I see the lawyer on a Tuesday.

  Sebastian thinks I’m at the grocery store. I drive across the city to an office building with a plastic plant in the waiting room and a woman at the front desk who smiles at me without asking why I’m there. I appreciate that.

  The lawyer is direct. I like her for it.

  She explains the process. She says custody the way you say any other word.

  “She’s five,” I say.

  “I know.” She doesn’t soften it. “That doesn’t change what your options are.”

  I write things in the small notebook I brought. The same notebook with Elise’s food preferences in it. The same one where I wrote strawberry, cream inside, not frosting kind.

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  I stop at the actual grocery store on the way home. I buy what we need.

  In the parked car I sit for a moment.

  You’re really doing this.

  I am. And I need to be clear with myself about why, because no one else will ever believe it and I’ll spend the rest of my life knowing what it looked like from the outside.

  I’m not leaving because I stopped loving Elise. I love my daughter completely. I love her in a way that doesn’t have edges or conditions. But I have been disappearing in this house for years. One self left. One. And if I stay, that goes too. I become the thing that runs the house while everyone loves someone else.

  She wished for another mother. Twice.

  I close my eyes.

  She didn’t know what she was saying.

  I know.

  I start the car. I go home.

  That night I keep the warmth running because I know I’m counting days now. I ask Elise the soft questions. I ask the tell me more. I sit with her at the table and listen to everything she says with my whole chest.

  “Mama, are you okay?” she asks out of nowhere.

  “I’m great,” I say. “Eat your dinner.”

  She looks at me for a second.

  Then she goes back to her food.

  I’m sorry. I’m already sorry.