Left in the Flooded Kindergarten for His Childhood Sweetheart Chapter 08

Left in the Flooded Kindergarten for His Childhood Sweetheart Chapter 08

The very next day after I reclaimed my car, Tristan showed up to work late for the first time ever.

He’d grown spoiled relying on my vehicle: the reserved underground parking spot, pre-programmed navigation, gas card, and toll pass—he’d treated every single convenience like his own birthright.

Overnight, all of it vanished. He was forced to hail a cab amid morning rush hour rain leftover from the storm.

The driver took a long detour, traffic gridlocked every highway, and he stumbled into the office forty minutes past his start time.

Word got back to me that his department supervisor reprimanded him in front of the entire team, his face twisted with barely contained fury throughout the dressing-down.

The message arrived from a coworker of Tristan’s—he was also the dad of one of Anna’s classmates, his tone hesitant and awkward.

[Nova, did you and Tristan have a huge fight? He’s been completely out of it today.]

I sent one short reply: [We’re filing for divorce.]

He went quiet for ages before sending a single weary sigh emoji.

Tristan began bombarding my phone relentlessly with calls. I never answered a single one.

He switched to flooding my texts instead.

[How’s Anna feeling?]

[I bought her favorite cake; I’ll swing by with it tonight.]

[I stopped by the preschool to pick her up, but the teacher said you’d already taken her home.]

[Nova, don’t cut me off from seeing my daughter.]

A bitter laugh rose unbidden when I read that last line.

Now he wanted to argue about his parental rights. What about his parental responsibilities?

All those sleepless hospital nights, the storm-stricken preschool pickup, the freezing train station wait—he’d vanished for every single one.

Only now that everything was slipping away did he suddenly remember he was a father.

I never planned to bar him from seeing Anna, but I asked her for her honest feelings first. “Daddy wants to come visit you. Do you want him to?”

Anna sat on the hotel bed clutching a pack of crayons. She thought it over for a long while, then shook her head firmly. “I don’t want to.”

I knelt down to meet her eye level. “Why not, sweetie?”

She bowed her head, drawing a car across the paper. Three figures sat inside the car: Daddy, Aunt Kylie, Paige. A tiny stick figure of herself stood all alone outside the vehicle.

She swept her blue crayon across the page, sketching dozens of raindrops surrounding the lonely little girl.

“I had a dream Daddy’s car drove away again,” she whispered softly. “I couldn’t run fast enough to catch it.”

My throat tightened painfully, and I pulled her into a tight hug. “Then we won’t make you see him.”

After Anna turned him away, Tristan stood outside the hospital entrance all night long.

The next morning, he sent over a photo via text. It was a kid’s birthday cake he’d purchased, with icing scrawled across the top: Anna, I’m so sorry.

I never showed the picture to Anna. A birthday cake should be joy, not a ledger of his regrets. To write “sorry” where “happy” belongs was to make her celebration about his guilt. Apologies were cheap currency among grown-ups, yet they crushed children under their burden.

Saying sorry meant forcing a little girl to relieve every hurt he’d inflicted, then pressuring her to perform forgiveness and accept his half-hearted remorse.

I refused to make Anna carry that weight.