She gave me a grim look. “Everyone knows, Mom. Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Dad and Mark had a huge fight on the lawn outside Mark’s house. The neighbors heard everything. Mark told Dad he never wanted to see him again, that he’d betrayed his trust.”

I buried my face in my hands. “I’ve noticed people staring at me at the grocery store, but… everyone knows?”

“Everyone. I understand why you don’t want to tell Edie, Josh, Tyler, and Sam everything, but they need to know he’s not coming back.”

The next day, I sat the kids down.

A few days later, the divorce papers arrived.

I sat at the kitchen table staring at them for a long time. He’d been generous. He was letting me keep the house and my car.

He was also offering a monthly child support payment higher than I expected. “Visitation at his discretion” appeared in tidy legal language.

Translated plainly, it meant: don’t fight, take the money, raise the kids, and don’t expect to see me.

I signed them. Twenty years of marriage ended in under thirty seconds.

Exactly one month after he left, my phone rang at 2:00 a.m.

His name lit up the screen.

I stared at it. Nobody calls at that hour with good news, so I let it ring. I didn’t want to get dragged into whatever crisis had prompted Daniel to call.

But when the voicemail notification appeared, something in my gut told me to listen.

His voice sounded different immediately. Not the smooth, confident Daniel who had spoken to me like I was an inconvenience.

Daniel was scared.

“Claire… You have to call my mom. Right now. I’m begging you.”

I sat up straighter.

“She’s going to cut me out of the will, the company, everything. You have to talk to her. Please. Ask her not to do this.”

I sat there in the dark for a moment.

Then I smiled.

Karma had finally caught up with Daniel. Good.

But when I called him back, I quickly realized that if I didn’t help him, I might end up in even deeper trouble than he was.

I called him back.

He answered immediately. “Claire?”

“Why on earth would you think I’d help you?”

Silence. Then two words.

“Child support.”

My smile vanished.

“You think I can support eight kids with nothing?” he said sharply. “If she cuts me off, I lose my salary. I lose everything. And if I have no income, the court can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”

I didn’t respond. I was doing the math in my head.