Chapter 13: Distance
Connor requested mediation on parenting time three times in six weeks.
Each request arrived dressed in new language—stability, biology, the importance of a father figure. Each request ran into the same record: the hospital statements, the burden comment, the public construction of a replacement child while calling Brinley useless. The temporary schedule that emerged was narrow, supervised where appropriate, and contingent on behavior that did not include ranking children by gender or usefulness. He attended the first supervised hour late and spent it on his phone. The report noted it. The next hour was not expanded.
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I did not gloat. I documented. Brinley’s world remained small and warm: the guesthouse, my mother’s kitchen, a pediatrician who knew her name, a brother who could still make me laugh without asking me to forgive anyone. When Connor’s name came up in legal email, I handled it and returned to the room where my daughter was learning to track a light with her eyes.
Alyssa, through counsel, sent a single message disclaiming any claim on the company or the trust and requesting to be left out of further public dispute. We agreed without ceremony. Her pregnancy continued somewhere outside my peripheral vision. That was where it belonged.
