Clare could not enter her own home.
She could not see her children.
She stood on her own front porch holding a legal document that told her she was not allowed to be where she was standing.
The door began to close and through the upstairs window she saw Lily’s face pressed against the glass.
Lily mouthed one word.
“Mommy.”
Clare pressed her hand flat against the air between them.
Lily put her small hand on the glass.
Then Diane’s shape appeared behind the curtain and the curtain closed.
Clare drove to a hotel.
She sat in the parking lot for 40 minutes before she could make herself get out of the car.
She called Sophie, who answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“What happened?”
“He filed a restraining order.”
“I cannot see my kids.”
A pause so loaded it could have sunk a ship.
“Sophie, I am going to need you to repeat that very slowly because I know you did not just say what I think you said.”
“I need you.”
“I am on my way.”
“Do not move.”
“Do not call him.”
“Do not do anything.”
“I am bringing ice cream and rage.”
Sophie arrived in the hotel room 40 minutes later with three pints of ice cream, a legal pad, and a face that could have melted steel.
She sat down on the bed, opened a pint, handed Clare a spoon, and said, “Okay, we are going to eat this entire pint, and then we are going to make a list of every person who wronged you, and then we are going to figure out how to legally destroy each one of them in alphabetical order.”
“Diane is first because D comes before M and V and also because I have wanted to destroy Diane since Thanksgiving 2019.”
Clare, despite everything, laughed.
The kind of laugh that comes out before you can stop it.
Wet and shaky and real.
Thomas Whitfield’s team filed an emergency motion, but the family court system moved slowly and the hearing was set for 2 weeks out.
