I had been cut out.
When I confronted Peter, he didn’t deny it.
“I tried to tell you,” he said. “But you weren’t ready to hear it.”
“And how do you know all this?”
He hesitated.
“Sean’s assistant. She told me.”
I found her.
And she confirmed everything.
“He talked like it was inevitable,” she said. “Like you’d fall apart, and the kids would end up with him full-time.”
That was the moment something inside me shifted.
Not anger.
Clarity.
Over the next few weeks, I started showing up again.
At school. At appointments. In decisions.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t guessing.
I was present.
Sean noticed.
He tried to push. To test limits.
At one point, he suggested taking the kids for weeks at a time.
“No,” I said.
Just that.
