“Kendra. You’re not going.”
I looked out at the city and said, “Oh, I’m going.”
Christmas morning was clear and hard and blue.
We lifted off at ten past nine with four children strapped into the back in matching red, because they had voted on it and I had lost.
I should say what those four knew before we got on that aircraft, because a great many people have since assumed I used them.
They knew all of it, at the level an eight-year-old can hold, and they had known since they were six and Beau asked directly at a kitchen table.
What I told them then, and have not changed since, is that their father did not believe I was expecting them, and that he chose to go before they were born, and that this was about him and had nothing to do with anything they had done, because they did not exist yet.
Zadie asked at six whether he knew there were four. I said no. She thought about that for a while and said, “That’s quite funny.”
Divorce & Separation
The invitation I read out to them at the kitchen table in the December. All of it, exactly as it was written, including the words one last time.
Then I said they did not have to come, that I would go on my own, and that nobody would be in any trouble whatsoever for saying no.
