I started keeping a folder — not the one full of screenshots and evidence, but a new one, digital, just for me. In it, I put the note from Dr. Shah about my monitor settings, a photo of Lily grinning gap-toothed outside the courthouse the day the temporary order was signed, and eventually, a printed copy of Judge Hanley’s final custody ruling. Not because I needed to prove anything to anyone anymore. Just because I wanted, someday, to be able to show Lily exactly how far we had come, in case she ever needed reminding that hard things can still end somewhere good.
PART 8
The ninety-day review hearing in October was almost anticlimactic, which felt, after everything, like its own kind of victory.
Susan Bell’s follow-up report noted real improvement. Lily had stopped repeating statements about my illness being fabricated. She talked about her father’s house more easily, without the tight, careful phrasing she’d used before, the sentences that always sounded rehearsed for an audience of adults deciding her fate. Daniel had completed his counseling requirement and, more importantly, had begun requesting extra time with Lily specifically around ordinary things — school pickups, a Saturday at the science museum — rather than only the minimum contact the court required.
