“She’s not my new mommy.”
My four-year-old daughter stood on her dining chair, clutching her stuffed rabbit so tightly its ears disappeared beneath her fingers.
Then she pointed across the table at my wife.
“She’s a monster.”
Vanessa gave a nervous little laugh.
I almost joined her.
My name is Daniel Mercer. Until that moment, I had convinced myself that Emma simply needed more time to adjust to my remarriage.
She had lost her mother. She was four. Some days, she barely let Bunny out of her sight.
I kept telling myself grief could look like anger.
Then I saw the tears running down her face.
“She locks my room.”
Vanessa’s laugh stopped.
“She takes Bunny.”
Emma pulled the rabbit closer.
“She hides Mommy’s picture.”
I set down my fork.
“Emma, what are you talking about?”
My daughter looked straight at Vanessa, but the words came out barely above a whisper.
“She says Mommy died because I came.”
Nobody moved.
I stared at Emma’s little hands. They were shaking around the only thing she seemed certain she could hold on to.
“That is absolutely not true,” Vanessa said.
She answered so quickly that I turned toward her before she finished.
Then I looked back at my daughter.
Emma wasn’t watching to see whether she had gotten someone in trouble.
She was watching Vanessa.
Waiting.
And suddenly, every explanation I had made for the past three weeks felt impossible to say out loud.
I opened the home security footage.
Vanessa moved closer.
