Chapter 3 - Christmas Morning Ambush
The sunrise on Christmas morning was cold and pale, the ocean marine layer blanketing Point Loma in a dense, woolly fog that muffled the sound of the channel buoys.
By seven o'clock, Derek was already in the kitchen, humming an old Sinatra tune while whisking pancake batter in a ceramic bowl. He had put on a fresh linen shirt, rolled to his elbows, and looked every inch the handsome, repentant patriarch preparing to bestow holiday cheer upon his household.
"Morning, stranger," he said as I walked into the kitchen, his voice bright, entirely scrubbed of the venom from twelve hours earlier. "Look, Eliza, about last night... I know things got heated. Marley’s at that age where everything is high drama. I talked to her before bed. She feels bad about the video. Let’s just hit the reset button today, okay?"
I poured myself a mug of black coffee, skipping the sugar. "Did she delete the video?"
Derek’s whisk paused for a millisecond, then resumed its rhythm. "She’s fifteen, Eliza. If I force her to delete it, she’ll just dig her heels in. Let Bethany see it, let Bethany talk to her woman-to-woman, and it’ll blow over. Why create another battle?"
Because if Bethany saw the video, Bethany would despise me even more, reinforcing Derek’s narrative that he was trapped between an impossible, icy stepmother and an overprotective ex-wife. He was a master of triangular warfare; as long as the women in his life were fighting each other for crumbs of his loyalty, nobody would ever demand to see the whole loaf.
"Of course," I said, taking a slow sip from my mug. "No need for battles."
"That’s my girl," he smiled, reaching out to pinch my hip.
I stepped smoothly toward the refrigerator before his fingers could make contact, pulling out the butter. He didn't seem to notice the evasion. His mind was already miles away, drifting north up Interstate 5.
At eight-fifteen, Cole and Marley drifted down the stairs. Cole looked sheepish, his hands shoved deep into his sweatpant pockets. Marley wore a tight, defensive posture, her arms crossed over an oversized crewneck, waiting for the lecture she assumed was coming.
I gave them nothing. I set out the syrup, the fresh butter, and a platter of crisp bacon without a word of reproach.
"Presents first, or pancakes?" Derek asked, looking between his children with open palms.
"Mom’s picking us up at nine," Marley said flatly. "We can open her presents at her house."
"Well, you have a few things under the tree from me," Derek said, puffing out his chest. He walked into the living room and retrieved three small envelopes from the branches of the spruce.
Gift cards. Fifty dollars each to Nordstrom for Marley, Best Buy for Cole, and Target for June.
One hundred and fifty dollars total.
I watched Cole’s face drop slightly. He had spent three weeks talking about the tide-pool kit; he had thrown it into the garbage because his sister told him their father had something better planned. Now, holding a plastic card that wouldn't buy a single textbook, the boy looked at his father with the first faint stirrings of a question he didn't have the courage to ask.
At eight-forty-five, Derek checked his Apple Watch with exaggerated surprise. "Shoot. I forgot I promised Dave down at the boatyard I’d drop off the keys to the slip before noon. He’s taking a client out on the bay. I need to run over to Harbor Island real quick."
"Now?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe. "Bethany will be here in fifteen minutes."
"I’ll be back before she leaves," Derek said, grabbing his leather jacket from the coat rack. "Just tell her to wait if she gets here early. Don't start an argument over the car seats."
He leaned down to kiss my cheek. I turned my head just enough so his lips brushed the air near my ear.
"Merry Christmas, Eliza," he whispered. "Thanks for making this work."
He stepped out the front door, his stride brisk and athletic. Through the kitchen window, I watched him walk down the driveway. He didn't turn toward his usual side of the two-car garage; he walked to the street where his black Audi Q7 was parked. He popped the rear hatch, adjusted the two black ballistic-nylon duffel bags June had spotted the night before, closed the trunk with a solid, hydraulic thud, and pulled away from the curb.
He wasn't going to Harbor Island.
I knew Dave from the boatyard. Dave was currently in Cabo with his wife, and had been since Tuesday.
At eight-fifty-eight, the low, throaty purr of an engine signaled the arrival of a Lexus GX.
Bethany Hartwell parked directly behind where Derek’s Audi had been five minutes earlier. She cut the engine and sat behind the wheel for a moment, her phone illuminated in her hands.
Through the dining room window, I saw her face in the rearview mirror. It was tight, pale, and furious.
She had seen my email.
She climbed out of the SUV, slamming the door hard enough to startle a pair of mourning doves from the telephone wire. She wore a tailored camel coat over dark trousers, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe, professional ponytail. She looked like an attorney arriving at a deposition she intended to win by total annihilation.
Marley grabbed her canvas tote bag from the hall bench. "Mom’s here. Cole, June, let's go."
