The folder contained more than my father’s message. Ambrose had been paying child support through the court every single month, never missing a payment. Odile pulled the records the following week and found that Delphine had been receiving every dollar. Worse, she had been telling our parents that Ambrose had stopped paying, collecting another eleven hundred dollars a month from my father for two full years. He never checked because checking would have meant admitting his daughter could lie. He had chosen the easier version of the truth and called it peace.

Delphine stayed away until her four-week trip was finished, posting smiling photographs from Rome, Florence, and Nice. But when she landed, an emergency motion was already waiting. Within six weeks, Odile had the custody order changed. Then the judge read Rowan’s folded paper, the one he had hidden inside a notebook with his father’s address written on it. The courtroom went silent, and the judge paused before delivering the decision that would change all five children’s lives.