Chapter 8 - Maisie Had Been Trying to Warn Her Father for Weeks
The warning signs looked painfully obvious in hindsight.
“Daddy, after the wedding, do I still live here?”
Graham had laughed.
“Of course.”
“Even if Sloane doesn’t want me?”
“She wants you.”
Maisie had looked unconvinced.
Another night:
“Can kids get divorced from stepmoms?”
He smiled.
“That’s not how it works.”
Then:
“What if she sends me somewhere?”
Graham finally became annoyed.
“Maisie, Sloane is not sending you anywhere.”
He remembered saying it.
Confidently.
Dismissively.
Exactly three weeks before finding the Harbor Pines intake packet.
Children sometimes ask strange questions.
But when the same fear repeats, adults have to stop treating repetition as imagination.
Graham had not.
Sloane used that.
Whenever Maisie complained, Sloane called it wedding anxiety.
Whenever she cried, Sloane said she feared change.
Whenever she begged Graham not to travel, Sloane framed it as unhealthy attachment.
Graham believed enough of it.
Not because he loved Sloane more than Maisie.
Because Sloane sounded reasonable.
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And reasonable adults are dangerous when children are assumed unreasonable by default.
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