Chapter 5 - Motherly Doubts and Derek's Filing
Derek kept calling.
When I didn’t answer, he switched tactics again.
He sent flowers to Rachel’s house.
The card read:
Come home. Emily needs both parents.
No apology.
No mention of the fifteen dollars.
No acknowledgment that he’d left his full-term wife in active labor because a client dinner mattered more.
Just an instruction disguised as concern.
I photographed the card and sent it to Laura.
Then Derek called my mother.
That hurt more.
My mother, Susan, lived in Cincinnati and had spent most of my marriage telling me Derek was “difficult but successful,” as though success excused everything else.
He earned more than I did.
Owned a consulting firm.
Wore expensive watches.
Remembered everyone’s birthday at family dinners.
To outsiders, he was organized, generous, ambitious.
To me, he was the man who once removed my access to online banking because I questioned a $6,000 withdrawal.
My mother called Rachel’s house after dinner.
“Claire, marriage is hard,” she said.
“So is labor.”
Silence.
“He said you left without telling him where his child was.”
“Our child.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I know exactly what he means.”
She sighed.
“What do you want me to do?”
For once, I knew.
“Believe me before he explains me to you.”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then, more quietly:
“Tell me what happened.”
So I did.
All of it.
When I reached the part about Derek tossing fifteen dollars onto the counter, my mother stopped interrupting.
When I told her about the bank transfers, she asked me to repeat the amount.
“Forty-three thousand seven hundred.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“No.”
Another silence.
Then she asked:
“Do you need money?”
I started crying.
Not because I needed it.
Because it was the first practical question anyone in my family had asked without telling me what I should feel.
“I’m okay for now,” I said.
“All right. Then if that changes, you call me.”
Two weeks later, Derek filed for divorce in Ohio before I could.
Laura had expected it.
“He wants home-field advantage,” she explained. “And he wants to frame the story first.”
His filing described me as unstable.
He claimed I’d abruptly abandoned the marital home, concealed our daughter’s birth, and interfered with his parental rights.
He also requested temporary sole custody.
Rachel nearly threw the papers across the kitchen.
“He left you in labor!”
“I know.”
“He gave you fifteen dollars!”
“I know.”
“And now he says you abandoned him?”
May you like
“I know.”
But the filing still terrified me.
