He looked like a small man in a meeting.
When the judge, a careful woman named Harwood, gently asked where he wanted to live, Eli wouldn’t look at me.
“I want to live with Dad,” he said quietly.
My heart clenched.
Then he said the sentence that would haunt me.
“Mom can’t give me the future I need.”
It sounded rehearsed, like words an eight-year-old had been taught to say in a car on the way there.
I watched Spencer smile.
I wanted to jump up and ask Eli why he’d said it.
Instead I sat in silence while the court weighed his wishes against the rest of the evidence.
The final order allowed Spencer to take Eli abroad for an extended period, ninety days, “for educational enrichment,” under conditions that included weekly contact with me and a return date in writing.
Spencer’s attorney called it a compromise.
I told myself my son had picked a bigger life over our ordinary one.
