Just a Little Too Late

In the eight years since my wife handed our daughter over to her widowed brother-in-law, I went to court eight times. This time, the judge asked me the same question she always did: was I here to sue for custody again? I corrected her. "I'm here to withdraw the suit. I'm giving up custody. I'm agreeing to the divorce." Ten years married to my wife, Vivian Simpson, and eight of those years spent in courtrooms. I'd become the whole city of Northbridge's favorite joke. Now, I'd finally endured enough to let go. From now on, the most spineless man in Northbridge would never have to show his face in front of them again. Chapter 1 Ted's POV I'd just finished signing the custody waiver the judge had drawn up when Vivian Simpson and our daughter arrived. They probably assumed I was here to drag them through court for a ninth time, the way I had the last eight. Vivian's voice dripped with mockery. "Ted, this makes nine lawsuits. It'll be the last one, too. Chloe just turned eight today, and legally, she's old enough to choose which of us she wants to live with." My daughter Chloe's eyes went cold and distant. She didn't hesitate. "I want to live with Mom and Papa Andy." I thought of the video my brother-in-law had sent me the night before—Vivian's family gathering early to set out a cake and light candles for our daughter's birthday. At the table, Chloe had suddenly frowned and complained, "It's all Dad's fault I always end up celebrating my birthday early." I wanted to tell her that wasn't true. Every year, Vivian pushed our court dates back to our daughter's birthday, claiming she was too busy with work. I'd confronted her about it more than once, but she only looked at me, cold and unbothered. "You like dragging this out, don't you? Fine, have it your way. Every time you drag us back to court, Chloe hates you a little more. I have all the time in the world to play this game with you, Ted." I knew she was doing it on purpose—turning our daughter against me. But there was nothing I could do. In the video, Chloe kept going. "I've made the same birthday wish for years now—that Mom wins in court. Why does Dad have to keep hounding us like some kind of lunatic? I hate a dad like that. Papa Andy is so much better." Everyone at the table had laughed. I was the only one whose eyes burned watching it. In that moment, any explanation felt pointless. This time, the one laughing at my expense wasn't a stranger—it was the daughter I'd fought eight years to keep. So now, faced with Chloe's own choice spoken to my face, I only said, numb, "Fine. I don't want you either." Chloe clearly didn't believe me. Her eyes flared with anger, her voice sharp. "If you didn't want me, why did you even bother suing?" I didn't feel like explaining. I pointed to the custody waiver I'd just signed. "This has nothing to do with you this time. I'm here to divorce your mother." Vivian's eyes landed on the document, and for a moment, she looked genuinely stunned. "You're sure? You'll give up Chloe just to divorce me?" I nodded. Ten years married to Vivian, and eight of them spent in courtrooms. Not a shred of dignity in any of it—just one hysterical accusation after another. Our daughter despised me now, and I was finally, truly tired. So I pulled out the divorce agreement I'd rewritten more times than I could count and held it out to her. "Just sign it. I'm not fighting for custody anymore." Chapter 2 Seeing that I wasn't joking, Chloe tugged at her mother's sleeve. She whispered urgently, "Mom, just sign it. Isn't getting rid of Dad exactly what you've wanted all along?" But Vivian glanced at my ashen face and, unexpectedly, her tone softened. "Ted, you know perfectly well I never actually meant to divorce you. I only wanted you to understand your place." My place. What place did I have? Ever since I'd moved into the Simpson household as Vivian's husband, I'd been nothing but an unpaid servant everyone ordered around. Vivian's mother, Lisa Simpson, looked down on me. She never missed a chance to humiliate me in front of others. Meanwhile, she doted on Andy and gave him the best of everything in the house. For Vivian's sake, I could have stomached all of that unfairness. What I never expected was her betrayal. Not long after she'd given birth to our daughter, she'd listened to Lisa and gone to Andy's room. The night the two of them spent tangled together, Lisa had me tied up for the entire night. The next day, all Vivian offered by way of explanation was, "Ted, Andy's a widower with no wife. He's been through enough." I couldn't accept sharing my wife with another man. Provoked past my limit, I passed out on the spot. But the first thing Vivian said when she came to see me in the hospital was, "Ted, Andy has no one to carry on his family line. I listened to Mom, and I've given