hearing him say her name like that. Like he used to.
She chewed her lip and then gave Parker a big wave.
With another sigh, David rounded the nose of the car, the hood catching sprinkles of falling snow. He took her shoulders and turned her to face him. She shrugged out of his touch.
“He’ll be okay. The Windhams are nice people. They’re not chainsaw murderers.” He ended this with a mocking scoff.
Saylor closed her eyes at his condescending tone and the sting of truth that she actually suspected something like that of them. She forced herself to meet David’s hard, cold gaze.
“But Amanda and I are getting married, and they just want to meet him. That’s all. You’ll have him back on Monday.”
He got in the car before she could say anything else. And he drove away, taking her baby with him.
“YOU AGREED TO THIS,” Saylor’s mom said through the phone a few hours later. Sure, Saylor was thirty-one, but a girl was never too old to need her mother. She’d tried pacing her living room, reading a book, and sweeping up the deplorable dust bunnies, and still time seemed to be dragging its feet. At this pace, Monday was going to take a snail’s vacation to get here. “You’ve been talking about needing a break.”
“Sending my son to have Christmas with my ex-husband and his new fiancé is not what I had in mind.”
“Come on, Saylor.”
“I know.” She sank onto her sagging couch. There were days where her son drove her insane with his incessant talking about Mario and Minecraft, and yet, the minute he was gone, she didn’t know what to do without him. The house—small as it was—seemed so empty.
Tinsel hung across the window. On the wall beside it was a poster of Santa Claus checking his list. It wasn’t much. She only put out the few discount items she’d scrounged up for Parker to enjoy, even though she knew he’d be gone for the actual holiday. His Spider-Man action figure and a few of his other toys lay scattered by the wood-burning stove. The sight scraped an extra hole in her heart for good measure.
“Turn on those cheesy shows you like,” her mom said, jerking her attention back, “the happy ones. Go to a spa, do something for yourself and give yourself permission to enjoy it. When was the last time you went shopping?”
Saylor laughed through the tightness in her chest. Shopping implied having money to spend.
“Take yourself out to dinner, go see a movie—”
She leaned forward and rubbed her eyebrow. “I get it, Mom. You’re right. I don’t need a man—large or little—to feel complete.”
“No, you don’t,” her mom said. “Look at this as an opportunity. I’ve got to go. I wish I could come with you.”
Saylor’s mom and dad were two and a half hours away in Rexburg, to visit her brother. Greg and Saylor didn’t exactly get along, and as she had to work the day after Christmas, she’d decided not to join them.
“Me too,” Saylor told her. “Talk soon.”
Her mother knew her too well; she knew the brink of this ridiculous depression Saylor had been on since it had happened, since she discovered David hadn’t been alone on the last four business trips he’d taken. She’d wanted to go with him, but each time he’d claimed they couldn’t budget the money for her plane ticket.
"After this next trip, I'll have enough Sky Miles for you to come to Florida," he’d promised. "Next time."
So she’d waited. And after the next one, she’d waited again.
But there never had been a next time. One of his associates had posted a picture on Facebook of himself at a bar of some kind while David was gone. Saylor had thought nothing of it until something made her scroll back up and take a closer look at the photo. In the background, behind the associate, had been David with Amanda. But they hadn’t been in a casual, businesslike stance.
He’d been sitting at the bar while she’d faced him, standing between his legs, her hips pressed to Saylor’s husband’s hips. David’s hands had been at Amanda’s waist, and he’d been nuzzling her neck while she’d thrown a careless, open smile toward the ceiling.
The image had burned into Saylor’s brain. She’d felt woozy. Confused, and shocked. Pain had slashed straight through her chest, though she couldn’t register it, like a wound where blood was visible but not
