He thanked me. Before hanging up, he apologized for the porch again and for the text about my ego. I told him I had heard him and that I wasn't interested in being part of his relationship anymore. Then I ended the call and stood in the garage staring at the unfinished shelf. I had imagined the day Landon discovered Minerva's behavior would feel like winning a contest. Instead, it felt like being called by a stranger who was standing in a hole I knew very well and asking whether there was a ladder nearby.
I didn't offer him a ladder that required me to climb back into the hole. That distinction mattered. I continued working on the shelf and finished it before dinner. When Jonah asked how my evening was going, I told him that Landon had called for advice.
Jonah laughed once, then asked whether I had told him to marry her faster. I admitted the thought had occurred to me. We both laughed, but the humor passed without needing a new audience.
Two days later, Billie called with news I hadn't requested. She sounded incredulous and upset in equal measure. Minerva had told Landon she was pregnant, then a recording surfaced in which she appeared to describe the claim as a way to make him stay. Billie said Landon's roommates had shared the recording with him after hearing Minerva joke about how easily people could be frightened by the possibility of a baby.
"I don't know what to believe," Billie said. "She says the recording was taken out of context. Landon says she admitted she wasn't pregnant. Mom is furious. I wish I'd never heard any of it."
I sat down at the kitchen table. A pregnancy was not a punch line, regardless of what Minerva might have said. People could be frightened, uncertain, or dishonest about it, and I wasn't in a position to determine medical facts from secondhand gossip. I told Billie I hoped her sister would get whatever support she needed but that I didn't want recordings sent to me or updates about intimate matters that were no longer connected to my safety.
"You're right," Billie said after a pause. "I'm sorry. I keep calling because you were the person who knew what was happening before the rest of us did."
"I only knew my part," I said. "And I didn't understand that part nearly as well as I thought."
Billie admitted she was exhausted. Minerva had left her apartment in the middle of the night to return to Landon, then seemed to treat each new argument as a reason to return to her parents. Doris and her husband had offered a spare room on the condition that Minerva look for work, contribute something toward expenses when she could, and participate in household routines. She called those conditions punishment. They called them the rules of living together.