We were close. Simple. Until Amira turned ten. Then Jamal decided to “take matters into his own hands.” Suddenly, texts appeared about bonding and court-ordered weekends he’d ignored for years. We didn’t block him—we couldn’t. But something in Amira had stirred. She noticed the missed birthdays, the last-minute cancellations, the apologies in the form of gifts. Still, she wanted to believe.
Around that time, she stopped calling me “Daddy.” She didn’t call him that—she simply called him “Dad” when necessary. In my case, she went back to “Josh.” I understood. It was her way of maintaining neutrality. But it still wasn’t pleasant for me.
And so I kept showing up. School pickups. Lunch notes. Homework assignments. Choir concerts. Soccer games. I was just trying to be a little quieter.
Then the text came. I pulled up to Jamal’s curb. She ran straight to my car.
“I don’t want to stay,” she said, fastening her seatbelt.
And then the question. I didn’t ask why.
At home, she went straight to her room. The next morning, over pancakes, she heard the story: Jamal had brought a girl she didn’t know. There was a kiss. Then an argument. Then the girl called her by the wrong name—twice. She said it like a fact, but the look in her eyes made something inside me break.
That night, while gluing a tri-fold board for a school project, she asked,
“Why didn’t you ever leave?”
I almost knocked over the glue.
“Because I never wanted to,” I said. “Because I love you.”
She nodded. She kept gluing. On Monday, my contact in her phone said “Dad.”
That could have been the end. But the post office had other plans.
A letter arrived from Jamal’s lawyer: a request for joint custody—weekends, holidays, school and health decisions. Zahra’s hands were shaking. We called our lawyer. Things quickly became a mess.
