Lauren held her like she was trying to memorize her weight. Hannah fussed, then calmed when Lauren started humming. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t nothing, either.
Lauren looked up at me, eyes wet. “I didn’t think…” Her voice broke. “I didn’t think you’d do this.”
“I didn’t think I’d have to,” I said.
She swallowed. “I just wanted to feel young again.”
That word—young—hit me harder than anger ever did. Because I understood it in a way. Not the leaving part, but the panic of time moving too fast. The feeling that your life got assigned to you and you didn’t get a say.
I stared at my hands, rough and cracked from work. “I’m fifty-two,” I said quietly. “You think I don’t feel time?”
Lauren looked down at Hannah. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her.”
“I believe you,” I said, and I meant it. “But you still did.”
Lauren’s shoulders sagged. “Is there any way I can fix this?”
That was the moment I could have gone for blood. I could have brought up the money again, the pictures, the reflection of the man in the cafe window. I could have demanded confessions and watched her squirm.
Instead, I heard myself say, “Show up.”
Lauren blinked.
“Not with souvenirs,” I continued. “Not with speeches. Show up when it’s boring. When it’s inconvenient. When nobody’s taking pictures.”
Lauren nodded slowly, like she’d never heard responsibility said out loud before.
Patty had told me something else during one of our phone calls: The court can’t force someone to be a good parent. It can only set boundaries around the child so the child doesn’t get crushed by someone else’s choices. That’s what my revenge really was. Not humiliation, not cruelty. Boundaries.
In the weeks that followed, things got quieter. Not easy—quieter. Lauren tried to push back at first. She asked for extra time, then got upset when I said it had to go through the schedule. She sent long messages full of emotion. I answered with short sentences full of facts. She hated it, I could tell.
But something changed when she realized the paper wasn’t going away. She started showing up on time. She started asking specific questions—what Hannah ate, what time she napped, what her doctor said about her teething. Not glamorous questions. Parenting questions.
One night, Lauren even texted: I bought diapers. Which size is she in now?
I stared at that message for a long moment, then let out a tired laugh in my empty kitchen.
“Progress,” I muttered to myself. “We’re celebrating diapers.”
The hearing came and went without fireworks. Patty did what she does—calm, steady, prepared. Lauren’s attorney tried to make me look controlling. Patty slid my log across the table like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“This is not control,” Patty said. “This is caregiving.”
The judge didn’t care about Lauren’s photos or captions. The judge cared about Hannah’s stability. I walked out with the arrangement extended, and the weirdest part wasn’t the relief. It was the sadness. Because the truth was, I didn’t win a prize. I just stopped losing ground.
A month later, I took Hannah to Glenbrook Square and let her toddle around the little play area in the middle while I sipped coffee that was way too hot. Old couples walked past holding hands. A grandfather sat on a bench, laughing while his grandkid tried to climb his knee.
I watched Hannah wobble on her feet, determined, stubborn as a Mercer. She fell onto her diapered bottom, looked up at me, and grinned like falling was just part of the plan. I realized something then that I wish I’d learned earlier.
Responsibility doesn’t make you smaller. It makes you real. And people who run from responsibility don’t come back refreshed. They come back shocked that the world kept moving without them.
Hannah will never remember the month her mother left. She won’t remember the 3 AM Walmart run, or the urgent care waiting room, or the porch light buzzing while papers changed our lives.
But I will.
I’ll remember how close I came to begging a woman to love us properly. And I’ll remember the day I stopped begging and started building.
