Chapter 9 - The Counselor Remembered Something Different
Dad did not call Ms. Parker and demand answers.
His attorney did.
That distinction frustrated me because I wanted everything handled immediately.
Real life did not move that way.
By Tuesday, Dad had arranged an appointment for himself with his attorney and asked whether Ethan should continue seeing the same counselor.
The attorney’s answer was careful.
Don’t interrogate Ethan.
Don’t tell him what to say.
Don’t stop treatment abruptly.
Raise concerns through appropriate channels.
Later that afternoon, Ms. Parker called Dad after receiving permission to discuss scheduling issues already covered by the parenting case.
I only heard Dad’s side.
“Yes.”
“No, I understand.”
“When?”
Then a longer silence.
Afterward, he sat down.
“What?”
Dad looked at Ethan’s abandoned cereal bowl before answering.
“Ms. Parker remembers your mother asking to speak with her alone after two sessions.”
“That’s normal, isn’t it?”
“Could be.”
“What else?”
“She said your mother was very focused on getting written confirmation that Ethan resisted overnights.”
I felt a slow pressure building in my chest.
“Did she give it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan never consistently said he was afraid of me.”
That should have been reassuring.
Instead, Dad looked more worried.
“There’s something else.”
At one session, Ms. Parker had asked Ethan what happened before he came to Dad’s house.
Ethan said Gary “helped him get ready.”
At the time, nobody thought much of it.
Neither had she.
But after the incident in the kitchen, the phrase sounded different.
One old detail.
New meaning.
Dad’s attorney then received something that destabilized the explanation again.
Mom had not filed a formal relocation request.
Not yet.
There was no court motion asking to move Ethan to Cincinnati or Kentucky.
No signed lease.
No school transfer.
Nothing.
If this whole campaign was about moving with Gary, why hadn’t she actually started the process?
That evening, Grandma called me.
She had found something in her own messages from Mom.
A text from nearly four months earlier.
I just need to make it to the review hearing. After that, things get easier.
The review hearing was three weeks away.
Dad had assumed it was routine.
Mom apparently had not.
May you like
And for the first time, I understood that we had been looking at the wrong deadline.
The kitchen confrontation had happened exactly three weeks before a hearing where the court would review how the temporary parenting arrangement was working.
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