My wife pointed at me.
“You know what they’ll say,” she said. “You’re his father. You think that means you automatically get to take him.”
The officer stepped closer.
“Ma’am, nobody is deciding custody in this hallway.”
She laughed once, without humor.
“They will.”
Then she looked at me again.
“And when they do, tell them how perfect you were.”
I said nothing.
Because there was something about that sentence that felt rehearsed.
Not spontaneous.
Not defensive.
Rehearsed.
The officer apparently noticed it too.
He asked her, “What exactly are you suggesting?”
My wife folded her arms.
“I’m suggesting he has been waiting for an excuse to take my child away from me.”
The words landed differently now.
An excuse.
As if what had happened in the nursery was something that could be reduced to a misunderstanding between parents.
As if the rag, the gasoline, the screaming baby, and her mother’s testimony were merely pieces in an argument she expected us to have.
