No more calls. Clean slate.”
The coffee turned sour in my mouth. That was the moment I realized his kindness had been conditional from the start.
His goal wasn’t to be part of our family — it was to erase the parts he didn’t like. I didn’t say anything right then. I just nodded faintly, my mind already moving.
That night, I packed a suitcase for Ember and me. The next morning, I told him we were going to my mother’s for the weekend. He barely looked up from his phone.
“Have fun.”
As soon as the door closed behind us, I called Mark. Told him everything. His voice was steady, but I could hear the tension coiled inside it.
“I’ll be there when you go back,” he said. When we walked through the door together two days later, Stan looked startled. I didn’t give him time to speak.
“You need to leave,” I told him. He laughed, a humorless sound. “You’re choosing him over me?”
“I’m choosing my daughter over anyone who thinks they can rewrite her life,” I said.
He demanded his ring back. I gave it to him, along with every gift he’d ever given us, boxed neatly and waiting. “Take it all,” I said.
“That way there’s nothing left to pull strings with.”
He dragged his departure out for hours, muttering insults under his breath, slamming drawers. But when the door finally closed that night, the silence was pure. Ember was already asleep, Mr.
Buttons — still faintly smelling of coffee — in her arms. And I knew then, with a clarity that felt like sunlight after rain, that no man was worth even a single tear from my child.