our daughter to him. We're still young. We can have another child." I refused, flatly. Her face turned cold. "Can't you understand anything? Andy's a widower with no child to his name. He'll be lonely for the rest of his life." Vivian truly had no heart. She never once considered how I, a father who'd just had his child taken from him, was supposed to go on living. To keep my daughter and me from being permanently separated, I went straight from the hospital to the courthouse and sued for divorce and custody. It even made the front page of Northbridge Entertainment News. The Simpsons didn't care in the slightest. Lisa looked at me with cold eyes. "Ted, I always thought you knew your place. I never expected you to be this foolish. You're a man who married into this family—what right do you have to fight us for custody of Chloe?" So what place did I actually have in the Simpson household? I took a deep breath, choked down my disgust, and pointed to the line on the divorce agreement reserved for her signature. "I'm not even fighting you for our daughter anymore. What more do you want? Just sign it." Vivian's lips pressed into a thin line, her expression darkening, and she signed her name. "Once we're divorced, seeing Chloe again won't come so easily. Don't you dare regret this, Ted." I looked at Chloe. Eight years ago, she'd been born premature, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, barely clinging to life in an incubator. The hospital had issued critical-condition notices again and again. The Simpsons had all but given up on her. I was the only one who'd begged everyone who could possibly save her, until I finally kept her alive. So for years, in Vivian's eyes, Chloe had been my one weakness. But now, looking at the indifference on Chloe's face and the disdain in her eyes when she looked at me, something in me finally let go. I folded up the divorce agreement. Chloe tugged excitedly at her mother's hem. "Great, Mom! Since I don't have to go to court on my birthday, let's go find Papa Andy. We can all go to the amusement park together!" I almost wanted to laugh. Countless times before, I'd gone to the Simpson house to take Chloe to that same amusement park, and every time she'd refused—her stomach hurt, or the weather wasn't good, or something. She'd even snapped at me once, "Dad, you're a grown man. Can't you act your age instead of always wanting to go to some amusement park?" Swallowing down the bitterness rising in my throat, I checked the time and said, "The park stops letting people in soon. You'll need to hurry if you want to make it." Chloe bristled like a cat with its tail stepped on, her eyes flaring red with anger. "You don't need to worry about it. Since you and Mom are divorced, you're not my dad anymore!" I thought she was right. "Fine. I won't say another word." I picked up the documents and walked out ahead of them. "Have fun." Chapter 3 Walking out of the courthouse, I took a cab straight to the hospital to see my mother, who was gravely ill. Just like the judge, she asked me the same question out of habit, "Did you get custody of Chloe?" I shook my head. "I withdrew the suit. I'm not fighting for custody anymore." Mom didn't ask why. She only looked crestfallen. "Maybe it's for the best." I knew she was lying. She'd begged me more than once to bring Chloe to see her. I'd brought it up with the Simpsons, but Lisa wouldn't budge, and even sneered at me for asking. "How could I let Chloe anywhere near someone who's about to die? Don't you think that's bad luck? No matter what, you're still her father—shouldn't you be thinking of what's best for her?" But the person Lisa called bad luck was my mother. Choking down the bitterness of it, I told Mom, "Once you're feeling better, let's leave Northbridge." She nodded weakly. I pulled out my phone to check for flights. That was when I saw a tabloid reporter had, just a minute earlier, dropped a wave of damaging material about the Simpson family. The whole internet was already tearing into Andy for stealing another man's wife and taking my daughter. Before I could make sense of it, the door to Mom's room banged open. Vivian stormed in, her face like thunder, Chloe right behind her, just as furious. Both of them looked at me with eyes gone ice-cold, and then Vivian swung her arm and slapped me hard across the face. "How could you be so vicious! No wonder you were suddenly willing to drop the lawsuit—you were planning to expose me and Andy online this whole time! Do you have any idea Andy couldn't handle the backlash and tried to slit his wrists? He almost didn't make it!" Mom, terrified by the scene, tried desperately to pull herself up and shield me. Cradling my stinging cheek, I tried to explain on instinct. "It wasn't me—" Vivian cut me off with a cold laugh. "No one but the Simpsons