Chapter 9

The Summer That Stole Everything

The work was heavy that year.

Between long days on the job and the house we were building, every ounce of energy I had went into keeping things running. Summer came like a promise — warm evenings, long light, and a small window to breathe.

I thought it would be a good time for the kids to spend a few weeks with their dad and grandmother. They’d get some rest from the noise and chaos of construction, and I’d have time to finish the house without little feet underfoot. It made sense — it felt right.

It was, without question, the biggest mistake of my life.

I did everything I was supposed to do. I followed every rule. I gave his grandmother power of attorney — not custody — just so that if the kids got hurt and she couldn’t reach me, she could sign for medical care. That’s all it was meant to be. She could call me anytime. I thought I was protecting my children, giving them family, stability, love.

I never imagined it would become the weapon used to destroy us.The day they came for me, everything happened so fast.

The knock at the door, the uniforms, the questions that didn’t make sense — and then the handcuffs. Cold steel on my wrists. I kept thinking there had been some terrible mistake.

They said my children had been abused.

At first, it was him they accused. I remember defending him, swearing it couldn’t be true. Then, just when I started to doubt myself — when I began wondering if maybe I had missed something — they turned on me. They said I’d helped.

I’ll never forget that feeling. The floor just… disappeared under me. I couldn’t breathe.

Then, when they accused my mother, the fog cleared, and everything made sense.

It wasn’t about the truth.

It was about control.

It was about her.

His grandmother — the same woman who had joked from the very beginning that I should “just give her my daughter.” The same one who’d always pushed, always meddled, always hovered too close. She finally got what she wanted, and she did it with lies. And the CPS investigator? Friends with his grandmother and my ex-husband’s new wife. The whole thing was a web — every thread spun to pull my children away from me.

Once the lie took root, there was no pulling it out.

When they accused my mother, something inside me broke.

I’d been fighting with everything I had — for my children, for my name, for the truth — but when they turned on her, I realized nothing I said or did was ever going to matter. The system wasn’t listening. The people in charge had already decided what story they wanted to tell.

So, I did the only thing left I could think of: I stopped fighting.

I tore out my own heart and put my children first. I had to spare them from more questions, more confusion, more endless doctor’s visits that showed nothing at all. The tests, the checkups, the interviews — every single one came back the same: no evidence of abuse. None. But they kept looking anyway, as if sheer persistence could make a lie come true.

One day, the investigator sat across from at a table and told me in with a smug tone, said my daughter had told her something “concerning.”

“She said he followed her up onto the roof,” waiting for me to stumble.

I looked her straight in the eye and said, “You’re absolutely right. I was cooking dinner, looked out the window, and saw my daughter standing on top of the playhouse — seven feet in the air. My son was inside it, and yes, her step-father grabbed a ladder and climbed up to get her down. Because that’s what parents do.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “You seem to have an answer for everything.”

“Yes,” I said evenly, “because I pay attention to my children. I know what happens in my home.”

What I wanted to scream was, Do you honestly think I’d have given anyone power of attorney over my kids if there was even a chance any of this were true? But I knew it wouldn’t matter.

It was all already decided.

They didn’t know the truth about me, about my children, or about the generations of women in my family who had already survived more than most could imagine.

They didn’t know that my mother, strong and unshakable, had lived through her own childhood trauma — and that because of her, I had taught my own children to know their boundaries, their voices, their right to say “no.”

They didn’t know that I had once been hurt too — and that from that day on, I swore no child in my care would ever experience what I did.

But none of that fit their narrative.

So, I walked out of that office holding my head high.

Because even though they took my children, they would not take the truth from me. I had to protect them with the only avenue I had left to use.