Chapter 4 - BLOOD AND PAPERWORK
Thomas wanted Daisy back immediately.
That part surprised no one.
What did surprise Ellie was how quickly he reverted to offended authority, as if fury itself could replace whatever he lacked in actual stability.
He called three times in an hour. The first time, he demanded. The second, he pleaded. The third, he threatened to call the sheriff.
Nora, reached by speakerphone while driving back from court, said cheerfully, “Let him. Just don’t discuss anything without witnesses.”
So when Thomas finally arrived at June’s farmhouse in a borrowed pickup around noon, June was on the porch, Ellie was beside her, and Nora was standing in the yard with a folder thick enough to make a judge feel optimistic.
Thomas got out looking more tired than intimidating. Daisy, who had been helping June knead biscuit dough, saw him through the window and froze.
Ellie moved slightly in front of the doorway without thinking.
Thomas noticed.
His mouth twisted.
“You always did like a show.”
June answered before Ellie could.
“And you always did like pretending people noticing your behavior was the same as creating drama.”
He ignored her.
“I’m taking Daisy.”
Nora stepped forward.
“No, you are not.”
Thomas glanced at her.
“And you are?”
“Nora Pike, attorney for Ellie Monroe in an emergency kinship petition filed this morning.”
He stared.
“What petition?”
“The one asking the court to place your daughter temporarily with her adult half-sister based on credible abandonment risk.”
Thomas laughed once, sharply.
“You people are insane.”
Nora handed him a copy anyway.
He didn’t take it.
Ellie said quietly, “You had blank guardianship papers in her suitcase.”
His face changed.
“That’s not what it looks like.”
That sentence might have been branded into Thomas’s DNA.
“It looks,” Ellie said, “like you were driving a nine-year-old to a woman who explicitly told you not to bring her.”
Thomas pointed at her.
“This is exactly why you don’t know what was happening. You never ask questions. You just decide I’m the villain.”
June muttered, “Convenient complaint from a man who disappears before question time.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
Then, because people like him always mistook volume for evidence, he raised his voice toward the house.
“Daisy! Come on out, baby.”
The movement inside was immediate and heartbreaking. Daisy appeared in the kitchen doorway, small and stiff, as though every cell in her body had been trained to interpret being called as obligation.
Ellie turned.
“You don’t have to.”
Thomas snapped, “Don’t tell my daughter what to do.”
Nora said mildly, “Actually, until the emergency hearing, nobody’s telling that child anything without a witness.”
He looked ready to lunge at the paperwork itself.
Instead he took one step toward the porch.
“Daisy, tell them we were just going to visit Aunt Sherry.”
Daisy’s eyes went from him to Ellie to June.
Then to the floor.
Thomas softened his voice, which somehow made it worse.
“Tell them, sweetheart.”
The manipulation was so practiced Ellie felt sick.
Daisy swallowed.
“You said… maybe just for a while.”
“That’s right.”
“And if she said no…” Daisy looked at her shoes. “Then maybe the church lady.”
Silence.
Thomas stared at her.
Not furious. Worse—betrayed.
As if honesty from a child were personal disloyalty.
Nora calmly wrote something down.
Thomas saw it and swore.
“This is ridiculous. I had a car break down. That’s all. I needed help.”
Ellie stepped off the porch.
“No. You needed somebody to make your choice disappear.”
His face flushed.
“You think you know everything because June filled your head for ten years.”
June barked out a laugh. “Thomas, if I’d been filling her head, she’d have much less patience left.”
That almost made Daisy smile despite herself.
Then Thomas did the thing that finally told Ellie how desperate he was.
He looked at Daisy, then at Ellie, and said:
“She’s better off with me than she would’ve been with you.”
Ellie went still.
“With me?”
“You’re twenty-three. You rent. You work at some office. You don’t know how to raise kids.”
No, she thought. I just know how it feels when the person who should keep you starts shopping for somewhere else to put you.
Nora stepped forward again.
“Mr. Monroe, if you continue this conversation, I’ll happily include your roadside statements, the unfinished relinquishment papers, and the text thread in my supporting affidavit.”
His expression hardened.
“You took her phone?”
“Daisy brought her backpack,” Ellie said. “Turns out children usually travel with their own things when you haven’t finished deciding who they belong to.”
Thomas stared at his oldest daughter for a long moment.
Then the front gate creaked.
A sheriff’s deputy stepped out of the driveway cruiser. Apparently Thomas had, in fact, called someone before thinking better of it.
Deputy Colin Reese listened to all three adults with a face that suggested he hated family disputes but hated obvious nonsense more. He checked Daisy’s well-being, reviewed Nora’s paperwork, and finally told Thomas the only useful thing anyone could have told him:
“This is a civil court matter now. I’m not removing a child from a stable placement on the roadside version of events.”
Thomas went pale with fury.
Ellie thought he might explode.
Instead he looked at Daisy one last time and said, very softly:
“I was trying to fix things.”
Daisy’s face didn’t change.
Not because she was cold.
Because children recognized false future-tense almost by instinct.
Thomas got in the borrowed truck and drove away.
The moment he disappeared down the road, Daisy went to the mudroom bench, sat down, and started crying without sound.
Ellie knelt in front of her.
“Hey.”
Daisy shook her head.
“I made him mad.”
“No,” Ellie said. “He did that himself.”
Daisy looked up with red eyes.
“Are you mad too?”
“No.”
That answer came from somewhere deeper than she expected.
Daisy dug into her backpack and pulled out a folded paper.
“I forgot.” She handed it to Ellie. “It was under the car seat.”
It was a motel receipt from Bristol dated the night before.
On the back, in Thomas’s handwriting, were two names listed in order:
Sherry
Mrs. Larkin (church)
Under them, circled twice:
If neither works — county office
Ellie stared.
A list.
An order of disposal.
A child passed down through options like luggage.
At the bottom, almost as an afterthought, Thomas had written one final line:
No more turns.
May you like
Nora took the paper slowly.
“Well,” she said. “That’s going to matter.”
