By Wednesday, Dylan still hadn't heard back from any auto shops, but he didn't care. Being in Colorado was better than he'd thought it would be. He actually felt something like happy, the kind of happy where getting up wasn't a drag, where he ate because he was hungry and not out of an automated necessity, where he thought about glass-half-full things like how fresh the air smelled and how cool the mountains looked.

Even the string of arson—which had the whole town in a tizzy—and his dad's suspicious behavior weren't enough to ruin this newfound happiness, although Dylan did vow to find out what was going on with his dad, hoping it wasn't a repeat of events, meaning: the cheating incident that had caused his mom to file for divorce. Dylan told himself that couldn't be it, that his dad wouldn't do that to Ellie.

Since Ellie had to do payroll at his dad's office, she'd asked Dylan to pick up the kids from school.

When school ended, he got Talia from inside where the preschool was located. The two of them waited for Avery outside on the field in the kindergarten pickup line.

A lot of parents stood in the line, and a lot of them looked exactly the way Dylan imagined they would look after hearing Ellie complain about them for the past few months: rich. Mothers made up the majority, and since this was the middle of the day, Dylan assumed they were stay-at-home moms or did part-time work like Ellie. Most of them wore workout clothing, the expensive kind with nice-looking fabric, boasting brands like Outdoor Research and Marmot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dylan spotted a young woman with bright red hair. He turned to find her smiling, in spite of all the invisible burdens she seemed to carry so well.

"Leah," he said, walking over to her and waving a hand in front of her face.

"Dylan?" Her eyes went wide and she smiled wider, and he got the feeling he'd just made her day. "What are you doing here?"

"Talia goes to preschool here now, and we're just waiting for my little brother. You waiting for your son?"

"I am," she said. "Normally I wait tables on Wednesday, but they told me not to come in today. Which is fine, 'cause I forgot to sign Trigger up in time for after-school camp this month, and the old woman next door who said she'd watch him was being really grouchy about it because he broke a couple of her plates yesterday."

"Cool. Do you have plans?"

"We were just gonna walk home," she said.

"Why don't you come with us? We could go to a park or something."

She blushed. "That sounds nice."

The Kindergartners came out right then, and Avery was quick to make his way over. Dylan and Leah watched Talia and him run around on the field while they waited for Leah's son. Five minutes later, a kindergartner with dark hair and a combination of what looked like dirt and tomato sauce on his face stalked over to Leah, crossing his arms over his shirt and pouting. Leah told him, "Trigger, this is Dylan. We're gonna go to a park with him and his brother."

"Nice to meet you, Trigger," Dylan said, smiling at him.

Trigger's frown persisting, he ignored Dylan. "I'm hungry!" His voice sounded like a smoker's voice, deep and hoarse, a strange combination to come out of a five-year-old's mouth.

"Sorry," Leah told him. "I forgot to bring snacks." She looked over at Dylan then, and he realized he didn't have any snacks, either.

"Well, maybe we could go back to my dad's place," Dylan said. "We have a fully-stocked fridge."

Leah smiled, relieved. "Alright! Did you hear that, Trigger? We'll go get you fed."

When they reached Dylan's car, he had to sit Trigger in the middle of Talia's and Avery's car seats with no car seat of his own, which was illegal, but they only had a six-minute drive, so Dylan wasn't worried.

After the drive, the five of them got out of Dylan's car and entered the house. Inside, Leah looked amazed, and Dylan got the feeling she'd never been in a house so big. It really wasn't that big, but Dylan knew that was his own privilege talking, because he grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, where most of his peers lived in huge houses because their parents had lawyer or doctor salaries. His dad's house was certainly much larger than any house he would ever be able to afford.

Right away, Trigger ran upstairs like he owned the place, and Avery followed. "Trigger, you need to ask first!" Leah yelled, and Dylan felt like maybe she'd yelled more for his sake than for Trigger's, especially since Trigger wasn't listening but he was; she wanted him to think of her as a good parent. But he already saw her as a good parent, a parent who had faced numerous obstacles and still kept going.

He waved her off. "It's fine; they're just going to Avery's playroom." Dylan's little brother's playroom seemed bigger than most kids' rooms; Avery needed to share his wealth of toys with kids like Trigger.

Dylan noticed right then that Talia had stayed downstairs with him and Leah. "Why don't you go upstairs with the boys?" he asked her, wanting to be alone with Leah. Evidently made shy by Trigger's presence, Talia buried her face in his elbow. "Oh, come here," he told her, holding her hand and taking her to the living room, where the two of them sat on the couch. Leah followed and sat on the adjacent one, saying, "She's so adorable."

"Thank you," he said.

"She looks a lot like you."

