Chapter 5: The Silence Between Calls
Dustin’s calls continued through Thursday. The tone rotated on a short cycle: anger that I had left without discussion, offense that I had involved a doctor and an attorney, and a thin layer of concern about “how this would look” if the situation became formal. He never asked about the red mark near Meadow’s ear. He never asked why she had stopped speaking. He repeated that his mother had been trying to help, that children needed structure, and that I was escalating a private family matter into something public and damaging.
I answered once, briefly, to state that all further communication would go through Francine. After that I let the calls reach voicemail. Meadow remained mostly silent, sleeping in the hat, eating only when the food required no decision, and staying within arm’s reach of me or Francine. The trauma response the pediatrician had named was not abstract. It sat at the kitchen table in a pink hat and refused strawberry pancakes she had once asked for by name.