"Marley," I said, stepping into the foyer.
"I’m not talking to you, Eliza," she spat, her hand on the brass doorknob.
"Your mother isn't coming to the door to pick you up yet," I said calmly. "She’s coming in to speak with me."
"She doesn't want to talk to you," Marley scoffed. "She thinks you’re pathetic."
The heavy front door swung open before Marley could touch the handle.
Bethany stood on the threshold. Her blue eyes swept over Marley, then Cole, then lingered on June, who stood behind her siblings holding her small overnight backpack.
"Mom!" Marley smiled, leaning in for an embrace. "Did you see the video I sent you? We dumped all of—"
"Get your things and go sit in the car, Marley," Bethany said.
The tone was not the co-conspirator warmth Marley had clearly anticipated. It was low, vibratory, and cold enough to strip paint from a hull.
Marley blinked, frozen in mid-reach. "What?"
"I said get in the car. All three of you. Lock the doors and do not get out until I come down that driveway."
"Mom, what’s wrong?" Cole asked, his voice cracking with sudden anxiety.
"Now, Cole," Bethany commanded, not raising her volume by a single decibel.
June didn't ask questions. She slipped past her mother’s coat like a shadow, heading down the flagstone path toward the warm idling Lexus. Cole followed, his shoulders slumped. Marley lingered for three seconds, glaring between Bethany and me, trying to decipher the shift in the atmosphere, before Bethany took her by the upper arm and gently, firmly turned her toward the driveway.
"Five minutes, Marley. Move."
Marley stormed down the path, her boots stamping against the stone.
Bethany stepped inside the foyer and closed the heavy mahogany door with her back. She didn't take off her coat. She stood in my entryway, breathing through her nose, her hands buried deep in her pockets.
"Where is he?" Bethany asked.
"He told the kids he went to Harbor Island to drop off boat keys," I replied, standing four feet away on the sisal rug. "He left fifteen minutes ago with two duffel bags in his trunk."
Bethany let out a single, humorless laugh that sounded like dry twigs snapping underfoot. She pulled her hands from her coat pockets; she was holding a stack of printed pages—the same files I had emailed her at midnight.
"He told me four months ago that he couldn't pay his half of Marley’s private school tuition because you had taken over his business accounts," Bethany said, her voice shaking with an anger she had kept bottled behind clinical boundaries for years. "He told me you were auditing every invoice, that you were resentful of the child support he paid, and that you had threatened to leave him if he sent one more dollar to my house."
"He told me you had threatened to take him back to court for an upward modification if he didn't buy Marley that laptop," I replied, my voice steady, matching her gaze without flinching. "He told me you were bleeding him dry to punish him for moving on."
Bethany stared at me. For five long seconds, the silence stretched between us, peeling back seven months of calculated triangulations, invented grievances, and proxy wars fought through three confused children.
"Taryn West," Bethany whispered, looking down at the order confirmation in her hand. "He swore to a family court judge two years ago that he had zero financial contact with that woman. I had to settle for forty percent less in alimony because he claimed his yacht sales had cratered and he was living on credit cards."
"He just spent eighteen thousand dollars of our emergency savings on a townhome in Carlsbad," I said. "And eighteen hundred on her kid's computer."
Bethany looked up from the papers, her sharp, defensive posture softening into something ancient, exhausted, and profoundly humiliated.
"He did this to me in 2024," she said, her voice dropping into a raw register. "The exact same play. He made me feel like I was crazy. He made me feel like an unreasonable, nagging bitch while he was funneling money into offshore crypto accounts and spending weekends at the montage in Laguna with her. And when I finally broke and threw a glass at the wall, he filmed it on his phone and showed it to our marriage counselor to prove I was unstable."
I felt the blood drain from my chest, replaced by an iron resolution.
"He had Marley film the kids throwing the presents away yesterday," I told her. "He stood on the porch in the sweater I gave him, watching them do it, so Marley would send the video to you."
Bethany’s jaw tightened until the tendons stood out against her throat. "He wanted me to attack you. He wanted me to file an emergency motion for sole custody so he could walk into court, act like the martyred father trapped between two hysterical women, and abandon all three of them without looking like the villain who packed his bags on Christmas Eve."
"Yes," I said.
Bethany folded the papers once, her fingers pressing into the creases until her nails turned white. She looked around the bright, immaculate foyer of the home she had once helped decorate, then looked directly into my eyes.
"Where is Carlsbad?" she asked.
"Poinsettia Park Way," I answered. "Thirty-four minutes north if the holiday traffic is light."
May you like
Bethany reached into her purse, pulled out her car keys, and tossed them lightly in her palm with a sharp, metallic ring.
"The kids have iPads in the back of the car," Bethany said, her lips curving into a cold, terrifying smile. "Let’s go show Marley what a real documentary looks like."
