Chapter 5 - Lauren Wanted To Become Necessary Before The Baby Arrived
Lauren never wrote anywhere:
I want Madeline’s children.
She was smarter than that.
Instead, her messages to Ethan became increasingly focused on what happened after my delivery.
You can’t keep living like this.
What if she has postpartum problems?
You’ll need someone stable around the kids.
They already know me.
That last message turned my stomach.
They already know me.
Yes.
Because I had invited her into our house.
Fed her.
Let her bring birthday gifts to my daughter.
Once, when I was too sick to attend a school fundraiser, Lauren volunteered to accompany Ethan.
I thanked her afterward.
That memory still makes me angry.
She had been practicing proximity.
Not motherhood.
Position.
The draft petition was designed as a temporary measure.
That mattered legally.
Lauren was not stupid enough to propose that Ethan immediately erase me as mother.
The strategy was to create short-term restrictions around childbirth.
Supervised transitions.
Temporary residence with Ethan.
Medical evaluation.
Then, if I reacted badly enough to having my children restricted, that reaction itself could become additional evidence.
Dad described it perfectly:
“She wanted the first order to create the behavior that justified the second one.”
I stared at him.
“She was going to provoke me.”
“She was going to create circumstances in which your distress could be reframed as instability.”
That was when I finally understood Lauren’s terror in the dining room.
The affair being exposed was humiliating.
May you like
The custody planning was dangerous.
Especially because she had started drafting it before Ethan had openly chosen a future with her.
