Chapter 16 Claire
Iwoke up the morning after the worst day of my life to discover that my face was everywhere.
Not in a good way. Not in a "local teacher wins award" way. In a "woman publicly humiliated in custody battle" way, complete with unflattering courtroom screenshots and headlines that made me want to crawl under my bed and never emerge.
STERLING CUSTODY BATTLE: Tutor's Mental Health Records Exposed
"Unstable Gold-Digger" or Victim? The Claire Cross Question
Billionaire's Employee Breaks Down Under Cross-Examination
I hadn't broken down. I'd answered questions while my soul was being filleted. There's a difference. But apparently, "woman maintains composure while being eviscerated" doesn't generate clicks.
"Fantastic," I muttered to my ceiling. "Really love this for me— wait… did I say that before?"
Abraham Lincoln stared back, unimpressed. Even the water stain was judging me now.
My phone had seventeen new notifications. I couldn't look at them. Couldn't face the mixture of pity and morbid curiosity that would be waiting in my inbox. Instead, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, replaying Nathaniel's texts from the night before.
Nathaniel
All professional ties dissolved. You owe us nothing.
You deserve complete freedom.
Freedom. Right. I was so free I couldn't move.
The day crawled by in a haze of instant coffee and compulsive apartment cleaning.
I scrubbed my bathroom until my hands were raw.
I reorganized my bookshelf twice, once alphabetically, once by color, then back to alphabetical because the color system looked unhinged.
I started applications for three teaching jobs I didn't want and closed my laptop before I could submit any of them.
My phone kept lighting up. Eleanor. Former colleagues. Numbers I didn't recognize, probably reporters who'd somehow gotten my contact information.
I ignored all of it.
But ignoring the world didn't stop my brain from circling the same obsessive loop: Millie was in the hospital. Millie had a serious head injury, a broken arm, and three cracked ribs. Millie was probably confused and scared, and wondering why the person who'd promised to be there had vanished.
I'd looked up pediatric head trauma recovery at 2 AM, because apparently I enjoyed torturing myself. The articles said children with moderate concussions needed calm, familiar faces. Minimal stress. Consistent reassurance.
Instead, Millie had a father drowning in a legal war and a stepmother who'd nearly killed her.
And me? I was scrubbing grout and pretending I didn't exist.
By the second morning, the guilt had become a physical weight on my chest.
"This is pathetic," I said to myself. "I'm hiding in my apartment while a seven-year-old wonders where I went. What kind of person does that?"
The kind who got publicly humiliated and is trying to survive, a reasonable voice answered.
The kind who abandons people when things get hard, my mother's voice countered. Just like me.
That one hit home.
I grabbed my phone before I could talk myself out of it and called Eleanor.
She answered on the first ring. "Claire. Thank God."
"I know, I'm sorry, I should have called sooner—"
"Stop apologizing and tell me you're okay."
"I'm..." I looked around my obsessively clean apartment, at the dark circles under my eyes in the hallway mirror, at the hollowed-out shell of a person I'd become in forty-eight hours. "I'm not okay. I'm really, really not okay."
"I'm coming over."
"Eleanor, you don't have to—"
"I'm already putting on my shoes." I heard rustling, the jingle of keys. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. Do you have food?"
"I have... half a sleeve of stale crackers and some questionable cheese."
"So that's a no." She sighed, the sound equal parts exasperation and affection. "I'm stopping at the bakery. Don't argue."
"I wasn't going to argue."
"Good. Because you'd lose." A pause. "Claire?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm proud of you for calling. I know it wasn’t easy for you."
The unexpected kindness made my eyes burn. "It took desperation, actually."
"Same thing, sometimes. Twenty minutes."
She hung up, and I stood there holding my phone, feeling something loosen slightly in my chest. Eleanor was coming. Eleanor would know what to do. Eleanor always knew what to do.
True to her word, she arrived nineteen minutes later with a paper bag from the bakery and an expression that suggested she'd been crying in her car. She took one look at me and opened her arms.
I fell into them.
"Oh, sweetheart," she murmured against my hair. "Oh, Claire."
"I'm a mess," I managed.
"You're allowed to be a mess. You've earned the right to be a spectacular mess.
" She pulled back, gripping my shoulders, her eyes fierce and wet.
