Unsupervised

It took fourteen months, a full psychological evaluation, and a caseworker's written recommendation before the court agreed to expand Jason's time with Owen to unsupervised visits, four hours at a time, twice a week.

I wasn't required to agree to anything beyond what the court ordered. I did it anyway, the first weekend, adding two extra hours on my own initiative, because I'd watched fourteen months of a man doing the actual, unglamorous work of changing instead of just apologizing for not having changed yet — and because Owen, nearly two now, lit up like a switch every time Jason's car pulled into the driveway.

Karen tried one more time to reach Owen that spring, through a card mailed to our house with no return address, official-looking enough that I called our lawyer before I even opened it. It contained a birthday message and a folded twenty-dollar bill.

I didn't respond. Our lawyer confirmed it didn't technically violate the order, since it wasn't direct contact, but recommended documenting it anyway in case there were more.

There weren't. As far as any of us know, that was the last time Karen tried.

Jason and I started, cautiously, seeing each other again outside of drop-offs that summer — dinner, once, then twice, then something that neither of us rushed to put a label on. I told him plainly, more than once, that this wasn't a reset button. Whatever came next had to be built on what he'd actually done differently, not on how much either of us missed what we used to have.

"I know," he said, every time. "I'm not in a hurry either. I just don't want to stop showing up."