I Paid His Down Payment, But My Son Thanked His Stepmom Instead Chapter 04

“You’re too busy to take care of your own kid, so someone else does. And instead of thanking her, you blame her?”

“Delphine, since when are you this petty?”

I stared at him. Suddenly he felt like a stranger.

I lay awake all night wondering when things had started to go wrong.

Was it when I started leaving every night to teach piano?

Was it sitting in other people’s living rooms with my sheet music till ten?

Or the day I pawned my mother’s gold pendant?

I didn’t realize until later that I’d been asking the wrong questions for far too long.

At the end of the year, the company needed a loan to expand. Barrett came home with a stack of paperwork and told me to sign it.

“It’s all for the bank. You’re a shareholder—just sign.”

I did. I signed in seven different places without reading a single page carefully.

Six months later, I was at the county clerk’s office looking something up for my school, so I checked the company’s registration records too.

My name was gone from the shareholders list.

My thirty percent stake had been transferred to Tamsin. The transfer date was the exact day I’d signed.

The company’s first money came from my mother’s gold pendant.

Now it belonged to Tamsin.

I lost it.

I stormed into the office and flipped Tamsin’s desk in front of more than twenty employees.

I called her ungrateful, shameless.

Barrett stepped in front of her. Didn’t say one word in my defense.

Someone pulled out a phone and started filming. I saw it, but by then I couldn’t stop.

After that, I barely recognized myself.

I showed up at the office to confront them. I made scenes at restaurants where they were eating. I called Barrett a hundred times a day.

The last time, I went to Rourke’s school.

When school let out, Tamsin came to pick him up. I rushed over and tried to pull him into my arms.

“Rourke, come with me.”

He burst into tears.

He fought free of my grip and ducked behind Tamsin, clinging to her waist.

Parents waiting for their children surrounded us. Some pointed and whispered. Others took out their phones and filmed.

Tamsin held him close, her eyes red as she looked at me.

“Delphine, you’re scaring him.”

That night, the video spread through every parent group chat at his school.

The next day, the kids at school made fun of him, saying his mom was crazy.

When he got home, he threw down the digital watch I’d given him and screamed at me.

“Stay away from my school!”

“I don’t want a mother like you!”

Barrett sat on the couch and played the video for me.

“Delphine, look at yourself.”

“You really think you deserve to be Rourke’s mother?”

I couldn’t say a word.

Even I didn’t recognize the woman on the screen—hair a mess, face streaked with tears.

Barrett knew exactly how to set me off. And exactly how to leave me with nothing afterward.

Junie sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes already red.

“Ms. Marchetti, didn’t the judge do anything at the divorce?”

The judge did.

At the hearing, the judge asked Rourke which parent he wanted to live with.

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he went and stood behind his father, looked down, and said something that made the whole courtroom go silent.

“Mom took two hundred thousand dollars from Dad.”

“She said she didn’t want me anymore.”

The courtroom went dead silent.

I wanted to stand up and say it wasn’t true.

But I couldn’t get the words out.

Because that paper—giving up custody for a one-time payment of two hundred thousand dollars—had my signature on it.

I’d signed it myself.

That winter, my mother collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.

We rushed her to the hospital. The doctor said she needed emergency surgery—two hundred thousand dollars upfront.

I had a little over forty thousand dollars to my name.

Over the years, I’d poured nearly every spare dollar from my paycheck into the company.

I’d borrowed from everyone I could think of. In the end, Barrett was the only one left.

When he arrived at the hospital, Tamsin came with him.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his bag and held it out to me.

“I’ll give you the money. But you sign this first.”

I glanced at the document, and my hands started to shake.

It said I was giving up custody of Rourke for a one-time payment of two hundred thousand dollars.