Chapter 12: The Messages She Didn't Think I'd Keep
I was sitting on the living room floor the next afternoon with my bunny in my lap. Daddy had left the laundry room door wide open like he promised, and the light in there was off, but I could still see it from where I sat. My bunny's pink ribbon had come a little loose and I kept twisting it around my finger.
Daddy's phone buzzed on the coffee table. He'd put it on silent, but the screen lit up and I saw her name. Vanessa. He didn't pick it up right away. He just stared at it while it buzzed again, then again. Three times in a row.
He picked it up and swiped, and I watched his face change. He didn't hide the screen from me, but he angled it so I couldn't read the words. His mouth got tight the way it had at the dining table.
He read out loud, but quiet, like he was reading to himself. "Caseworker just called me," he said. His voice was flat. He looked at me. "She wants to know if I'm okay to read these to you later, baby. Not now."
I nodded and hugged my bunny closer. I didn't want to hear from her. I just wanted to know if Daddy believed me still.
That night after he put me to bed, I heard him downstairs talking. His sister was on speaker. I wasn't supposed to be listening, but my door was open like he promised and his voice carried up the hall.
"She's changing her story," he said. "First text says the caseworker contacted her and she didn't understand it was that serious. Second one says she did take Ellie into the laundry room, that she lost her temper, that she was exhausted and overwhelmed and didn't know what else to do."
I held my breath and held my bunny's ear.
Aunt Maya's voice was small through the phone. "Did she apologize?"
"Yeah. Then she asked to meet. Just the two of us, to talk it through. Says she wants to explain and make it right. Then another one, five minutes later, saying she didn't mean to scare her, she was just trying to discipline."
I heard Daddy move around. A chair scraping.
"I told her no," he said. "I said not alone. Not without the caseworker knowing. I screenshotted everything."
He was quiet for a second. "I kept thinking about what she said at the table. 'She's confused, that's not what happened.' And now she's writing that it did happen."
I pulled the blanket up to my chin. My chest felt weird, like tight and then a little lighter. She had said I was lying. Now she was writing that I wasn't.
The next morning Daddy was at the kitchen table with his phone plugged in and a notebook open. He was copying the times next to each message. He had already forwarded them to the caseworker. He showed me the notebook because he wanted me to see he was writing it down.
"Look, Ellie-bug," he said, and tapped the page. "At 4:12 she wrote she took you in there. At 4:18 she wrote she was sorry she lost her temper. I'm keeping it so nobody can say we made it up."
I looked at the blue ink and nodded. He'd written her words exactly, with the time.
My bunny was on the chair next to me, sitting up against the cut-glass goblet Daddy had washed and put away.
His phone buzzed again. Another message from her. I saw the preview pop up before he turned it over. It said "please can we just meet for coffee, I want to apologize properly."
Daddy didn't answer right away. He called the caseworker instead. I sat and colored while he talked in the next room, his voice low. He said, "She wants to meet alone. I told her no. Is that right?" and then listened for a long time.
When he came back he knelt down next to my chair.
"Ms. Rivera says the same thing," he told me. "No contact with you, Ellie. Not a call, not a text, not a drop-by. If Vanessa wants to talk, it goes through her. And you and I don't meet her alone. That's the boundary."
I asked, "Is she going to come here?"
"No," he said quickly. "She doesn't live here anymore. And she knows not to come by without permission."
He put his hand on my back, light. "You did right telling me to check the camera. And now what she wrote matches what you said. That matters."
May you like
I didn't know what corroborates meant then, but I understood what Daddy meant. Her own words said I had told the truth. He believed me first, and now her messages said the same thing.
That night I fell asleep with the laundry room door still open down the hall, the light off, and Daddy's phone face-down on the dresser so it wouldn't buzz and wake me.
