Chapter 9
Meanwhile, Allera’s Canvas flourished.
Sadi and I did not just sell cupcakes. I leaned into the intricate, high-end pastry techniques I had secretly studied while Leo and David slept. We introduced a line of hyper-realistic floral cakes—stunning, delicate, and fiercely expensive.
One rainy Tuesday, a local food critic wandered in, bought a slice of my Earl Grey and lavender mousse cake, and wrote a glowing front-page review for the city’s premier lifestyle magazine.
By month five, we had a line out the door every morning.
By month six, we were catering high-society weddings.
I was working fourteen-hour days. My hands were perpetually stained with food coloring, and I had never been happier.
The money I made did not go into a joint account. It went straight to Ms. Vance, who used it to dismantle David’s legal barricades piece by piece.
I didn’t see Leo.
That was the hardest part. The only thing that could still disturb the still pool of my heart.
David blocked my calls, claiming Leo was too traumatized to speak to me. Ms. Vance assured me we could get an emergency injunction for visitation, but I stopped her.
“Let him keep him,” I said one afternoon in her mahogany-paneled office.
She peered at me over her glasses.
“Are you sure? Judges like mothers who fight tooth and nail.”
“David is using Leo as a shield. If I pull, he’ll only pull harder, and Leo will be torn in half. David wants the title of the aggrieved single father. Let him do the actual work of one. Let’s see how long he lasts.”
I knew David. I knew Rosalie.
They were brilliant at the grand gestures—the amusement parks, the expensive toys, the KFC dinners.
But parenting isn’t a highlight reel.
It is waking up at two in the morning to wash vomit from bed sheets. It is sitting at a table for two hours refusing to let a child leave until they eat their broccoli. It is the grinding, relentless monotony of putting someone else first.
Neither David nor Rosalie had the spine for it.
It took exactly eight months for the cracks in their perfect facade to split wide open.