My chest went cold.
“Ryan.”
“I was making sure.”
“By asking until she changed her answer?”
“I never told her to change anything.”
Travis’s voice hardened.
“She told me, ‘Daddy keeps asking like I’m saying it wrong.’”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then everything began making sense.
Emma’s reluctance to answer Ryan lately.
The way she had gone quiet whenever Travis’s name came up at dinner.
Her saying she no longer trusted her father.
Ryan had convinced himself he was protecting her.
But Emma had experienced something completely different.
Her father had asked a question.
She answered honestly.
And then he kept questioning her as though honesty wasn’t enough.
Travis continued.
“That’s why I talked to him.”
I looked at him.
“You should have talked to me too.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
No defensiveness.
Just yes.
“I thought if I confronted him directly, he’d stop putting Emma in the middle.”
Ryan laughed bitterly.
“You confronted me about parenting my own child.”
“I told you that if you had a problem with me, you should bring it to me. Not make a seven-year-old responsible for proving I’m safe.”
Ryan pointed at him.
“And this proves my point. Why is my daughter talking to you about me?”
Travis stared at him.
“Because you kept talking to her about me.”
Ryan fell silent.
And suddenly, the real question was staring directly at us.
If Ryan had no evidence Travis had done anything wrong, what was he actually afraid of?
Part 7 — “Every Time I’m Not There, He Is”
I turned to Ryan.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I already have.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You’ve told me you don’t trust Travis. You’ve never told me why.”
Ryan began pacing.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He stopped.
Then the words came out all at once.
“He’s always there.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“Travis.”
Ryan gestured toward him.
“He’s always there.”
His voice grew sharper.
“Your car breaks when you’re seventeen? Travis fixes it. Your father dies? Travis shows up for your mother. Something at the house needs fixing? He knows how to do it. We have a problem getting Emma home from school? Of course Travis is available.”
