Chapter 6
Galen wanted to drive directly to Nolan’s house.
He did not.
Rebecca made him sit down first.
“If you confront him angry, you give him another story about your temper.”
Galen hated the sentence because it was true.
Instead, Rebecca sent the transition plan to Dr. Levin.
Hannah called it clinically inappropriate.
More importantly, she recognized several phrases.
“They’re from an article I sent Ainsley.”
Galen frowned.
“You sent her this?”
“I sent her general material on helping children through family transitions.”
Hannah sounded angry now.
“She stripped out everything about preserving attachment, gradual change, and child choice.”
The document was not a professional recommendation.
It was a private plan dressed to look like one.
The emotional fallout reached Eira quickly.
Wedding boxes disappeared from the estate.
Staff stopped talking about rehearsals.
Her flower-girl dress hung torn in a garment bag.
At breakfast she asked:
“Am I bad because there’s no wedding?”
Galen put down his coffee.
“No.”
“Did I break it?”
“No.”
“Did Mommy?”
That question hurt differently.
Galen moved beside her.
“The wedding stopped because grown-ups made bad choices. Not you. Not Mommy.”
Eira nodded, but four-year-olds did not discard guilt because an adult explained it once.
Later that day, Galen’s aunt Teresa called.
She had known Sofia and liked Ainsley.
“You’re letting grief make every disagreement look evil.”
Galen listened.
Then he sent her photographs of the behavior logs and transition plan.
Teresa called back twenty minutes later.
Her tone had changed.
“Who else knew about this?”
“I’m finding out.”
That shift mattered.
Until then, Galen had been standing almost alone between his daughter and a family eager to save an expensive wedding.
Now someone else wanted proof.
Teresa offered to speak to Margaret and several household employees without Galen present.
“People may tell me things they won’t tell you.”
Galen knew exactly why.
He had spent years making himself difficult to challenge.
“Do it.”
By evening Teresa had three names.
All three remembered Ainsley removing something belonging to Sofia shortly before Eira had a documented “episode.”
May you like
It was becoming a pattern.
But nobody yet knew what Ainsley hoped to gain from proving Eira could not live around her mother’s memory.
