“How did you… how…” Jasper’s face flushed a deep, angry red. “It was ten minutes! You’re acting like I abandoned him in the woods!”
“You told me you were watching him. You made him lie to me. That’s the part you don’t get to walk away from.”
The social worker appeared around the corner, holding a clipboard like a shield. “Sir? We need to speak with you.”
Some nurses and a doctor down the hall stared at us curiously.
For the first time in all the years I’d known him, Jasper looked truly unsure of himself.
The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of legal meetings and hard conversations.
Kelly never appeared in court. In fact, she vanished from the picture pretty quickly once things got “complicated.” I guess she wasn’t as ready for the reality of parenting as Jasper wanted to believe.
Howard started therapy. He needed a safe place to talk about why he felt like he had to protect his dad. It’s a lot of weight for a child to carry.
The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of legal meetings and hard conversations.
For the first time since the divorce, I stopped worrying about being “difficult.”
