His ex Diane had said something similar early on. Something about family being first, something about understanding what he needed. He had believed it because he'd wanted to believe it and because he was 27 and and didn't yet know how to listen for what wasn't being said underneath the words that were. But lying in the dark at 4:30 in the morning, Malcolm found himself doing something he rarely allowed himself to do. He compared the two women honestly, not to be unfair to Diane, but because the comparison was information, Diane had said the right things.
Clare showed up and did them. There was a difference between a woman who told him she understood fatherhood and a woman who had spent 9 years proving she did. There was a difference between a promise made at the beginning of something and a record built over the entire length of it. He lay there and thought about the grants she had stayed late to push through. Four nights no credit sought.
He thought about the board meeting where she had watched through the window in the door. He thought about the breakfast she'd brought to the supply room during the boiler crisis, the Aki and saltfish, the two large coffees, the way she had simply sat on the edge of the desk and waited for him to finish his phone call without filling the silence with noise. By the time his alarm went off at 6, he had stopped thinking of the 6 weeks as an experiment. That framing had always been somewhat dishonest. He realized now.
You run an experiment to discover an unknown quantity. But Malcolm had already known. The answer had known it longer than he was willing to admit. What the 6 weeks had actually been was a runway, a safe structure inside which he could move towards something true without being required to call it true before he was ready. He was getting close to ready.
Not there yet, but close. Week four arrived with a phone call from Renee at 8:15 Monday morning. Diane's attorney contacted me, Renee said, with the measured calm of a lawyer who delivers difficult information without inflection because inflection costs extra. They're filing a formal petition for custody modification. We have approximately 3 weeks before to the preliminary hearing.
Malcolm was in the parking lot of the community center. He had pulled up, put the car in park, and not gotten out yet. Okay, he said. I want to be clear with you about what this means practically. Renee said this is not a verdict.
This is a process. A judge will review the current arrangement, consider any documented changes in circumstance, and make a determination. Your record as Ava's primary parent is strong. Your employment history is consistent. The funding crisis at Cornerstone is a factor we'll need to address directly, but it is addressable.
What do they have on the funding situation? They've documented the Harwell Foundation withdrawal. They'll argue your employment environment is unstable. And what do we have? The emergency bridge funding from Councilman Davis's office, which came through last week and covers the gap through Q1.
Gerald Hayes has already agreed to provide a letter of employment stability. A brief pause. I'd also like documentation of the grant submissions from last week if those are accessible. They show organizational stabilization. Malcolm looked through the windshield at the community center building, the grants, Clare's four late nights, the work she had done quietly without credit to protect the organization's financial position, and by extension, his employment record.