The woman on my porch had a toddler on her hip, and the toddler had Gregs eyes, and the envelope on my kitchen table said Bibb County Superior Court. It did not take a charge nurse to put those two things together, but it helped that I am one.
Greg had a second family. The second mortgage on our house, the one he locked me out in the rain for asking about, had been funding an apartment across town, and a woman, and a child none of us knew about. The court papers were him being served, because the woman on my porch had filed for support and had come, with more courage than I will ever have, to tell the wife to her face before a judge made it official.
He told me that next time I wanted to talk about money, I would remember that porch in the rain. I remembered it. I just did my remembering with a lawyer.
Twenty-two years as a charge nurse in an emergency room teaches you to document everything, times and dates and what you see, because someday someone will ask and the chart has to hold. While I stood on that back porch in my scrubs for two hours and fourteen minutes, watching the microwave clock through the window while he watched TV, I was not crying. I was making calls. To a lawyer. To the bank. To a locksmith, for later.
I did not scream at the woman with the baby. None of it was that childs fault, and not much of it was hers. I gave her a dry towel and a glass of water and the name of my lawyer, because the two of us had the same problem, and his name was Greg.
I filed first. My documentation was better, because documenting is what I do. The second mortgage he hid became his to answer for. The house, through the court, stayed mine. And a protective order made sure there would be no more locked doors with me on the wrong side.
Greg sat at that table with his hands shaking over his pecan pancakes, the ones I made just right, one last time. He said it was more like it. He had no idea what was coming to the door.