Chapter 10

Callie's POV

He picked up on the third ring.

"I already said what I said."

"Derek please." I kept my voice low. Lily was in the next room and the walls in this house were not thick. "She has been asking about her birthday for weeks. She made a list. She wrote your name at the top of it before she wrote down any presents. Just your name."

Silence.

"I will not contact Michael again," I said. "I will stay away from him completely. Whatever you need me to do. Just do not take her birthday from her."

"You should have thought about that before you met him in parking lots."

"We are getting divorced Derek. You are living with another woman. I met a doctor about our daughter's treatment—"

"You met your ex boyfriend," he said. "Do not dress it up."

I pressed my hand flat against the kitchen counter and breathed.

"We were together for eight months six years ago," I said. "He is a pediatric hematologist. That is the only reason I contacted him."

"While you are still legally my wife." His voice dropped in that particular way that meant he had moved past anger into something colder and more deliberate. "You do not get to decide what that looks like to other people. You do not get to decide what it looks like to me."

"We are divorcing—"

"The papers are not signed." A pause that had weight in it. "Until they are you are still Mrs. Ashford. And Mrs. Ashford does not meet men in parking lots while my daughter is at home."

I said nothing.

"I will come to the birthday," he said finally. "But hear me clearly Callie. One more thing. One more person. One more parking lot. And I will take you to court for sole custody so fast you will not have time to call your doctor friend for advice."

The line went dead.

I stood in the kitchen for a long time after.

Then I went to check on Lily.

She was asleep finally. Mr. Rabbit tucked under her chin. Her face smooth and untroubled the way it only ever was when she was completely under.

I pulled her blanket up and stood in the dark beside her bed and made myself a promise I intended to keep.

Whatever it cost. Whatever I had to swallow. She was getting her birthday.

---

The support check came on Thursday the way it always did.

Dropped at the door by Derek's driver. An envelope slid through the mail slot without a knock. I had never thought much about it beyond being grateful it arrived consistently.

This Thursday I happened to be standing in the hallway when it came.

I opened the door.

The driver was already back at the car. A dark sedan parked just far enough down the street to be unremarkable. I watched him get in and I was about to close the door when something made me look again.

He was not driving away.

He was sitting behind the wheel with his phone raised toward my front door.

I stepped back inside slowly and stood against the wall beside the window and watched through the gap in the curtain. He sat there for another two minutes. Then he photographed my car in the driveway. Then he drove away.

I went to my phone and scrolled back through three weeks of barely noticed details and suddenly they rearranged themselves into a pattern.

The sedan on the street the morning I took Lily to her first appointment. The car parked outside the coffee shop when I met Michael. The same dark car two streets from Michael's clinic on a Tuesday afternoon when I had driven past it on the way to the pharmacy.

He had not started watching me the night of the exhibition.

He had been watching me for weeks.

---

I called Derek before I talked myself out of it.

"Your driver photographs my house," I said the moment he answered. "My car. Michael's clinic. How long."

A pause.

"Long enough," he said.

"You had me followed for weeks—"

"I have a daughter in your care," he said simply. "I have every right to know who is moving in and out of her environment. You are still legally my wife. What happens around my family is my business."

"This is not about Lily."

"Everything is about Lily."

"You are tracking me because you want control Derek. Not because you want to protect her."

He said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer.

"Sign the papers," I said. "You want this divorce. Sign it and then you have no claim over what I do."

Something shifted in his voice. Almost imperceptible. "I'll sign when I'm ready."

"Vanessa is waiting—"

"Vanessa can wait."

---

I did not know that until two hours later when Vanessa called me herself.

She did not bother with pleasantries.

"Whatever you are doing to stall this divorce needs to stop," she said. "I have a moving timeline. We agreed on a date. Tell him to sign the papers."

I almost laughed.

"Tell him yourself," I said. "He is your problem not mine."

I hung up.

For the first time in weeks I felt something almost close to satisfaction.

---

Michael called at ten that night.

I knew from his voice immediately that something was wrong. Not panic. Something quieter and more deliberate that was somehow worse.

"I need to tell you something," he said.

"What happened."

"Two men came to my clinic this afternoon." He paused. "They were asking questions. About my license. My malpractice history. Any previous complaints." Another pause. "And whether I had any prior personal involvement with a woman named Callie Dawson."

The kitchen went very cold around me.

"Michael—"

"Someone is building a file," he said quietly. "Before I have done a single thing for Lily. Before I have submitted a single form or made a single recommendation." His voice was steady but the steadiness was deliberate. "Someone wants me discredited before I can help her at all."

I sat down.

The support check was still on the kitchen counter where I had left it. The envelope with Derek's family solicitor stamp on the front.

"I know who it is," I said.

"I know you do," Michael said.

Neither of us said his name.

We did not need to.