Dorothy turned slowly toward Vivian.
“Where are they?”
Vivian blinked, all innocence. “Grant thought the house needed less… sadness.”
Dorothy looked at her for a long moment. “My daughter is not sadness.”
Vivian shifted but said nothing.
Dorothy crossed the room, picked up Theodore from his bassinet, and held him close enough to hear his breathing.
She made no scene. She simply took out her small notebook later and wrote down the date, the time, the exact wording.
Colleen had taught her through those letters: if you cannot win in volume, win in detail.
That same week, Dorothy met with the court-appointed guardian ad litem, a measured woman named Rebecca Snow who represented only one thing: the children’s best interests.
Rebecca visited the hotel room first. Dorothy had worried about that. A hotel room was no place to build a case for custody of triplets. But Dorothy cleaned it until it looked like an operating room, lined up sterilized bottles, stacked diaper supplies by size, and placed Colleen’s letters back in the purse where she kept them close but private.
Rebecca watched Dorothy with the babies for two hours.
Dorothy did not perform. She simply did what she always did—knew which cry belonged to Margot, which bottle Theodore preferred warm rather than merely heated, how Bridget settled fastest when held against a heartbeat instead of bounced.
At one point Rebecca asked, “How are you managing sleep?”
Dorothy replied, “Poorly. But effectively.”
Rebecca’s mouth twitched.
Then the guardian visited Birchwood Lane.
What she saw there would later matter more than Grant understood.
Vivian answered the door wearing yoga clothes and lipstick. The nanny, Tessa, was in the nursery. Grant was in his home office on a conference call. Rebecca asked basic questions about feeding schedules, pediatric appointments, immunizations, and night wakings.
Grant answered some correctly.
Vivian answered several for him.
When Rebecca asked who usually got up first when Theodore cried overnight, Grant said, “We all share responsibilities.”
Tessa, from the doorway, looked down at her shoes.
Rebecca noticed.
That evening, Jolene brought Dorothy another box of things Emmett’s team had recovered from the house under discovery rules: Colleen’s desk calendar, a bundle of receipts, and a spiral-bound lavender notebook.
The pregnancy journal.
Dorothy sat on the hotel bed and opened it.