“Why didn’t you tell me?”He shrugged.
“I thought you’d get mad.”
“At you?”
“At Dad.”
I reached for his hand.
“You can tell me something even when it makes me angry. It’s not your job to protect adults from the consequences of their choices.”
He nodded, although I could see he was still struggling to make sense of what had happened.
Then he asked the question I’d been dreading.
“Are you and Dad getting divorced?”
“I don’t know yet, sweetheart.”
He leaned against me, and I stayed beside him until he fell asleep.
The next morning, Derek called.
I asked him to explain exactly why he had met Cindy.
After a long silence, he finally told me.
Cindy had suggested that if we withdrew the formal complaint against Tyler, she would persuade her son to leave Lucas alone. Derek had agreed to meet her because he thought he could negotiate a solution without another school meeting.