He smiled, as Avery came running down the stairs. "Trigger is being mean with my lacrosse stick!"

It hasn't even been two minutes, Dylan thought, agitated. "You can tough it out, can't you?" he asked him, but Leah got up and said, "I'll tell him to stop playing with it, kay?" Up the stairs she went right then, Avery in tow, and Dylan could hear her talking forcefully to Trigger. He tried to eavesdrop on her exact words, but he couldn't make them out.

"Can we watch cawtoons?" Talia asked him in a shy voice.

"Sure, Angel Hair," he said. He started up the Blu-ray player so he could get to the Netflix app, where he hoped to find a good cartoon Talia could zone out to while he talked to Leah.

Leah came back down then, and Dylan finally settled on a Disney movie and pressed play. After its hypnotic elements had taken hold, Talia's gaze was locked, and she quit holding on to him like he was her lifeboat. This was the reason he loved television.

Except now he had no idea what to say to Leah. He wanted to learn more about her, but he didn't want to probe too deep. Not that she would care; she'd practically told him her life story when they'd met at the grocery store the previous week. "Is Trigger liking school?" he asked eventually, and he hated the question, because it seemed so obviously forced.

She shrugged. "Mmmm. Is she?"

"Yeah. She has a really nice teacher, I think. At least she seems nice." This conversation wasn't getting very far below the surface.

Suddenly it sounded like a stampede was coming down the stairs, and Dylan saw the cat being chased by Trigger, who held the lacrosse stick. Avery followed behind, shrieking at Trigger to "Stop it!" And once more, Dylan thought, it hasn't even been five minutes.

Of course that was the exact moment Ellie walked in from the door that led to the garage; Dylan hadn't even heard the garage door opening. He and Leah both got up from the couch. Looking confused, Ellie didn't introduce herself to Leah or even smile. "What's going on?"

Avery came up to her. "Trigger is chasing Waffles with my lacrosse stick!"

Ellie frowned. "What?" Without hesitation, she went straight up to Trigger and took away the stick, and firmly and fiercely said, "We don't use these as weapons, and we don't chase animals. My cat is a living creature, and you need to respect him." Trigger stamped his foot and pouted, and Ellie turned to Leah and gave her a judgmental look.

Looking down like she felt ashamed, Leah said, in a voice much less firm and not at all fierce, "Come 'ere, Trigger."

"Can I talk to you in the garage?" Ellie asked Dylan through gritted teeth. He nodded, following her through the door.

In the garage, she still didn't smile. "Why have you invited a stranger into my house?"

"Your house?"

Her anger intensified, and he realized he shouldn't have said that. "Whether you understand it or not, this is my house. It isn't just your dad's house."

Part of him realized that, yeah, it probably wasn't okay to invite a stranger into their house, but part of him felt defensive. "Ellie, we used to invite tons of strangers into my dad's house when we were teenagers. You never seemed to care then."

"That's really your defense? Because it's something we used to do when we were teenagers? We also used to snort powder we hoped was coke and light aerosol cans on fire and make fun of girls with lopsided boobs and caterpillar eyebrows. But we're adults now, Dylan. The rulebook is different, and for good reason."

Her argument won and she made him feel stupid, but he didn't feel like giving up. "Come on, Elle, she's really nice. I met her at the grocery store the other day. She's been going through rough times, and I just thought—"

"You just thought it was a good idea to bring someone here who can steal my stuff and teach my kid to abuse animals."

He felt his own expression go judgmental. "Wow, Ellie, that's harsh."

"I'm not being harsh. I'm being...practical."

"You think that just because she's poor she's interested in stealing your shit? There's a word for that, you know. Stereotyping."

Ellie actually looked a bit regretful. "Look, it's not just that, it's—"

Leah opened the garage door right then, and Ellie stopped talking, mid-sentence, and perked up. Leah said, softly, "Sorry to disrupt you guys, but, well, Trigger and me are gonna start walking home."

"No way," Dylan said, smiling. "I'll drive you. Ellie, will you watch Talia?"

Ellie nodded without smiling, and although her attitude embarrassed Dylan, he ignored her. He opened the garage door, and then he and Leah and Trigger made their way to his parked car, with Leah dragging Trigger by his right arm as he protested about how he didn't want to leave.

Once inside the car, Trigger refused to use a car seat, screaming, "I sat in the middle seat on the way here!" in his little smoker's voice. Leah gave up, and Dylan could tell she felt defeated, and not just because of the car seat thing. He chose to ignore Trigger's defiance, too, breaking the law once more.

After Leah gave Dylan directions, the ride fell uncomfortably silent, with the exception of Trigger kicking the passenger seat, which they both ignored, though Dylan couldn't deny it bothered the fuck out of him. He reminded himself that Trigger had endured a hard childhood, and his trauma probably now manifested itself into these subtly aggressive behaviors.

