The Custody Lie Between Us

"Are you just waiting for him to hang himself?" I demanded.

Twenty minutes after Colin's text lit up my screen, Daniel placed my phone face-down on the clinic hallway bench. He did not ask to read the rest of the thread.

"I am waiting for you to take Sadie inside," Daniel replied, pointing toward the frosted glass door of Dr. Eva Patel's office.

His refusal to press the advantage made me want a fight I could understand.

"You saw the message," I pushed, refusing to let it go. "You know Colin is hiding something about Northgate. Why aren't you interrogating me?"

"Because your fiance's secrets are your problem," Daniel said, his voice flat. "I care about the kid sitting in that waiting chair. Go to the appointment, Molly."

"You always do this," I shot back, gripping the edge of the wooden bench. "You act like you are above the mess."

Daniel finally turned his head, locking his eyes on mine. "I am waiting for you to treat Lena's words as evidence instead of wounds. Until you do that, arguing with you is a waste of breath."

"I know how to handle my sister," I argued.

"You know how to survive her," he corrected. "There is a difference."

My phone vibrated against the wood. Colin calling again. The screen flashed his name brightly.

I muted the phone and slid Sadie's crayon drawing into my folder.

Dr. Eva Patel sat cross-legged on a blue foam mat. Sadie knelt beside a wooden dollhouse, clutching five painted peg figures in her small fists. The room smelled faintly of lavender.

"Where does this one go, Sadie?" Dr. Patel asked, tapping a peg painted with a yellow dress.

"That is Mom," Sadie mumbled. She dropped the yellow figure onto a plastic hospital bed. She pushed the bed into the corner of the toy room, isolating it from the rest of the furniture.

She grabbed two more figures. One tall brown peg and a smaller green one. She placed them shoulder-to-shoulder next to a miniature kitchen chair.

"Aunt Molly and Dad," my niece announced.

I dug my fingernails into my palms.

Sadie picked up the fourth peg, a rigid gray block. She marched it across the carpet, opened the trunk of a plastic toy car, and shoved it inside. "Colin goes away."

"Why does Colin go in the car?" Dr. Patel asked gently, keeping her tone neutral.

"Mom said so," Sadie answered, not looking up from the carpet. "She told me if Daddy falls back in love with Aunt Molly, Mom gets to come home."

The air in the small room evaporated.

"Why would your mom say that?" I asked, my voice cracking on the final word.

Sadie stacked a tiny wooden block on top of the car trunk, locking the gray peg inside. "Because Mom wins every time she loses."

I wanted to snatch the dolls away and tell an eight-year-old that her mother was trapping everyone inside adult fantasies.

Instead, I knelt on the edge of the mat, forcing my hands to uncurl. "When did Mom tell you this rule, bug?"

Sadie held up her small hands, counting on her fingers. "The day before she drove the car into the ditch." She folded one finger down. "And the night she dropped the empty medicine bottle in the sink."

The automatic sliding doors of the medical building parted. The afternoon sun hit my face, but the warmth vanished instantly.

Colin stood directly on the sidewalk, blocking the path to my sedan.

He held a printed ivory paper in his right hand.

"The bridal shop needs an answer by noon," Colin stated, holding the sheet out. "The cancellation policy is strict. The twelve-hundred-dollar deposit is non-refundable."

I looked at the crisp black text. "You tracked my phone location to hand me a dress receipt?"

"I came to remind you of our actual life," he countered, stepping closer. "You ignored six of my calls. If Daniel stays in your daily schedule, this wedding falls apart."

"Sadie is not a schedule," I snapped, snatching the paper from his grip. "She is a child who just spent an hour talking about empty pill bottles."

Colin leaned in close, lowering his voice so only I could hear. "Are you prioritizing a never-started first love over your future husband?"

Ten feet away, Daniel leaned against my passenger door. He heard the accusation but did not defend himself.

Daniel simply reached into the backseat, pulled out Sadie's noise-canceling headphones, and slid them over her ears. He turned the volume dial up, tuning us out.

I looked back at my fiance. I didn't offer my usual apology. I didn't try to smooth over his bruised ego.

"The wedding date can change," I told Colin, folding the ivory paper in half and shoving it into my purse. "Her placement cannot."

Colin's jaw tightened. Finding no surrender, he walked back to his sedan.

The apartment felt suffocatingly quiet. Sadie sat at the kitchen island, eating a bowl of dry cereal with her headphones still securely over her ears.

I dumped her purple unicorn backpack onto the living room rug to sort her school folders. My hand brushed against a hidden zipper on the side panel. The metal teeth scraped against my skin.

I pulled the zipper open.

A cheap silver voice recorder fell onto the carpet. A bright red lipstick kiss stained the plastic casing.

I picked it up. A piece of masking tape ran across the back. The black marker handwriting read: Truth for Baby 1.

Daniel stepped into the living room with the mail and stopped. The color drained from his face.

"Put that away," Daniel said, his voice dropping to a harsh, terrified whisper.

"This is Lena's handwriting," I replied, turning the device over to examine the buttons.

"Do not play it in front of her," he ordered, stepping forward and reaching for the recorder.

I pulled my hand back, out of his reach. "Are you deciding what I get to know again?" I challenged, gripping the plastic tight.

"I am protecting my daughter from a psychological weapon," Daniel pleaded, his eyes darting toward the kitchen. "Give it to me."

"I protect this family," I fired back. "I need to know what she is putting in Sadie's head."

"You are going to regret hearing this," Daniel warned.

"I already regret handing her my savings account," I said.

I pressed the green play button.

Static hissed from the tiny speaker. Then, Lena's raspy, slurred voice filled the room.

"If Auntie says Daddy didn't lie to me," Lena crooned through the recording, her tone sickly sweet. "You ask her why she seduced him first nine years ago."

Sadie's bedroom door clicked open down the hall.