Her face flashed with surprise, then annoyance. “I was helping him,” she said quickly. “You’re making it worse by coddling him.
He needs to grow up.”
I told her—quietly, because Jake was right there—that she had no right. Not now. Not ever.
She scoffed. “You’re being emotionally manipulated by a teenager. He’s playing it up for attention.”
That was it.
I told her she was wrong. That grief doesn’t have an age limit. That my son lost his mother and I would choose him every single time.
She crossed her arms and said, “Then you’re choosing him over our marriage.”
She packed a bag that night and said she was going to stay with her sister “until this whole weird thing is over.”
After she left, I sat on Jake’s bed. He didn’t say anything. He just leaned into me like he used to when he was little, and I held him.
And now, in the quiet aftermath, I’m realizing something I didn’t expect. I don’t miss her. I’m not sure I want her back.
Because anyone who sees a grieving child as competition isn’t someone I trust in my home—or in my son’s life.
