Your Ex Wants the Dog

The story so far

Linda calls from her car so Jake's dad won't hear. She sounds tired. "He doesn't want that dog," she says. "He wants to win." She tells you Jake signed a lease on a fourth-floor studio with no elevator and works double shifts at the warehouse. She saw who walked Biscuit at Thanksgiving, who brought his food, who cleaned up when he got into the pie. She'll say all of it in front of a judge. But she makes you promise: Jake finds out at the hearing, not before. You think about Christmas at Linda's house, the ornament with Biscuit's paw print she still hangs every year. Accepting means a mother testifying against her son, for you, over a dog.