and you, an outsider, knew about any of that. If it wasn't you, then who? Besides, selling that story to a reporter would've fetched a decent price." Her gaze slid meaningfully toward my mother. "And we both know who around here needs money the most." Mom froze where she stood, her face flashing pale, then red. I shook my head. "It really wasn't me." Vivian didn't bother arguing further. She grabbed me and hauled me bodily toward Andy's hospital room. "Enough talk. Get in there and apologize to Andy." Even my own daughter started throwing punches and kicks at me. "You're a bad person! You hurt Papa Andy! I'll beat you to death! Apologize! Get on your knees and beg for forgiveness!" Seeing me treated like this by Vivian and Chloe, Mom flushed red with fury from her hospital bed. "Please—please don't touch my son." She struggled to move her weakened body and, in the effort, slipped off the bed and hit the floor hard. I fought against Vivian's grip, desperate to check on my mother, but she only waved a nurse over and sneered, "Your mother's too stubborn to die that easily. Andy is what matters right now." I was dragged bodily into Andy's hospital room. He lay there in a patient's gown, his wrist wrapped in thick white bandages. When he saw us, his weak face creased into a frown. "Vivian, don't treat Ted like this." Vivian looked at him, her face full of tender concern. "He did something this stupid and nearly cost me you. This is the least he should suffer for it." I laughed until tears came. Once, when Vivian and I had married, she'd sworn she'd never betray me in this lifetime, never so much as lay a finger on me. Now, for the sake of her widowed brother-in-law, she was doing exactly that. And standing beside her, doing the same thing, was the daughter I'd fought eight years to keep. Chloe ground her heel into a raw scrape on my skin, currying favor with Andy. Even my long-numbed heart ached faintly at that. Vivian's voice, cold and merciless, reached my ears again. "I won't say it twice. Apologize to Andy." I looked at the two faces in front of me, one large and one small, so alike it hurt, and eight years of buried grievance surged up all at once inside my chest. "Why should I apologize? Isn't everything online true? Didn't Andy steal my wife and take my daughter, too?" Chapter 4 Hearing that, Andy's face went even paler, guilt deepening across his features. "Ted's right. I'm the one who wronged him." In an instant, Vivian's expression turned murderous. "You don't want your mother's life saved anymore?" She was already reaching for her phone, ready to stop my mother's emergency treatment. I knew she was capable of it. Panic took over completely. I abandoned what dignity I had left and dropped to my knees, apologizing. Still, it wasn't enough for Vivian. "Go live on camera and clear Andy's name. Tell everyone the truth—that you're the one who schemed your way into my life, that you're the one who came between me and Andy. By rights, you're the homewrecker here." Numb, I dragged myself through it exactly as she demanded. I went live and told the world the news was all fabricated—that I'd drugged her all those years ago and taken advantage of her for one night, and only after she got pregnant did I manage to marry into the Simpson family. I said the reason I'd fought her in court all these years was that I resented the divorce settlement, not because I cared about custody of our daughter. By the time the stream ended, "Ted Weir: Gold-Digging Husband of a Wealthy Family" was the top trending topic online. Watching the public's anger swing away from Andy and onto me, Vivian smiled, satisfied. She wrapped her arms around Andy and cooed, "Anyone who hurts you gets what's coming to them." I couldn't stand to look at either of them any longer. I staggered to my feet and rushed toward the operating room, only to find the light above the door already dark. Frantic, I asked the doctor coming out, "How's my mother?" He looked at me, something complicated in his eyes. "Why did it take you so long to get here? Your card was frozen before we could even start the emergency treatment. Your mother—" I couldn't hear anything else after that. I just stood there, staring blankly as they wheeled out a body covered in a white sheet. At the same time, Vivian and Chloe swept past me on either side of Andy. I heard, with perfect clarity, Chloe reporting her good deed to him. "Papa Andy, I froze Dad's card to get revenge for you. It's his fault this happened to you, all because he's obsessed with money!" The last thread holding my mind together snapped. My heart seized with violent pain, and my whole body shook uncontrollably. My own daughter had indirectly killed my mother. The next second, I coughed up a mouthful of blood. It splattered instantly across Vivian's and Chloe's sleeves.