Chapter 6 - THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T ANSWER
Ava refused Claire’s calls for two days.
Daniel did not. He sent a flurry of messages that moved from blame to logistics to threat.
Come get the rest of your clothes.
If you turn this into a legal thing, don’t expect to come back.
You’re trying to poison Ava against me because you never wanted her in that house.
That last one almost worked. It struck directly at Claire’s oldest insecurity.
She had spent eleven years trying not to be the woman who replaced anyone, erased anyone, or made a child feel negotiated around.
Ava finally answered on Friday afternoon.
Claire had just finished with a new patient at the clinic when the girl’s name flashed across the screen.
“What?”
No hello. No softness.
“I need to ask you one question,” Claire said. “Did you believe I splashed you on purpose?”
Ava’s silence lasted long enough to answer.
“That’s not why you’re calling.”
“No,” Claire said. “But it matters.”
“Dad says you’re blowing everything up over an accident.”
Claire closed the door of the empty treatment room behind her.
“He grabbed me.”
“You shoved his hand away.”
“Because he had his hand on me.”
Ava breathed out, shaky and young for a second. Then the defensive tone came back.
“You don’t get it.”
“Then help me.”
“I can’t.”
“Because of Daniel?”
Ava said nothing.
“Because of the money?”
A sharp inhale.
“I knew you’d make it about that.”
Claire kept her voice steady. “Ava, if your college fund is gone, that is about you.”
The line went dead.
May you like
Claire stood alone in the treatment room with her phone still to her ear and understood something Erica had warned her about that morning:
sometimes a child protects the same person who is frightening them, because choosing the truth would cost too much all at once.