"Don't worry about the lacrosse stick thing, okay?" he finally said to Leah. "Kids will be kids."

"That girl has never liked me," Leah said. "Is that your sister or something?"

"My stepmom, technically."

At this, Leah seemed to brighten up a bit. "Really? That's kind of messed up. She looks like she should be your sister or your girlfriend or something. Not your mom."

"She's also a good friend," he said, feeling like omitting this information would be a bad move. "But she's changed a lot recently." He heard the pessimism in his tone right then, a pessimism that masked his true disappointment in how much Ellie had changed. He tried to make his tone more optimistic. "She'll come around, though."

"This is it," Leah told him, pointing to the apartment complex on the right, a single building with three floors. He turned into the parking lot, and she directed him to where the main entrance to the building was. The building looked modern and new, like it had just been built in the last year or so, with a white, blue, and gold color scheme and baby trees planted along the sidewalk. A large and lit-up sign running vertically down the front of the building spelled out, "Ascendance."

"This looks nice," he said, parking in a free space. He almost wanted her to invite him in, but she didn't; all she said was, "See you later."

"Yeah, we should definitely hang out later."

"I'm pretty busy with work," she said, and he wondered if this was it, if his attempts to get closer to her were being blocked for good, all thanks to Ellie.

"Maybe I could bring beer over one night after you get off work," he said, instantly regretting it, because it was one of those phrases packaged with presumptions.

Oddly, she didn't seem to care, smiling and saying, "Yeah, that'd be nice."

After she disappeared inside the main entrance with Trigger, Dylan realized he'd forgotten to get her number. Maybe it was a sign.

He backed away from the parking space and drove away, arriving home ten minutes later, where he found Ellie still looking upset, like she wanted to say something. He didn't want to hear it, but he knew he needed to. "What?"

"Look. I don't think you should mix yourself up with a girl like that."

"Nobody likes advice they didn't ask for. We're both young parents; haven't you learned this yet?"

"There's something you need to know."

"Is this about the cat? Because that cat is a fast little shit. He was probably having fun. And Trigger wasn't going to catch him."

"Does it matter if he catches him or not? Think about his intentions. Look, you need to know... that boy got in trouble for punching another boy the first week of school."

"I know."

"You know? You know and you let him come over here? With my son, and your daughter?"

"I think you need to accept that you don't understand all sides of the situation. Did you know Trigger's father abused him and his mom?" Ellie's face revealed that maybe she hadn't been privy to that knowledge, so Dylan continued. "Do you really think shunning him for learned behavior is the best way to help him?"

"No, but I also don't think that it's our job to help him, either. We have children of our own to think about."

"Well, actually, I really like Leah. I think I want to get to know her."

Ellie displayed a look of complete confusion. "Why?"

"Is it so difficult to understand why helping someone who needs help might make me feel better?"

Shaking her head, she muttered, "Typical."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're using someone in a worse situation than you are to make yourself feel better. Just like you did with Katie. And you remember what happened with Katie, right?"

Katie. The mention of Talia's mom made Dylan cringe a little. Her parents had told him the previous year that she'd been officially listed as a missing person. He certainly didn't miss her.

But he felt the weight of Ellie's words. He knew Katie had been a mess when he'd started sleeping with her, knew her relationship with heroin would probably always take precedence over her relationship with him. In truth, he'd been kind of a mess, too, and for good reason: the girl he'd fantasized marrying for a good portion of his teenage life was about to give birth to his little brother. But he and Katie had seemed to work well together, and there were moments he felt like he could truly help her. There had been a sparkle of hope when she'd gotten pregnant, when she'd gotten sober, when their baby girl had come into the world in a state of good health...and then Katie left him and Talia without warning, and they hadn't heard from her since.

Fuck her.

Dylan's expression must have matched his thoughts, because Ellie seemed to think her words were getting to him, as she reached her hand out to his own. He didn't take it, but still she plowed forward with her words. "Don't invite chaos into your life, Dylan. You reaching out to someone who needs your help isn't you being selfless; it's you being selfish, because it's really about you. But you need to think about Talia."

When he didn't say anything back to her, she took her hand back and said, in a firmer voice, "That woman and her son are not welcome in my home."

Without responding to her, he left and went to the guest room, lying down on the memory-foam mattress and wondering if she was right about him inviting chaos into his life.

Later, they barely talked at dinner. His dad could definitely tell something was off, but he didn't ask.

The next morning, Dylan got a call from one of the auto shops, and the guy asked him to come in for an interview. He wished he felt happier about it, like the kind of happy he'd felt the morning before. The air didn't seem as fresh when his head was polluted.