Then Jason.
Then Mom again.
On the camera, she started pounding on my door.
“Riley!”
I tapped the microphone on the doorbell app.
My voice came through the little speaker outside my apartment.
“Hi, Mom.”
All five adults and children seemed to look at the camera at once.
Mom stepped closer.
“Open the door.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
I looked beyond the pool toward the bright blue water.
“I’m in Nassau.”
The silence outside my Denver apartment was spectacular.
“Nassau?” Mom repeated.
“The Bahamas.”
“I know where Nassau is!”
“Then we’re caught up.”
Jason walked toward the camera.
“You actually left?”
“I told you I wouldn’t be home.”
Mom grabbed the door handle again.
Then she finally understood why her key didn’t work.
“You changed the lock?”
“Yes.”
“You changed your lock because of me?”
“No, Mom.”
I took another sip of coffee.
“I changed it because you kept acting like my no was something you could unlock.”
For the first time in years, nobody on the other side of the conversation had an immediate answer.
And watching them stand outside that locked door, I realized my family was finally about to learn the difference between assuming I would be available and actually having my consent.
Full story continuation
Mom recovered first.
She always did.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“No.”
“Three children are standing outside in the cold.”
“I can see that.”
“You need to fix this.”
That phrase again.
Fix this.
I looked at the doorbell feed.
Emma was staring at the camera with the serious expression she got when adults were arguing and she was pretending not to listen.
Oliver had started kicking a little patch of dirty snow beside the walkway.
Sky was bundled against Stephanie’s chest.
None of this was their fault.
So I kept my voice calm.
“Jason and Stephanie need to take the kids home.”
Jason leaned toward the camera.
“We can’t. Our cabin reservation starts today.”
“You live forty minutes away.”
“That’s not the point.”
Actually, it was exactly the point.
They had a home.
The children were not stranded.
Nobody had been abandoned at an airport.
Nobody was in danger.
They had simply arrived at a place where they had been explicitly told childcare would not be available and discovered childcare was, in fact, not available.
Stephanie finally spoke.
“Riley, Mom told us you were just being dramatic and that you’d calm down.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
There it was.
I had wondered why her text two weeks earlier had simply said “Okay.”
She had believed me.
Then my mother had apparently overwritten my answer again.
“I texted you directly,” I said.
“I know.”
“And I said I would not be home.”
“I know, but your mom said—”
“Stephanie.”
She stopped.
“I’m not mad at you right now. But you had my answer in writing.”
She looked away from the camera.
Jason rubbed both hands over his face.
Mom cut in.
“This is unbelievably selfish.”
“No. Selfish would have been agreeing to take three children and then disappearing. I never agreed.”