Chapter 2 - The Father I Thought Had Walked Away
I took Owen to my sister Natalie’s house that night.
Grant called twenty-seven times.
I turned off my phone.
The burgundy envelope sat on Natalie’s dining table between us.
The first page was a letter from Caleb.
My ex-husband.
Owen’s father.
I hadn’t seen his handwriting in years.
Rachel, I don’t know how much of this you know. I’m sending copies because I can’t keep assuming you’re the one answering me.
My stomach tightened.
Behind the letter were printouts from OurFamilyLink, the co-parenting service we had used after our divorce.
Caleb’s addiction after a back injury had destroyed our marriage.
There had been pills.
Lies.
A DUI.
One frightening night when he showed up at my apartment impaired and demanded to see two-year-old Owen.
I had been right to protect my child.
Eventually Caleb entered residential treatment.
For a while, he had supervised visits.
Then he disappeared.
That was the story I had carried for five years.
Except the printouts showed messages.
Dozens of them.
Thirty-two months sober. Could we restart supervised visits?
I’m willing to meet with Owen’s therapist first.
Support payment went through today. Please tell me if he needs anything for school.
I know I don’t get to demand forgiveness. I’m asking for a safe way to earn contact.
Some messages showed replies from my account.
Stop contacting us.
Owen doesn’t ask about you.
Grant is his father now.
I had written none of them.
Natalie read over my shoulder.
“Rachel…”
“I didn’t send these.”
At the bottom of several pages was technical information from an account-access audit.
Different login locations.
My phone.
My office laptop.
And another device repeatedly accessing the account from an IP address registered to Grant’s architecture firm.
My throat went dry.
Owen stared at me.
“Dad sent that to Grandma Mercer.”
Caleb’s mother.
I had not spoken to her in years either.
“She gave it to me yesterday.”
“You saw her?”
“She came to my school.”
I stiffened.
“She didn’t come inside. Mr. Harris brought me out.”
His school counselor.
“She said Dad was going to court because he thought you weren’t getting his messages.”
I looked again at Grant’s login records.
Suddenly I remembered something.
Five years earlier, when Caleb supposedly stopped contacting me, Grant had offered to manage the co-parenting account because every notification sent me into a panic.
May you like
I had given him the password.
I had thanked him for protecting me.
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