Over the next couple of days I watched and listened carefully to what was being said around me. Ashley commented to me several times that I seemed different, but I wasn't willing to discuss it with her. First of all, I wasn't sure whether she'd run to Daddy and try to make trouble. But more than anything, the idea of Mike purposely working against me seemed absurd.

I was dying to know where he had received his information about my time alone with the younger kids, and even though I felt guilty, I questioned them. Not directly, just asking them stuff like whether they thought I yelled at them too much when Mike was gone or if they'd had a nice time at the beach, etc. They acted a little bewildered but told me it had been fun, and I believed they were telling the truth. Andrew, who was 7 at the time, stated profoundly that Mike had made the same inquiries. Only my husband had confided in him in a secretive way that he'd learned from "one of the other children" that I was mean to them the whole time. Andy said he looked at his father and said it wasn't so. However, it seemed to him that the more he described our few days together, the more worried his father had acted.

Did Mike want me to have a difficult time with the children? Did he expect them to complain about me? It certainly seemed so.

A few days went by, and the subject was dropped. I received several telephone calls from Bart, Ashley's Oakside counselor, suggesting that Mike and I come in to participate in her therapy. He was concerned because she wasn't trying to adjust to the school and argued with everyone. That's our Ash- butting heads with everyone but unable to comprehend why she's so unhappy!

I asked if there was one particular thing which was causing trouble. To which he replied that she was still not obeying the dress code. I got a little miffed and asked if he'd noticed that Ashley was wearing new, more conservative clothing. "I noticed that the clothes are new, Julie, but not more conservative." A few more questions later and I had my answer- Ashley was stuffing one of her short skirts in her backpack and changed as soon as she arrived at school.

Another problem was the girl's incessant smoking. Oakside, like most school campuses, has a no-smoking policy, and twice Ashley has been caught with cigarettes at school. I know she smokes- it's one of the small discussion topics between me and Mike in which we disagree hotly. I don't think we should tolerate it, but he keeps saying that we can't take everything away from her. Considering it is illegal for a 16-year-old to smoke, I have begged in vain for him to reconsider.

This is mostly Heidi's fault, I fumed. If the lady hadn't supported the idea of Ashley smoking in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess. But even the counselor had no idea that Mike wouldn't follow the rules we set up as a couple- three cigarettes a day, period! While he hasn't allowed her to smoke in front of the children, this is not the deal we set up. The idea as I understood it was to wean her from smoking and gradually cut down until she stopped altogether. But every time I brought up the subject to Mike, he protested that Ash's cigarette habit was going to be awfully difficult for her to break just like that. Some habit! She had been smoking for what? Six months? Maybe I'm clueless to the extent that nicotine works on people, but I felt no sympathy. It was a constant irritation every time that Ashley got stressed out that she went crying to her father for an extra cigarette, and he supported her all the way. He refused to even consider making her stop.