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So last night...(Damn this is long...sorry...)
DH, the kiddo, and I went out to dinner for DH's aunt's birthday.
On our way home, my neighbor calls. She says (sounding panicked), "Are you home?!" I say, "No. We went out to dinner and we're on our way back." Dead silence. I say "V?! Are you there?!" And she starts sobbing.
She tells me that her husband kicked her and her son (from her 1st marriage) out! I asked what happened. She said they got in a fight over two different jobs she's been offered. One is for a large bank and after training her hours would be mid-shift hours (12-9) and the other is for a small law firm and she would have daytime hours. Her H has been promoted to the weekend supervisor for his job and I guess this means his hours during the week would be pushed back to getting off work at 7 or 8. Her son is 7.
Her husband wants her to take the bank job, even though that means that neither of them would be spending any time with the son after school. Furthermore, the bank job could entail some weekends and her H would be working weekends as well, so weekend care would become an issue as well. His reasoning is that the job seems 'more secure' than the law firm. She now doesn't want to take the bank job because her son would essentially be raise by a babysitter and she doesn't want that. He basically, in so many words, told her that it didn't matter.
I guess the fight escalated really bad. She finally go so frustrated that she threw her sunglasses and a bowl of grapefruit. It's my understanding that it went in his direction, but she wasn't intending to hit him. She was just so frustrated. He got mad and told her to 'GET THE F OUT!' or he was going to call the cops on her. She tried to reason with him but he wasn't having it.
So she grabbed some stuff for her and her son and left. I guess she came by our house to see if we were home and if she could leave her son with us while she figured out what she was going to do.
She was hinting around that she wanted me to offer her a place to stay. She said she was going to try to go to her friends house in town, but she wasn't sure if the friend was going to be home. She said she didn't want to go to her mom's and involve her mom. Thankfully, her friend was home.
I didn't come right out and offer up our house for several reasons. 1) I didn't need my family and especially the kiddo involved in a domestic dispute. We live right next door to them. If he found out she was at our house, who knows what could have happened? If we lived across town or on another side of the neighborhood even, we might have considered it. 2) I was not going to offer w/o discussing with DH first. 3) No matter what happens, the house is in her H's name. We have to live next to him. So if it appears we're taking sides, he may be inclined to do *something* to us. I don't trust him. As I said to DH, we can't afford to borrow trouble, especially not someone else's. 4) I didn't want her son at our house talking to the kiddo about what went on. They're both too young to be dealing with this. I feel badly for her son, but I have to protect mine.
While I was on the phone with her, I was trying to use very general words so as not to tip off the kiddo on who I was talking to and what about. Then my H gets a call from his brother and w/o thinking, he says something about me being on the phone with our neighbor and there was a situation but he wasn't sure what was going on. I got off the phone and he asked me if it was V and I said, "It's not for you to worry about buddy." Gah.
I talked to her this morning. She called me to ask if he had went to work. I told her he had. She wanted to go to the house to get some stuff because she'd forgotten a lot of necessities in her panic.
She told me she doesn't think she can stay with him. She told me some other stuff that's been going on and it was not good. I told her that she needs to make a plan then to take care of herself and her son. I offered her an ear and told her that if she had issues getting an apt. in our district and didn't want to move her kiddo out of ours until the end of the school year, she could use our address for any mailings the school may send out. She said she was going back to the house after she dropped her son off for visitation with his dad to talk to her H.
The reason she left and didn't want him to call the cops is that she's in the middle of a contentious custody dispute with her ex-H and his parents. It's a long drawn out situation, but she was terrified if the cops were called it could affect her ongoing case. Now she's scared that since she left, she has no right to stay there.
I don't know what's going to happen from here on out, but I feel for her. I really do. I told her that once she gets settled, she really should consider counseling for herself and her son.
Re: So last night...(Damn this is long...sorry...)
Awful.
Steer clear, Big Tuna. Head for open waters.
Woooow. You were right to stay away.
I'm not sure she's right about the house. Even though our last house was only in my name and I'd lived in it alone for 8 years, when DH and I married it became ours in the eyes of the law.