Chapter 4: What Marcus Found
Marcus stayed until midnight.
After Daniel finished the call with the attorney, he sat at the kitchen table with his brother while Ethan slept on the couch under a blanket Marcus had found in the hall closet.
Vanessa had gone upstairs.
Neither of them had told her to.
She had simply gone.
"How long have you known something was wrong?" Marcus asked.
"I didn't." Daniel turned his coffee cup in his hands.
"That's the part I can't get past.
Three years and I didn't see it."
"She didn't want you to see it."
"He's six, Marcus.
He flinched when I reached for him.
My own son flinched."
Marcus didn't say anything to that.
There was nothing to say.
Daniel called Dr.
Harlan's emergency line at nine that evening.
The doctor called back within twenty minutes.
Daniel read him the signature on the psychological assessment.
There was a long silence on the other end.
"That is not my signature," Dr.
Harlan said.
"Daniel, I have never written a psychological assessment for Ethan.
Not once.
He's a healthy boy.
A little quiet sometimes, but healthy."
"I know that now."
"Who signed this?"
"Someone who needed him to look unstable."
Another silence.
"I want a copy of that document.
And I want to speak with your attorney."
"I'll have him call you tomorrow morning."
He hung up and looked at Marcus.
"She forged a pediatrician's signature on a psychological assessment," Marcus said.
It wasn't a question.
"And printed emails from a family law attorney she hired twenty-two months ago.
Before our first anniversary."
Marcus set down his cup.
"She planned this from the start."
"From the start."
They sat with that for a moment.
Then Marcus said, "There's something I need to tell you.
I didn't say anything because I thought I was wrong." He looked at the table.
"About eight months ago, I came by to drop off Ethan's birthday gift.
You were traveling.
Vanessa answered the door.
She told me Ethan was napping and she'd give him the gift later." He paused.
"But I heard him.
From upstairs.
He wasn't napping.
He was crying.
Not the way kids cry when they're tired or want something.
The other kind."
Daniel looked at his brother.
"I should have said something," Marcus said.
"I talked myself out of it.
I thought — she's his stepmother, she's there every day, what do I know.
But I heard him, Daniel.
And I left anyway."
"You're telling me now."
"It's not enough."
"It's something." Daniel looked toward the living room where Ethan was sleeping.
"It's something I can use."
Marcus frowned.
"Use how?"
"The attorney asked if there were any witnesses to Ethan's behavior in the home.
Any third party who could speak to the environment." He looked at his brother.
"You heard him crying.
You saw her at the door.
You can describe how she acted."
"I can do that."
"I need you to write it down tonight.
Everything you remember.
The date, the time, what you heard, what she said, how she looked."
Marcus pulled out his phone and opened a notes app.
"I remember the date.
It was the fourteenth.
Ethan's birthday is the sixteenth and I came two days early because I had a work trip."
"Write it all down."
While Marcus typed, Daniel went to the living room doorway and looked at his son.
Ethan was on his side, one hand tucked under his cheek, breathing slowly.
He looked smaller than six.
He looked like a child who had learned to make himself small on purpose.
Daniel went back to the kitchen.
"There's something else," he said.
"The attorney's name in those emails.
R.
Colton.
I want to know if Vanessa is still in contact with him."
"You think she'll try to move forward anyway?"
"I think she told me she has copies of everything.
I think she meant it.
And I think a woman who spent twenty-two months building a false case against a child doesn't stop because she got caught in the living room."
Marcus looked up from his phone.
"So what do you do?"
Daniel sat back down.
"Tomorrow morning, my attorney files for emergency sole custody.
Dr.
Harlan's office confirms the forged signature.
And then—" He stopped.
His phone lit up on the table between them.
The screen showed a name neither of them expected.
May you like
R.
Colton — Attorney at Law.
