Chapter 7: Parentage
Ethan’s attorney floated acknowledgment of paternity paired with informal support talk that smelled like a path back toward my accounts.
Priya shut the informal path. If he wanted legal fatherhood on paper, he could petition; support would be calculated by guidelines, not by access to my operating reserves. The assault record and protective order sat in the same universe as any custody conversation. Judges, she reminded me, disliked men who confined pregnant partners for bank cards. I slept on that reminder like a sandbag against old guilt.
May you like
Margaret’s name appeared on a social post about “false accusations destroying families.” Screenshots went to Priya. The post came down. The order had a memory even when people pretended it did not.
My mother assembled the crib with a hardware-store precision that made me cry in the useful way. We did not invite Ethan to see it. The nursery was not a shared exhibit. It was a room in a house I owned, for a child who would learn that no meant no before they learned any man’s startup pitch.
