Chapter 3 - Every Time I Left, Something Happened
Nat’s pediatrician found no physical injury beyond a faint scrape on his elbow.
Emotionally, she was more concerned.
Nat had started wetting the bed again.
He had begun complaining of stomachaches before going back to Walter’s house.
Claire admitted she had noticed both.
“I thought it was the move,” she said in the parking lot.
“So did I.”
That failure belonged to both of them.
The pediatrician referred Nat to a child therapist named Melissa Grant and advised Claire and Julian to keep him away from Walter and Evelyn for now.
When Claire emailed Evelyn that afternoon asking her not to contact Nat, Evelyn answered within three minutes.
This is ridiculous. He is manipulating you.
Claire showed Julian.
Then another message appeared.
Walter has done everything for your family, and this is how you repay him.
Julian took a screenshot.
Not because he knew what he would do with it.
Because he had finally stopped assuming family conversations would remain harmless.
That evening, he asked Nat a careful question.
“Buddy, when you said Grandma Evelyn and Grandpa were mean when I left, do you remember any of the times?”
Claire sat beside him.
They did not interrogate him.
They did not ask leading questions.
Nat remembered fragments.
Evelyn throwing away a drawing he had made for Julian because “nobody wants that junk.”
Walter refusing to let him sit at the dining table because “Mercers are sitting there.”
A Saturday when Evelyn made him stay alone in the upstairs hallway while the adults ate brunch downstairs.
Nothing Nat described involved serious physical injury.
That almost made Julian angrier.
These were small enough acts to hide.
Small enough to explain away individually.
But they all had the same message.
You are temporary.
Julian opened the calendar on his phone.
The Saturday Nat remembered was April 18.
Julian had been at a Hinsdale project.
Not because he was supposed to be there.
Walter had called at 9:10 that morning and told him the client was threatening to cancel.
The client had been perfectly calm when Julian arrived.
Another incident Nat remembered happened May 3.
Julian had been sent to Barrington to inspect stonework.
Again, Walter had personally asked him to go.
Julian started writing down dates.
Claire watched him.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know yet.”
But a third date matched.
Then a fourth.
Every one of Nat’s clearest memories happened on a day Walter had changed Julian’s schedule personally.
Julian called his sister Brooke.
She worked in commercial real estate and had no role in Mercer Residential Group, but she knew their father better than almost anyone.
“Did Dad ever tell you I was having problems with Claire?”
Brooke hesitated.
“He said the marriage was strained.”
“When?”
“Maybe two months ago.”
“Our marriage wasn’t strained two months ago.”
Another pause.
“Julian, what happened?”
He told her.
Brooke was horrified by what Evelyn and Walter had done.
Then she said something worse.
“Dad told me not to stop by the mansion after school anymore.”
Julian sat up.
“Why?”
“He said Evelyn needed uninterrupted afternoons with Nat.”
“When did he say that?”
May you like
“Right after Easter.”
That was when Julian had first told Walter he and Claire were planning to begin Nat’s stepparent adoption.
