Chapter 5 - The Room Daniel Had Stopped Entering
Daniel returned to the house with Aaron while Vanessa was at work.
He wanted Lily’s clothes, medical records, and Megan’s keepsake box.
While packing, he noticed Lily’s bedroom looked different.
Several framed photographs of Megan were gone.
Daniel opened drawers.
Nothing.
He went to the hall closet.
Still nothing.
Then Aaron called from the guest room.
“Dan.”
Inside the bottom drawer of an old dresser sat the missing frames.
Face down.
Wrapped in towels.
Daniel stared.
Vanessa had told him months earlier that Lily had been knocking the frames over, so she moved them “temporarily.”
Daniel had never checked.
He picked up one photograph.
Megan holding newborn Lily in the hospital.
Behind it was a sticky note in Margaret’s handwriting.
This is unhealthy for a new marriage.
Aaron read it over his shoulder.
“That your mother-in-law?”
Daniel nodded.
Another photograph had a note.
Vanessa shouldn’t have to live with a shrine.
Daniel felt something collapse inside him.
This was not simply Vanessa losing her temper at dinner.
There had been an organized effort to make Lily smaller inside her own home.
Her mother’s photographs removed.
Her crying dismissed.
Her attachment to Daniel treated like manipulation.
And Margaret had been reinforcing it.
Aaron looked at him.
“What are you going to do?”
Daniel put the photographs into Lily’s bag.
May you like
“First, I’m going to stop pretending this marriage can be discussed like a normal fight.”
Then he called a family-law attorney.
