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After a long pause, she told him, “Fine. I’ll cut back on the McDonald’s, buy him some Goodnites, make sure he doesn’t miss a single nap, and I won’t leave him with a babysitter anymore. Does that make you happy?”
“As far as the neglect goes, yes.”
“Well, what else is there?”
“There’s the emotional and physical abuse that Jacob has suffered—”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t emotionally or physically abused Jacob.”
“No, but your boyfriend has.”
A shocked layer of silence filled the living room for several moments before Ashley broke it with an outraged, “Are you out of your fucking mind? Liam would never—”
“Yes, he would. And he did, on multiple occasions.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He put his hands on our son, Ash, and called him a ‘fucking brat’ and a ‘little shit’. To his face.”
Ashley shook her head in denial. “No. Liam is a really great guy, and I can’t picture him doing—or saying—anything like that. Jacob has to be making it up.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, while his thumb worked away on the worry stone. Rub, rub, rub. “Why do you think he’d make something like that up?”
“Because he’s looking for attention. Isn’t that what troubled kids do?”
“He’s ‘troubled’ because of your boyfriend.” Letting go of the worry stone, David pulled his hand out of his pocket and leaned forward to grab the envelope off the table. Opening it, he pulled out several sheets of paper and handed them to her. “Here.”
“What are these?” she asked, barely glancing at them.
“Those are the official reports detailing Jacob’s abuse, written by his therapist—”
“Jacob has a fucking therapist? He’s not even four years old.”
“Yes, he has a therapist. After his last visit with you, he was such a fucking mess that I became concerned and made an appointment for him to talk to someone, because he wouldn’t talk to me. He ended up seeing Lauren—that’s his therapist’s name—several times, and during these visits she uncovered multiple instances of abuse.”
Ashley reluctantly turned her attention to the papers in her hands. David wasn’t surprised when she seemed to barely skim the contents of the first page before laying it down on the table, unimpressed, since the first session had really been about establishing trust, so there wasn’t anything overly problematic in it. The second and third reports, however, did get more of her attention, garnering some raised eyebrows and a few frowns, and when she was finished, she set the last page down and turned to David with a bland expression. “If Liam did say those things to Jacob—”
“If? He did say those things.”
“—then he probably shouldn’t have—”
“Probably?”
She released an annoyed sigh. “I’ll talk to Liam about his language, okay?”
David gave her a look that said it clearly wasn’t okay.
“And as for his spanking Jacob—”
“Your boyfriend didn’t ‘spank’ Jacob. Liam emotionally and physically abused Jacob,” David corrected her. “So, let’s call it what it is, okay?”
“I’ll ask him not to do it again,” she said with another annoyed sigh. “All right?”
“You’ll ask him?”
“I’ll tell him not to do it again,” she rephrased, then added, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
“Ashley,” David said slowly, “I’m not sure which is more disturbing here, the fact that you would let this prick be around our son ever again, or the fact you think I would allow this prick to be around our son ever again.”
