Furthermore, Olivia had not made loads of friends among the other mothers and therefore these mothers had happily chitchatted with hot-guy Hector, telling tales of Olivia dropping the boys off late and then not staying at the boys’ junior football and little league games or calling random moms at the last minute during the game to ask another mom to take the boys home and she’d pick them up later and her later meant later. Sometimes, the boys would be asleep at their friends’ houses before Olivia would show, which meant she left them for hours.

And when she did all this, she was not at the soup kitchen spreading her benevolence among those less fortunate, but shopping or getting laid by her bevy of boy toys.

Of this, Hector, too, had photographic proof.

Luckily, I did not see Hector’s proof. Unluckily, Hector had to, considering he took the photos, and his face upon handing over the evidence to a Brock, who was even unhappier to learn that his ex was less of a mother than he thought, shared the knowledge that Hector was of the same opinion as his bad-boy brethren that bony wasn’t beautiful.

So, the papers had been drawn up, everyone signed them, a judge stamped his approval, and the boys’ custody flip-flopped. Olivia had them every other weekend. Brock and I had them the rest of the time. Therefore, he wanted them settled in what would be their permanent rooms.

The first delay on the renovation meant that when they moved in with us, Rex had moved into my office upstairs that we converted to a bedroom and Joel into the guest bedroom (now his bedroom) downstairs.

This was something Brock did not like because it didn’t say to Rex, “You’re home and settled.” He also didn’t like it because Rex was right next door to our room. The walls weren’t paper thin but they weren’t soundproof either and the reasons he didn’t like that were obvious. But there Rex was—a bathroom and hallway away.

Olivia was also coping with a move but hers would have been more settled if she was less, well… her. Dade had paid six months advance rent on a furnished, two-bedroom apartment for her. When he came into my bakery a few days after Olivia had left, he told me he’d done this for Joel and Rex and I figured this was true. But I knew it was also because he was a good man and if he tried to do something pure asshole, like kick her out on her ass without any support (even if she did deserve it), he’d probably spontaneously combust or something.

He had not given her any money, however.