Chapter 20 - THE MEMORY
Tyler had been five.
He remembered shouting.
A kitchen.
His mother crying.
Blood near her mouth.
A man leaving.
Brooke had always told him that man was Gavin.
That memory mattered.
It was also incomplete.
Amanda refused to interrogate a thirteen-year-old.
A child specialist interviewed Tyler instead.
Gavin denied ever striking Brooke.
Completely.
His attorney produced an old police report from the same year.
Amanda read it.
Officers had responded to Brooke’s apartment after a domestic disturbance.
Brooke had a split lip.
But the man identified at the scene was not Gavin.
It was Daniel Reeves.
A boyfriend Brooke dated after Gavin.
Tyler had been five.
He remembered a man.
Brooke supplied the name later.
Amanda felt physically sick.
Brooke had not invented Tyler’s fear.
She had attached the wrong person to it.
When confronted, Brooke denied deliberately doing so.
“Tyler was a child.”
“You told him it was Gavin.”
“I thought it was.”
“You were there.”
Brooke’s expression changed.
“I had several terrible years.”
That was not an answer.
Then Brooke shifted strategies.
She produced a restraining-order petition she had filed against Gavin thirteen years earlier.
The petition accused him of threatening to take Tyler and saying his family had enough money to “bury her in court.”
The temporary order had been granted.
The permanent order had not.
Gavin admitted saying something close to it.
“I was twenty-seven and furious.”
“What exactly did you say?” Amanda asked.
“That if she kept disappearing with my son, I would spend everything I had finding him.”
“Did your family threaten her?”
Gavin hesitated.
“Yes.”
There it was.
His mother, Victoria Cole, had disliked Brooke intensely.
Victoria believed Brooke was unstable.
After Tyler’s birth, she offered Brooke money to surrender custody.
Brooke refused.
Then Victoria hired investigators.
Family lawyers.
Private process servers.
Brooke felt hunted.
Gavin called it legal enforcement.
Brooke called it intimidation.
Both descriptions contained pieces of truth.
Gavin said:
“I should have stopped my mother.”
“But you didn't.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted my son.”
Amanda looked at him.
“That doesn't make every method acceptable.”
“I know that now.”
Another adult arriving late to understanding.
Then Richard disclosed something worse.
Victoria had contacted him during the affair.
Amanda stared.
“When?”
“About six months before everything came apart.”
“She knew about you and Brooke?”
“Yes.”
“What did she want?”
“She offered me money.”
“For what?”
“To testify that Brooke was an unfit mother.”
Amanda looked at Richard.
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
“Did you tell Brooke?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“She panicked.”
That explained why Brooke became increasingly dependent on Richard during the affair.
Richard was not merely a lover.
He had become a shield against Gavin’s family.
Then Tyler asked to speak to Gavin privately with a therapist present.
Brooke objected.
The child representative supported it.
The meeting lasted thirty-eight minutes.
When Tyler emerged, he was crying.
Amanda did not approach.
Neither did Richard.
Tyler walked directly toward Brooke.
He stared at his mother.
Then asked:
“Why did you tell me he never looked for me?”
Brooke froze.
Tyler continued.
“He showed me every birthday card.”
And Gavin had kept thirteen returned envelopes.
May you like
One for every birthday Tyler never knew his father remembered.
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