Chapter 12 - The Night Nobody Could Hide Behind Holly Anymore
The confrontation happened in a mediator’s office rather than Sabine’s dining room.
That was Denise’s suggestion.
Neutral chairs.
No birthday decorations.
No child present.
Sabine sat across from Greer and Eli.
Rick sat at the far end of the table.
For nearly ten minutes, nobody mentioned Holly.
Then Sabine did.
“She asked me to protect him.”
Eli’s jaw tightened.
“She asked you to protect him until I was stable.”
“You relapsed while she was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“You disappeared for two weeks.”
“Yes.”
“She thought you were dead.”
Eli looked at the table.
“Yes.”
Greer had never heard that detail.
Sabine looked at her.
“That’s the part nobody wants to talk about now.”
“I’m talking about it,” Eli said.
Sabine’s eyes moved back to him.
“I hated you.”
“I know.”
“I watched my sister cry over you while she was dying.”
“I know.”
“And six weeks later she was gone and there was a newborn in my house.”
Her voice broke for the first time.
Not theatrically.
Almost angrily.
“I fed him at two in the morning. I sat in emergency rooms. I learned every stupid dinosaur he liked. I held him through fevers. You sent letters.”
Eli flinched.
“You wouldn’t let me do anything else.”
“Because I didn’t trust you.”
“Then why pretend to be Greer?”
Sabine stopped.
The mediator let the silence remain.
Greer leaned forward.
“That’s the question.”
Sabine looked toward Rick.
He did not rescue her.
Finally she said, “Because you kept getting better.”
Eli stared at her.
Sabine laughed once, bitterly.
“There. Is that what you wanted?”
“No,” Greer said. “Keep going.”
Sabine’s eyes filled.
“If he stayed sick, I knew what my job was.”
Greer said nothing.
“If he stayed unreliable, Fletcher needed me.”
“And when he didn’t?”
Sabine looked at her hands.
“I didn’t know what I was anymore.”
Greer remembered Rick’s words.
Then what am I?
Sabine continued.
“I was forty-one. I had built my whole life around him. People at preschool called me Mom. He called for me at night. And suddenly Eli wanted visits and lawyers and reunification plans and everybody was acting like I was supposed to hand over the child I had raised.”
“No one asked you to stop loving him,” Eli said.
“You wanted to be his father.”
“I am his father.”
Sabine’s face hardened again.
Greer saw the old reflex return.
Control.
“Biology isn’t parenting.”
“No,” Greer said.
Sabine looked at her.
Greer’s voice remained calm.
“But parenting isn’t ownership either.”
That landed.
Rick shifted in his chair.
“I helped start this,” he said.
Sabine turned on him.
“You told me Eli was dangerous.”
“He was unstable.”
“You told me Greer needed to be kept out of it.”
“I did.”
“You told me Holly would want Fletcher protected.”
“She would.”
“Then don’t sit there pretending I invented all of this alone.”
Rick looked at Greer.
“I’m not.”
For once, nobody used Holly’s memory to win.
They let her be dead.
A flawed woman who had loved her children, feared Eli’s addiction and left instructions that frightened people turned into rules she had never written.
The mediator looked at Sabine.
“You still have a decision to make.”
Sabine wiped her face.
“What decision?”
May you like
“Whether you want to remain important to Fletcher more than you want to remain in control of him.”
Sabine did not answer.
