I glance out the window at the Lamar boys, who are completely oblivious to the meltdown their poor mom is having. I may not be an expert on kids by any means, but I’m pretty sure they all look old as fuck. “But aren’t your kids all in school?”

She waves her hands wide and looks at me with hard, angry eyes. “Exactly,” she says—scratch that—she yells. “Herein lies the problem. The kids are in school and Justin is going into his hundredth year playing this stupid fucking sport and I’m still waiting. When I told Justin I was going to look into going back to work when Jax started kindergarten, I was still somehow convinced to stay home. Why would I want to miss all the field trips? Who would go to the teacher conferences? Wouldn’t I feel terrible sending them to daycare after they already spent their day at school? Why would I want to miss any of this? I think it’s why I jumped at the opportunity to be the president for the Lady Mustangs. It was the first opportunity I had to talk with adults and make things happen. And even though Justin will never admit it, he loved it because it was still focused around him. Because once I started getting outside opportunities based on it, he suddenly had a problem again.

“I don’t know when the man I married became so keen on keeping me dependent on him. You know he called me selfish when I was working on the morning show?” she asks. I open my mouth to say something—something about what a dick Justin is being—but snap it shut when I realize she wasn’t looking for an actual response. “I think it’s a security thing for him, like I won’t leave if I don’t have a job. But what he doesn’t realize is I probably am going to leave and he keeps pushing me to it.”

She stops talking and her mouth hangs open, like her admission shocked her.

“Oh fuck.” She falls back onto the couch and stares at me with wide eyes. But instead of seeing sadness and anger in her eyes, I see fear. “Can I leave him?”