Chapter 2: The Divorce

Callie's POV

"Sign here. And here. Initial at the bottom."

Derek's lawyer slid the papers across the table one by one without looking up. Efficient and practiced. The kind of man who had sat in rooms like this so many times that the weight of what was happening had long stopped reaching him.

I picked up the pen.

Derek sat at the far end of the table scrolling through his phone. He had said four words to me since I walked in. Good morning was two of them and he had not meant either.

I started reading.

Not because I expected anything surprising. I just needed something to do with my hands besides shake.

The first page was standard. Asset division. The apartment I had never felt at home in. The car I had bought myself. The joint account that had never had much in it because Derek's real money lived somewhere I had never been given access to.

I signed.

Second page. Custody. Full parental rights assigned to me. Derek had left the co-parenting section completely blank. Not filled in with zero. Just blank. Like the question had not been worth answering.

I signed.

Third page.

I stopped.

It was an addendum. Attached at the back like an afterthought. A will amendment dated three days ago. Before he had even called me about the divorce. Before any of this conversation had officially started.

I read it twice.

All references to Lily Dawson hereby removed from the estate of Derek Ashford. All prior allocations revoked. All future claims nullified.

Her name had a single line drawn through it.

Neat and recise. Like correcting a spelling mistake.

"Is there a problem?" The lawyer finally looked up.

I raised my eyes to Derek.

He was still looking at his phone.

"You removed her from your will," I said.

"Cleaner this way."

"She is four years old Derek."

He set his phone down then. Looked at me with that expression I had memorized across four years. Faintly impatient. Like I was a meeting that had run over its allocated time.

"The custody arrangement covers her financially. This changes nothing for Lily practically."

"It changes everything for Lily."

"Callie." A warning in his voice.

"She is your daughter." My voice did not rise. I kept it completely level because the moment it broke he would win and I was not giving him that. "Whatever you think of me you cannot just delete her from your life like she is a line item that did not work out."

"I'm not deleting anyone." He leaned back in his chair. "I'm being practical. Vanessa and I are building something. It makes sense to simplify the legal picture now rather than later."

Vanessa and I are building something.

Said to the mother of his sick child across a divorce table at nine in the morning.

I looked back down at the page.

At Lily's name with a line through it.

I thought about her this morning before I left. She was standing at the bathroom mirror in her pajamas carefully brushing Mr. Rabbit's ears with her toothbrush because she had decided he needed to be clean for the day. She did not know where I was going. I had told her I had errands. She had nodded very seriously and told me not to forget to eat breakfast.

I picked up the pen.

And I signed every remaining page without another word.

Derek watched me like he was waiting for something. A scene. Tears. Some version of the Callie he had decided I was. The one who calculated and manipulated and always had an angle.

I stacked the pages. Pushed them back.

Stood up.

"Lily's birthday," I said. "Three weeks. You promised."

"I'll be there."

I picked up my bag and walked to the door.

"That's it?" His voice followed me. Genuinely surprised for the first time. "Nothing else to say?"

I turned around.

"You crossed out her name," I said quietly. "She is dying Derek. The doctor gave her six weeks. And three days ago before you even told me you wanted a divorce you sat down and crossed her name out of your will." I held his gaze. "I don't have anything to say to you. I don't think there are words for what you are."

I left.

---

The drive home took twenty minutes.

I kept both hands on the wheel and the radio off and I did not let myself feel anything until I pulled into our street. Then I sat in the parked car for a little while with my hands still on the wheel and the engine off.

Six weeks.

Three of them spoken for by a man who had already erased her name before the ink was dry.

I went inside.

The kitchen was quiet. Afternoon light coming through the window. Mr. Rabbit sitting upright on the table.

Lily was sitting beside him with her hands folded in her lap and my phone in front of her on the table.

She looked up when I came in.

Her eyes were dry but her face had that particular stillness it got when she was carrying something too big for her.

"Lily." I set my bag down slowly. "What are you doing with Mummy's phone?"

She looked at it.

Then back at me.

"I called Daddy," she said. "I wanted to tell him something."

My chest pulled tight. "What did you want to tell him?"

"That I am not scared." She smoothed Mr. Rabbit's ear with one finger. "Dr. Anderson said I have to be brave. I wanted to tell Daddy that I am being brave." She paused. "So he would be proud of me."

I could not speak.

"But he did not pick up." She said it simply. The way children state facts that have not yet finished breaking them. "I called three times Mummy."

She looked up at me.

"Why does Daddy not pick up?"