Chapter 3

Walking out of the courthouse, I took a cab straight to the hospital to see my mother, who was gravely ill.

Just like the judge, she asked me the same question out of habit, "Did you get custody of Chloe?"

I shook my head. "I withdrew the suit. I'm not fighting for custody anymore."

Mom didn't ask why. She only looked crestfallen. "Maybe it's for the best."

I knew she was lying. She'd begged me more than once to bring Chloe to see her. I'd brought it up with the Simpsons, but Lisa wouldn't budge, and even sneered at me for asking. "How could I let Chloe anywhere near someone who's about to die? Don't you think that's bad luck? No matter what, you're still her father—shouldn't you be thinking of what's best for her?"

But the person Lisa called bad luck was my mother.

Choking down the bitterness of it, I told Mom, "Once you're feeling better, let's leave Northbridge." She nodded weakly. I pulled out my phone to check for flights.

That was when I saw a tabloid reporter had, just a minute earlier, dropped a wave of damaging material about the Simpson family. The whole internet was already tearing into Andy for stealing another man's wife and taking my daughter.

Before I could make sense of it, the door to Mom's room banged open. Vivian stormed in, her face like thunder, Chloe right behind her, just as furious. Both of them looked at me with eyes gone ice-cold, and then Vivian swung her arm and slapped me hard across the face.

"How could you be so vicious! No wonder you were suddenly willing to drop the lawsuit—you were planning to expose me and Andy online this whole time! Do you have any idea Andy couldn't handle the backlash and tried to slit his wrists? He almost didn't make it!"

Mom, terrified by the scene, tried desperately to pull herself up and shield me.

Cradling my stinging cheek, I tried to explain on instinct. "It wasn't me—"

Vivian cut me off with a cold laugh. "No one but the Simpsons and you, an outsider, knew about any of that. If it wasn't you, then who? Besides, selling that story to a reporter would've fetched a decent price." Her gaze slid meaningfully toward my mother. "And we both know who around here needs money the most."

Mom froze where she stood, her face flashing pale, then red.

I shook my head. "It really wasn't me."

Vivian didn't bother arguing further. She grabbed me and hauled me bodily toward Andy's hospital room. "Enough talk. Get in there and apologize to Andy."

Even my own daughter started throwing punches and kicks at me. "You're a bad person! You hurt Papa Andy! I'll beat you to death! Apologize! Get on your knees and beg for forgiveness!"

Seeing me treated like this by Vivian and Chloe, Mom flushed red with fury from her hospital bed. "Please—please don't touch my son."

She struggled to move her weakened body and, in the effort, slipped off the bed and hit the floor hard.

I fought against Vivian's grip, desperate to check on my mother, but she only waved a nurse over and sneered, "Your mother's too stubborn to die that easily. Andy is what matters right now."

I was dragged bodily into Andy's hospital room. He lay there in a patient's gown, his wrist wrapped in thick white bandages. When he saw us, his weak face creased into a frown. "Vivian, don't treat Ted like this."

Vivian looked at him, her face full of tender concern. "He did something this stupid and nearly cost me you. This is the least he should suffer for it."

I laughed until tears came. Once, when Vivian and I had married, she'd sworn she'd never betray me in this lifetime, never so much as lay a finger on me. Now, for the sake of her widowed brother-in-law, she was doing exactly that. And standing beside her, doing the same thing, was the daughter I'd fought eight years to keep.

Chloe ground her heel into a raw scrape on my skin, currying favor with Andy. Even my long-numbed heart ached faintly at that.

Vivian's voice, cold and merciless, reached my ears again. "I won't say it twice. Apologize to Andy."

I looked at the two faces in front of me, one large and one small, so alike it hurt, and eight years of buried grievance surged up all at once inside my chest.

"Why should I apologize? Isn't everything online true? Didn't Andy steal my wife and take my daughter, too?"