"What they did to you in that courtroom was barbaric.
Using therapy against someone, using healing as a weapon…
I've never seen anything so unconscionable in my life. "
"You watched it?"
"I watched every second." Her cheeks puffed up with grief. "And then I watched it again, because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. That lawyer should be disbarred. That woman, Victoria, should be in prison, not giving interviews outside hospitals."
I blinked. "Interviews?"
Eleanor's expression shifted. "You haven't seen?"
"I've been avoiding the news. And my phone. And reality in general."
She guided me to the couch, pressing a still-warm cinnamon roll into my hands. "Eat first. Then I'll tell you."
"Eleanor—"
"Eat." Her tone left no room for argument.
I ate. The cinnamon roll was perfect, warm and gooey, and exactly the kind of comfort I needed. Eleanor watched me like a hawk, only relaxing once I'd finished the whole thing.
"Okay," she said, settling beside me. "Victoria has been staging a media circus outside the hospital.
Flowers, tears, the whole performance. She's telling anyone with a camera that she's devastated about the 'accident' and that Nathaniel is a controlling monster who's using the restraining order to punish her. "
My stomach turned. "She's making herself the victim."
"She's certainly trying." Eleanor's voice was grim. "The woman nearly killed her stepdaughter, and somehow she's spun it into a narrative about an abusive husband keeping her from her 'precious child.' It's masterful, in a horrifying way."
"And people believe her?"
"Some do. The comments sections are... divided."
I set down the empty bakery bag, my appetite gone. "Millie. How is she? Have you heard anything?"
Eleanor shook her head. "Nothing beyond what's in the news. The hospital isn't releasing details."
"She has a serious concussion. A broken arm. Three broken ribs." The words came out flat, recited. "I looked it up. Children with head injuries need stability."
"And instead she's got a media circus outside her window."
"And no me." My voice cracked. "I promised her, Eleanor. I promised I wouldn't leave."
Eleanor was quiet for a moment, studying my face. "Tell me everything. Start from wherever you need to start."
So I did.
It poured out of me, not just the hearing, but everything.
Finding Millie in the rain that first night.
The soup. The mansion with its cold marble and colder stepmother.
Victoria's subtle cruelties, the way she'd make Millie shrink just by entering a room.
The kitchen conversations with Nathaniel, late nights trading griefs like secret currencies.
"He told me about his wife," I said quietly. "His first wife. How she died. The guilt he carries."
"And how did that make you feel?"
I looked at my hands. "Like I understood him. Like we were both just... trying to survive the people we'd lost."
"Claire." Eleanor's voice was gentle. "Sweetheart. Are you in love with him?"
The question landed like a grenade.
"I don't—" I started, then stopped. I tried again. "It's complicated."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a yes either." I pulled my knees to my chest, making myself smaller. "I care about him. I care about Millie so much it scares me. And there were moments, in the kitchen, during Millie's recital, where I thought maybe..."
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe I wasn't just the help to him. Maybe I was something more.
" The words hurt coming out. "But then the hearing happened, and he sent that text, and now I don't know what any of it meant.
Was it real? Or was I just doing what I always do, projecting feelings onto someone unavailable, trying to save a broken family because I couldn't save my own? "
Eleanor reached over and took my hand. "Do you want my honest opinion?"
"I'm terrified of your honest opinion."
"Tough luck." She squeezed my fingers. "Here it is: I think you fell in love with that man somewhere between all the Victoria mess and your kitchen counter moments.
I think you love his daughter like she's your own.
And I think you're sitting here torturing yourself because you're convinced you don't deserve any of it. "
My eyes burned. "The lawyer said—"
"The lawyer said what she was paid to say.
" Eleanor's voice hardened. "She took your therapy records, the sign of a healing person, and twisted them into something ugly.
But Claire, having anxious attachment doesn't mean your feelings aren't real.
Working on yourself doesn't make you broken. It makes you brave."
"I don't feel brave. I feel like I'm falling apart."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
A sobbing laugh escaped me. "When did you get so wise?"
"I've always been wise. You were just too busy taking care of everyone else to notice.
" She shifted to face me fully. "Here's what I know: you can sit in this apartment and hide.
You can take that man's money and disappear, just like Victoria wants.
Or you can decide that you're done letting other people write your story. "
"What does that even mean?"