Chapter 2 - What Daddy Allowed
I stopped breathing.
“What did you say, baby?”
Ellie clung tighter to me.
Daniel stepped around the table. “Claire, she’s upset. Don’t question her right now.”
I backed away from him.
“Don’t tell me how to talk to my child.”
Vanessa’s face had gone still.
Margaret moved faster than I expected for a woman in her sixties. She caught my wrist before I could dial.
“Not here,” she whispered.
I pulled free. “Why not here?”
“Because there are things you don’t understand.”
“Then explain them.”
Nobody did.
That was my answer.
I carried Ellie into the front hall, grabbed our coats, and headed for the door. Daniel followed.
“Claire, please.”
I turned. “Did you tell Vanessa she could discipline Ellie?”
He rubbed both hands over his face. “I told her she could be firm.”
“Firm?” I almost laughed. “She slapped a five-year-old hard enough to leave a handprint.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Then why is everyone acting like this has happened before?”
Daniel froze.
There it was.
I saw it.
A tiny flinch. A delay. Guilt.
“How long?” I asked.
“Claire—”
“How long has she been touching my daughter?”
His eyes filled with something that looked like shame.
“I don’t know.”
That answer was worse than yes.
I opened the door.
Cold November air rushed in.
Daniel grabbed his keys. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“I’m her father.”
“Then act like it.”
He recoiled.
Ellie lifted her head from my shoulder. “Mommy, can we go to Grandma Ruth’s?”
My mother lived thirty minutes away and had never trusted Daniel’s family. I used to think it was because she was stubborn.
Now I wondered if she had seen something I hadn’t.
We made it three steps onto the porch before the front door opened behind us.
Vanessa’s voice was low.
“If you call the police, Claire, you’re going to regret what they find.”
I turned slowly.
“What are they going to find?”
She smiled with half her mouth.
“Ask your husband why Ellie’s school has his mother listed as an emergency guardian instead of you.”
My stomach dropped.
Daniel whispered, “Vanessa, shut up.”
May you like
I looked at him.
And for the first time in twelve years of marriage, my husband looked afraid of me learning the truth.
