The judge’s ruling was decisive. I was awarded primary physical and legal custody. Caspian was granted alternating weekends and a two-week block during the summer. Furthermore, the judge ordered Caspian to pay eight months of retroactive child support—a substantial sum that his legal team attempted with incredible creativity to reduce. They failed spectacularly.
News in our suburban enclave travels with the speed of a lit fuse. It didn’t take long for the details of the settlement to reach my family through the neighborhood grapevine.
Two days after the final gavel fell, my cell phone vibrated. The caller ID flashed Levette’s name. It was the first time she had initiated contact since the night she denied us entry.
I let it ring three times, regulating my breathing, before sliding my thumb across the screen. “Hello.”
“Coralie, darling!” my mother cooed, her voice dripping with a sickening, artificial warmth. “We heard the news about the settlement. We are just so incredibly relieved that it all worked out for you!”
She spoke as if she had been enthusiastically cheering from my corner of the ring the entire time, rather than locking the arena doors from the outside.
“Are you?” I asked, my tone glacial.
“Well, of course! Coralie, you have to understand the position we were in back then—”
“Mom,” I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave, carrying the weight of a judge rendering a verdict. “I do understand. I understood everything that night on the porch. With crystal clarity.”
A heavy, uncomfortable pause choked the line.
“We were simply worried you were acting out of haste,” she attempted to pivot, her voice taking on a defensive edge. “Divorce is—”
“I had three small children shivering next to a garbage bag,” I stated, the anger finally bleeding through my composure. “I was not being hasty. I was begging my parents for shelter. And you chose a man who didn’t even want me over your own daughter.”
