Chapter 13 - Nadia's Deadline
Denise arranged for Nadia's attorney to communicate with investigators.
No one asked me to meet Nadia alone or negotiate a secret deal.
I was grateful for that.
I didn't trust myself to speak calmly to a woman who had accessed my daughter's medical information without a clear explanation.
Nadia admitted through the appropriate process that she'd improperly accessed an appointment record after receiving a frantic call from Elliot.
She said Elliot told her there was a family emergency and that Lucas needed to identify which doctor had seen Chloe.
She understood she had crossed a line.
She also claimed Elliot had threatened to reveal unrelated misconduct at her workplace if she refused.
The investigators would need to verify her account, but it explained how Lucas might have learned Dr. Collins's name.
It did not explain how Elliot knew we were at the hospital in the first place.
Nadia supplied communications showing that Elliot had received a location alert from a device registered under Northline's technology account.
The device identifier matched the tablet Lucas had set up for Chloe.
I felt sick remembering how proudly she'd carried it around the apartment.
We had left the tablet at home when we went to the hospital, so the alert did not by itself establish our route.
But Nadia also showed that Elliot had been sent a screenshot from a shared family location service linked to my own phone.
Lucas had enabled that service years earlier and never told me it could be viewed through his business account.
The two channels together offered a plausible explanation for the messages.
The mystery had an answer.
The answer was surveillance, deception, and a network of people willing to misuse access.
I didn't feel relief.
I felt violated in a new way.
Then Nadia's attorney revealed another concern.
Nadia said Elliot had given her a deadline to deny everything publicly or risk losing her home and job.
She had preserved several messages and turned them over through counsel.
While the authorities evaluated them, Denise moved urgently to protect our location and financial records.
Nora offered to rent a place under her own name, but Denise cautioned us against informal arrangements that could complicate safety planning.
We worked with advocates to choose a more secure option.
Chloe continued therapy and began sleeping through more nights.
She still asked to keep the bedroom door partly open.
I told her that was fine.
Some evenings she laughed again.
Other evenings she wanted me to sit beside her until she fell asleep.
I learned not to interpret every good day as proof she was healed or every hard day as proof she was falling apart.
Healing wasn't an argument to win.
It was the ordinary work of helping her feel safe.
On Friday, I received a notice that Harbor Meridian had filed a change in corporate officers.
The form listed my name as resigning from a position I'd never accepted.
The effective date was the previous Monday.
The same day Lucas had offered me money in exchange for surrendering the camera records.
Daniel Cho examined the notice and called Denise.
“Someone is cleaning up a paper trail,” he said.
I stared at the date.
Lucas's battle against me was no longer just about custody or reputation.
He was trying to rearrange evidence from years of business dealings.
Then Denise received a message from Lucas's attorney.
He demanded that we accept a confidential settlement within forty-eight hours.
If we refused, Lucas intended to pursue sanctions and broaden his allegations about my fitness as a parent.
I looked at the deadline.
For the first time, I didn't wonder whether Lucas would forgive me.
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I wondered what would happen when someone finally refused to give him what he wanted.
