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lips were twisted into a curious half smile. Thinking back, I bet she was going for a smirk, but smirking was new to her. In any event, my mother’s mug shot was so beautiful she could have used it as a profile picture on an Internet dating site. Ironic, really, since she’d sworn off dating for life.
    After that incident, my mother’s attorney arranged for her to be admitted to a psychiatric facility to be treated for an emotional breakdown. “It doesn’t mean she’s crazy, kid,” Flo tried to comfort me. “It’s a tactic just like any other. She can’t get fired while she’s on family medical leave, and she can’t get prosecuted for the assault as long as she’s receiving treatment for a mental breakdown.”
    Because her attorney was able to place my mother in a facility that accepted WorldAir insurance under the Family Medical Leave act, it meant Ash couldn’t track her down. She had long since put in the request to have her employee information restricted so that nobody—especially Ash—could gain access to it unless, like me, they had her username and password.
    And, thank God, my mother’s attorney was able to get the “terroristic threats” charge dropped from the docket. My mother herself had not posted any disturbing comments on her Facebook page. It turned out that, against my express instructions, she had no privacy settings whatsoever on her Facebook account, and the second the security clip of her attacking Kathy went viral it unleashed a spike of psycho postings on my mother’s page that she had nothing to do with. Still, though, it’s out there. Now when you do a Google search of my mother’s name, her mug shot and “terroristic threats” dominate the first page of search results, not to mention “psychiatric evaluation.”
    “At least she can’t get fired,” Flo reassured me. “The nut house was a genius move, really. It puts everything in a holding pattern until we can figure out a new battle plan.”
    Holding pattern. That phrase has perfectly described my life ever since. I have no cell phone (that’s considered an “important decision affecting my life,” so Ash naturally said no), so I communicated with my mother via Skype using my iPad, but only when I had access to a strong WiFi Internet signal, which did not include Ash’s condo. My mother tried to laughingly refer to her time in the nut house as her “spa getaway,” and told me she loves me. I love her, too, but it was hard not to be mad at her. Don’t get me wrong; I understand the odds were stacked against her, and that Ash was underhanded and used his girlfriend as a stick to stir the big cauldron of crazy that is family court. I understood that none of this was fair.
    But while I was growing up my mother always told me, “Don’t freak out.
Figure
it out.” Like when I was eleven and my troll of a second cousin used to intercept me at family picnics to stomp on my toes because my feet were “as big as surfboards” and always got in her way. I used to freak out and cry, to no avail. Then my mother bought me a pair of steel-toed Doc Martens. Troll Cousin could stomp on my toes until her foot fell off and I wouldn’t feel a thing. And that steel toe left a helluva bruise on her shin, too.
    So I feel like my mother broke her own rule. She should have figured out how to navigate the landscape of family court, how to combat the enemy. I know she was facing an unfair fight, but since when was life fair? Don’t freak out.
Figure
it out.



CHAPTER 2
    It was right after the divorce when Ash decided to transfer himself to LAX, thus commencing the necessity for me to fly there unaccompanied every other week in order to fulfill the custodial order. More than half the time Ash would forget to pick me up at the airport, and I’d have to catch a ride with one of the sympathetic gate agents. Eventually Ash took it for granted that I’d appear on my own. I got to know many of the gate agents who worked the ATL and LAX