Really?

That’s what you’re going to send me off with, Jack?

Four days and that’s the solution you’ve come up with to fix my thoroughly fucked-up family and marriage?

I laugh, rough and frustrated. “Then my gut is a fucking useless thing. I still don’t know what to do. It’s not telling me a damn thing.”

Jack smiles. He fixes his intense blue eyes on me. “It’s all going to be all right, Alan.”

Fuck, such a trite thing to say.

Why is it always so believable when Jack says it?

*  *  *

Early the next morning I catch the 101 freeway south still without a clear action plan. Even after a sleepless night sifting through my discussions with Jack, trying to find something useful, I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I go home and see Chrissie.

By Ventura, my gut is screaming loudly to me. Only one thing: I’m not leaving my kids again. The clearest thing Jack said last night, the one thing I couldn’t shut off in my head, was about Kaley.

All she sees right now is that you left.

I don’t even need to analyze that to understand it.

I know what that felt like to Kaley.

I lived that, too, with my father.

After deciding to just do what my gut is telling me to do, I stop trying to think everything through and step into action. I call my pilot and tell him to file a flight plan to the UK for tomorrow. I call my assistant and ask her to hire me a nanny, preferably British, able to travel, with a passport, and send her to meet up with us at Heathrow on the day the tour departs from the UK. The kids’ schools were a bit of a hassle when I requested they prepare lesson plans, messenger them to me, and agree to allow Kaley to graduate even though she won’t be finishing her senior year. Arguing with Pacific Palisades Academy to get what I wanted for Kaley didn’t work. I went in another direction. All their unwillingness to accommodate my request, wrapped in that academic superiority about needing to do what’s in the best interests of the children, ended with the offer of a substantial donation.

I pull into the driveway in Pacific Palisades, knowing this is going to be a fight with Chrissie. I’m determined nonetheless. Those are my kids. This is what I have to do for them. For me. To get us on track and start moving in the right direction together I need to work through this with them without Chrissie. She is just going to have to deal with it even if she doesn’t understand why this is necessary. And I am sure as hell not going to explain myself to her.

I’m not ready to think about our marriage. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to try to work it out with Chrissie. It seems impossible to me right now after everything that she’s done. Even though I love her. And even though the thought of walking away scares me to death.

*  *  *

After I touch base with each of the kids, trying to talk with them about everything that’s happened, I make a stop in the nursery to be with Khloe.

I sit with her for a while to collect my bearings again. Krystal and the boys were cautious and standoffish. They’re worried. They don’t know what’s happening. It won’t be all right for them until it feels and looks all right with Chrissie again. I can tell them everything will be fine, but they are meaningless words because the house is pulsing with the worry of their mother. Kaley opened her bedroom door when I knocked, stared at me, and said nothing before she shut it in my face.

Two hours back and Chrissie still hasn’t appeared. Even though my rational self reminds me it was the right thing for her to do with the kids here, it hurts that she didn’t come out and try to fight for me.

I’ve been gone four days.

I haven’t talked to her.

She’s hanging back, like always, waiting for me.

Her in control, but today I am not in disarray.

I kiss Khloe, set her back into her crib, send Lourdes in to keep an eye on her and then I tell Aarsi to take the younger kids out back until I send for them.

I go down the hall and into my bedroom.

Chrissie is sitting curled in a chair, a tissue in her hand, staring blankly out the window. I shut the door and her face snaps toward me.

I sink down on the foot of the bed across from her.

“Do the kids have passports?” I ask, removing the things from my pockets and setting them on the bed to have something to focus on other than her face.

A long moment of silence.

“Yes,” she answers weakly. “Why? Why are you asking me this?”

I shift my gaze back to her. “Have them packed in the morning and ready to go by nine. All of them except Khloe. I’m leaving tomorrow with them for the UK. I’m going to spend a few days with the kids, alone, at my home there. Sort of an impromptu holiday. Then they are going on tour with me. The entire four months. Without you.”

Her eyes go wide. She tenses. Her breath comes in rapid spurts. “You are not taking my children from me, Alan.”

I meet her stare directly.

“That is inaccurate,” I counter coldly. “I’m taking our children, Chrissie. That’s not subject to discussion. Don’t even try to tell me no. Not now.”

“Don’t—please.” She crosses the room to me, panic etched on her face. “Don’t do this, Alan.”

“Go talk to the kids. Tell them they are leaving with me. See that Lourdes packs their things. Do it, Chrissie, or I will. But I think it’s better for them that this comes from you instead of me.”

She stares at me, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. I hold my breath. She looks so sad, so worried, and it cuts deep that I’m responsible for that look. It’s torture, the fractured heaviness between us, and it feels like a slow, suffocating death.

In my head comes the daunting awareness that if I stay on this track with her this is what it will be like tomorrow when I leave. I don’t want that for the kids. And I sure as fuck don’t want it for me because looking at her the way she looks now makes everything sharply adjust inside me and less certain.

“I’m not doing this as some sort of punishment or to hurt you, Chrissie.”

She steps back and it’s a move that signals all too clearly that she doesn’t believe me. She starts to cry. Each tear lands like a knife in my belly.

“Then don’t do it at all,” she sobs, anxiously brushing at her cheeks.

Now that she’s crying I can’t take my eyes off her and I feel her more sharply than I feel me. Her pain. Her fear. Her love. Everything. I feel her above what I feel inside of me.

Every line rehearsed in my head before this fails me. If I walk through that door tomorrow how we are now I will have nothing but a void inside my chest.

I can’t leave us like this.

No matter what has happened.

No matter where we go from here.

I can’t walk from her like this.

I pull her up against me before she can protest and hold her as tightly against me as I can. I bury my lips in her hair. “Chrissie, I love you, but I can’t change this for either of us. Too much has happened. I don’t know where we go from here. I can’t cancel the tour. I can’t stay, and I know if I leave here now they won’t understand and that’s something I won’t ever be able to fix with them. I don’t want to fuck this up.”

She puts her arms around me and I don’t even know what this is. She holds me for a long time. She doesn’t say anything. Her tears stop. She looks up at me, her eyes clear and calm and fixed on mine. “You won’t fuck it up, Alan. I wouldn’t let you out of this house with the most important parts of me if I didn’t believe that. I’ll go talk to the kids. I’ll talk to Lourdes. They’ll be ready in the morning to leave.”

She hurries from the room and doesn’t look back. The blood starts pounding through my head. I don’t know what the hell just happened here.