Chapter 10 - The Plan Was Never About Postpartum Depression
Loretta brought one final set of messages to Blythe’s attorney.
She had delayed because they made her look terrible.
Blythe respected that admission more than another excuse.
The exchange began five months before Arlo’s birth.
Damon: If Blythe leaves after the baby comes, I need to be ready.
Loretta: Why would she leave?
Damon: Because she always runs to her father when we fight.
Loretta: That doesn’t mean she’ll take your child.
Damon: You don’t understand women like her.
Weeks later:
Damon: If she gets bad after delivery, I need you to see it.
Loretta: Bad how?
Damon: Crying. Not sleeping. Panicking. Saying she can’t do this.
Loretta: Most new mothers do some of that.
Damon: Exactly.
Blythe read the last word again.
Exactly.
There was the major truth.
Damon had not predicted that Blythe would become dangerously unstable.
He had identified ordinary postpartum vulnerability as something he might be able to reinterpret.
The hospital wristband.
The exhaustion.
The crying.
The isolation from visitors.
The canceled follow-up Blythe thought her doctor had canceled.
Three earlier details now fit together.
Damon had wanted a version of the first postpartum week in which he controlled who saw Blythe, what they heard about her, and whether outside professionals spoke to her directly.
Not because he already planned to take Arlo immediately.
Because he was terrified Blythe would eventually leave him, as she had threatened during arguments.
He wanted leverage before she could.
It was less cinematic than a secret conspiracy.
And more frightening.
It grew directly from who Damon was.
A man who experienced uncertainty as abandonment.
A man who tried to survive abandonment by making other people less free.
Loretta had finally turned against the plan when Damon asked her to sign a statement saying Blythe had “always been emotionally unstable.”
Loretta refused.
She had known Blythe only four years.
She could not truthfully say it.
Damon became furious.
That was when Loretta called the hospital social worker.
Then Ellis.
Blythe pushed the messages away.
Her attorney asked whether she needed a break.
“No.”
For months Blythe had been asking why Damon attacked her that morning.
Now she understood.
Arlo’s crying had triggered the explosion.
But the violence had grown inside a much older fear.
Damon believed he was losing control of the family.
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And when Loretta exposed the story he had been constructing, he lost the one thing he had been trying to secure.
Credibility.
