“Kade,” Ethel interrupts, squeezing my hand, “She's okay. Aurora is fine. Teething like crazy and struggling to sleep through the night, but that's to be expected. She's going through a lot of changes. Missing her parents, I have no doubt. Her life’s changing, and it’s changing fast—something I'm sure you can understand. But she also spent some time in the hospital, had a lot of tests done, and they found some things that sparked…”
She trails off, setting her cup down with a ragged exhale.
“Things that prompted me to dig a bit deeper.”
Nodding slowly, I brace myself, mind whirling, heart hammering, and fuck, I’m surprised my first thought is:I want Georgia here.
Want her at my side, to lean on, to ask for help and support. Just plain want her here.
But she's not. I'm on my own. Signed up to do this on my own, and as of now, that’s where I’m at. Need to learn to be a dad by myself just in case…
Just in case she ends up leaving in a few months.
So I gesture to Ethel to continue and wait for the words I already know are gonna fuck me up.
“Aurora shows some history of abuse,” she says quietly, and my body goes utterly still. “Some minor but telling fractures in her wrist and collarbone, consistent with rough handling. A few small scars. The kind that don’t come from normal childhood bumps.”
My heart skips a beat, room spinning, but I force my legs to hold me up.
“Because of that,” she continues, her tone carefully measured, “I looked deeper into her parents. Marlee Parker-Vernal had a relatively clean record—just a few minor incidents, short-term arrests, but they were from years ago. As I’m sure you know, she had a rough upbringing. Both her parents died from drug overdoses.”
She sighs, clicking her tongue softly. “I knew Kim Parker—Marlee’s grandmother. That woman had no business raising anyone, let alone Marlee and Oakley after their own mom passed.”
A beat of silence stretches between us.
“I thought Marlee had escaped the cycle,” she murmurs, fingers tight around her mug. “But from what I found, it looks like she got pulled back in… and it seems to have started around the time she met Travis Vernal. His record paints a very different picture.”
I grit my teeth, listening.
“Travis Vernal had two DUIs in the past five years, both quietly pled down. Several reports of domestic disturbances from neighbors, but none that resulted in charges. A few hospital visits for unexplained injuries to Marlee and Aurora, but nothing concrete. Still, it was enough to raise red flags.”
My hands shake and I grip the counter to keep from punching something.
“That brings me to last week. I received the toxicology report for Aurora's parents the day they passed.” A breath as she meets my gaze. “Travis Vernal was highly intoxicated. Nearly twice the legal limit. Marlee was also drinking, though her levels were lower.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” I rasp, barely holding it together.
Her eyes cloud over and she looks down at her cup before steeling herself and looking back at me.
“There were no skid marks at the accident site, Kade.”
I lose it the only way I can.
Spinning around, I yank at my hair and breathe through the rage clouding my mind. When that doesn’t do a damn thing, I pace, quietly working through the chaos swirling inside me.
My eyes repeatedly slide to Aurora. The need to go to her, pick her up, hold her close and protect her is hard to ignore, but I don’t want her in the middle of this. Never want a single ounce of this…hateto touch her.
“You're saying that piece of shit crashed on purpose?” I whisper-hiss, jerking a finger toward the playpen. “With his baby in the fucking car?”
She holds her hands up but doesn’t seem put off by my reaction. “We don’t know that for sure. Could have been too drunk to see the lines, or fallen asleep at the wheel. We don’t know it was intentional—”
“Nah, fuck that,” I bark, shaking my head. “He got behind the wheel drunk as hell, with his baby in the backseat. He did that shit on purpose. And Marlee…”
I grip the sink and lean over, dry heaving. “She knew. She was there. She was drinking. Sheknew.”
Silence hangs between us like smoke, and I hate how long it takes me to pull myself together. Hate that it’s happening now, on a day that was supposed to be filled with love and happiness.
Swallowing hard, I shake the lingering anger from my system, put it away for later, and turn back to the social worker who’s quietly wrecking everything I thought I knew about my ex.
