Chapter 4
The investigation found the school registrar had received the forged papers from Patricia personally.
She had also received a donation check for the school’s literacy garden that same week.
The registrar claimed coincidence.
James called it bribery with flowers.
The district placed her on leave.
Patricia’s attorney stopped returning calls for two days.
Laura moved out of Patricia’s guesthouse and into a small rental apartment across town.
That surprised me.
She called me from the parking lot of a furniture store.
“I need Ethan’s bed from my mother’s house.”
“I’ll meet you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
“I know.”
We went with a police standby.
Patricia opened the door and looked at us like we were thieves.
“You’re taking my grandson’s things?”
Laura stood straighter than I had seen in years.
“I’m taking my son’s bed.”
“Your son needs stability.”
“He needs truth.”
Patricia laughed.
“You think Marcus will stay now because a judge scolded me? He’ll leave again. Men like him always do.”
Laura flinched.
I saw how deep that arrow had lived in her.
I wanted to snap back.
But this was not mine to answer.
Laura lifted her chin.
“Maybe he will travel for work. Maybe I hated that. Maybe I was lonely. But you turned loneliness into a weapon.”
Patricia’s mouth tightened.
“I protected you.”
“No. You made me afraid of everyone but you.”
That landed.
Patricia’s face changed.
Only for a second.
Then she turned cold again.
“If you walk out with him, don’t come back.”
Laura looked at the house.
The expensive curtains.
The framed family photos.
The dining room where I had once been corrected for using the wrong fork.
Then she looked at Ethan’s bed frame behind me.
“I’m not coming back.”
We carried the bed out in pieces.
Ethan helped choose where it went in Laura’s new apartment.
He picked the room with the streetlight outside the window.
“So I can see if Dad comes,” he said.
Laura went still.
I crouched beside him.
“Buddy, when I come, I’ll knock. You don’t have to watch for me.”
He nodded.
“But you will come?”
“Yes.”
Laura covered her face.
That became our new start.
Not romantic.
May you like
Not repaired.
Just two parents standing in a half-empty apartment trying to make a little boy feel safe in two homes.
