“Using a child to destroy a marriage… that’s a new low, even for her,” Jack muttered. “She’s never seeing Maddie alone again. Not ever.”
“She’s still your mother, Jack. You can see her if you want,” Christine said quietly, her voice steady. “But our daughter isn’t a pawn in her sick games.”
From that day on, the Sunday visits stopped. When Eleanor called to demand why her granddaughter wasn’t being dropped off, Jack didn’t yell. He simply told her that they knew about “Pete and Vince.”
Eleanor tried to play it off as a joke, then blamed Maddie’s “overactive imagination,” claiming the child must have misinterpreted a TV show.
But the bridge was burned. Jack knew the truth, and for the first time, he chose his wife’s peace over his mother’s approval.
Eleanor was relegated to supervised visits on holidays, watched closely by two parents who finally understood exactly what kind of “lessons” she was trying to teach.
