I cried again, melting into his strength and crumbling under the fear of Danny getting his claws into my kids because of me. He’d destroy every good part of them, every inch of innocence inside of them that believed in right and wrong. They’d never heal from the venom they found in him.
When Travis turned the wheel of his truck toward the opposite side of the rink, taillights glowing red against the dark on his way home, to be with the kids, to a place where I wasn’t allowed, something inside of me broke.
It didn’t matter that he was going to the kids. It didn’t matter that he was protecting them, the only thing that was important right now.
All I saw was distance. Him driving away from me.
I felt it.
The familiar ache in my chest as I realized what Danny was doing to me all over again. The alienation. The isolation. The distance he forced between me and everyone that mattered in my life.
He was doing it again. And he was going to get away with it if I didn’t find some way to prove something I didn’t believe most days myself.
I was a good mom.
But there was a hollow ache of knowing I couldn’t be their mother and a partner to anyone but Danny.
He’d never allow it.
Eli touched my hand on the console, murmured something steady, but it barely cut through the roar in my head. Because in that instant, I realized DCFS didn’t need to prove I was unfit. I already felt like I was.
I had to walk away from Travis and Eli if I ever wanted this to end.
I had to choose my children over myself if I had even the barest chance of keeping them safe from the monster that fathered them.
The office smelledof stale coffee and ink, the kind of place where lives got shredded and filed away in manila folders. Frankie sat beside me in a stiff chair, her shoulders tense, papers clutched in her lap. She looked smaller than I’d ever seen her.
The walls were closing in on her, like she was already braced for the worst, and it gutted me.
All I wanted to do was pull her into my arms, snarl at everyone in the building that she was a damn good mother, better than anyone I’d ever known, and drag her out.
But I couldn’t, not here.
Trav was blowing up my phone, obsessively inquiring about what was happening and how Frankie was doing. The kids were asleep, and her mother had broken down the moment he told her the news.
There was nothing we could do to quell their fears; we could simply support them as we let the process run its course and hope that justice prevailed.
So, I sat still, jaw tight, trying to be steady when she glanced at me. Because if I lost it, she would too.
The agent across the desk shuffled through the report, every word another knife twisting in my gut.
Unfit. Neglect. Exposing minors to an unsafe environment. Unsupervised time.
My fists curled on my knees. Neglect? I’d seen Frankie skip meals so her kids could eat. I’d seen her stumble in exhausted from late-night shifts and early school drop-offs but still make it work to do homework and bedtime stories simultaneously while going to school for her own degree.
I’d seen her carry the weight of the entire world alone and somehow never let it crush them.
If that was unsafe, then I didn’t know what the hell safe was anymore.
Frankie’s voice cracked when she finally spoke up, cutting through the silence as the agent prolonged the suspense, scribbling in her notes. “I love my kids. They’re my life. I’d die before I let anything happen to them.”
The agent didn’t even look up, as if Frankie’s heart bleeding on the table didn’t matter.
I reached under the desk, found her hand, and squeezed. She squeezed back, so hard it hurt, but I didn’t let go.
She was breaking in front of me, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t shield her from this. I could only sit here and hold her while strangers decided if she got to keep the two people who mattered the most to her.
And I swear in that moment, I hated Danny more than I’d ever hated anything in my life.
