Chapter 3
I inspected Elise’s room myself.
Blue walls.
New curtains.
New furniture.
No trace of her.
Then I opened the closet.
Boxes.
Six.
All labeled simply:
OLD.
Not Elise.
Not Ethan’s mother.
Old.
I opened the first.
Photographs.
Elise laughing on the dock.
Elise pregnant.
Elise holding Ethan at two days old.
Elise sitting with me on Christmas morning.
None damaged.
Just removed.
Second box:
Clothes.
Third:
Books.
Fourth:
Handwritten recipes.
Fifth:
Ethan’s baby things.
Sixth:
Family photographs including Mark.
That interested me.
Claudia had not only removed Elise.
She removed the version of Mark that existed before her.
Cleaner replacement.
New couple.
New house.
New rules.
Then I found something inside a drawer Claudia had missed.
A small wooden train.
Ethan’s name burned underneath.
Elise’s father had made it.
I remembered.
Ethan loved it.
“Why was this hidden?”
Mark stood behind me.
He looked ashamed.
“Claudia said toys connected to Elise made him regress.”
Again.
Medical language without medicine.
“Who told her that?”
No answer.
“Therapist?”
“No.”
“Doctor?”
“No.”
“Anyone qualified?”
“No.”
There.
Just Claudia.
Opinion upgraded into policy because Mark wanted quiet.
I held the little train.
“Ethan asked for this?”
Mark nodded.
“How often?”
His eyes closed.
“Every night.”
That was the first moment I wanted to hit my son.
I didn’t.
Violence would make me feel decisive while accomplishing nothing.
Instead I asked:
“And what did you tell him?”
“That it was gone.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“Because Claudia said he needed to stop associating comfort with his mother.”
My voice went very quiet.
“You lied to a grieving three-year-old because your girlfriend found his grief inconvenient.”
Mark flinched.
Good.
Girlfriend.
Not wife.
May you like
Not family matriarch.
Just the woman he had allowed to command a house she did not understand.
