Chapter 6 - The Mother They Wanted Me to Become
Melissa agreed to meet us at my attorney’s office.
She brought an old phone.
Diane had fired her two weeks earlier after catching her photographing documents.
“I knew something was wrong,” Melissa said.
She showed us messages Diane had sent.
Don’t comfort Lily immediately.
Let her cry.
Ryan says Emma gives in too easily.
Another message was worse.
We need examples of instability when Emma returns.
I looked at Melissa.
“Instability?”
“She wanted you angry.”
Suddenly, the slap in the laundry room felt different.
Diane had deserved to be stopped.
But she had also expected a reaction.
Melissa explained that Diane constantly insulted me around Ryan.
Too emotional.
Too controlling.
Obsessed with Lily.
Unstable after becoming a mother.
Ryan rarely defended me.
Instead, he had begun documenting our arguments.
My attorney, Karen Walsh, asked the obvious question.
“Why?”
Melissa placed a photograph of several papers on the table.
I recognized Ryan’s signature.
One was a draft separation agreement.
Another discussed temporary custody.
A third listed our house.
My house.
The house my grandmother had left me before I married Ryan.
Diane had apparently convinced Ryan that if he established himself as Lily’s “stable parent,” he could pressure me into a settlement.
But there was a problem.
The house wasn’t marital property.
Neither was the trust attached to it.
Karen studied the photograph.
“How much is the trust?”
“About $2.8 million.”
Melissa looked at me.
“Diane knew.”
Of course she did.
Then Karen noticed something at the bottom of one page.
A company name.
Parker Family Development LLC.
Ryan had never mentioned it.
Dad searched the public business database.
The company existed.
Ryan and Diane were managers.
And three months earlier, that company had applied for financing using an address as proposed collateral.
My address.
My home.
I felt physically sick.
They hadn’t merely been preparing to take my daughter.
They had been positioning themselves to take everything around her.
But Karen pointed at the paperwork.
“There’s one problem for them.”
“What?”
May you like
“They can’t legally pledge property Ryan doesn’t own.”
Unless, she added, someone had created documents saying otherwise.
