Chapter 2 - The Ghost from Elm Street
The birthday party limped along after that.
We sang the song—Michael leading the chorus with an extra-bright, theatrical grin while Sophie blew out the candles in one enthusiastic puff that sprayed pink sugar across the frosting. We cut the cake, we handed out paper plates with lopsided slices, and we smiled until our cheeks felt stiff.
When the kids were finally tucked into bed upstairs—Sophie clutching a new plastic unicorn, Leo snoring softly with his face smudged with chocolate—I sat at the kitchen island with my laptop open. The screen cast a cold, blue rectangular glow over the granite countertop.
Michael walked in carrying two mugs of chamomile tea, setting one down beside my hand without a word. He didn’t ask what the boy had said; he already knew the shape of it from the tension in my shoulders and the way I hadn't touched my dinner.
“You don’t have to open that door, Elena,” Michael said quietly, leaning his hip against the edge of the counter and wrapping his hands around his mug. “If that man is still playing games after all this time, we can get a lawyer. We can change our numbers. We can make it stop.”
“It’s not just a game anymore, Michael,” I said, my fingers hovering over the trackpad. “He’s using a sixteen-year-old kid. He’s taking a boy’s earnings—money that kid earned sweating on weekends—and calling it ‘debt’ or ‘legal fees’ from a divorce that happened when that boy was in diapers.”
“How do you even know it’s true? The kid could be repeating garbage his dad fed him, but—”
“I know the lawyer who handled our settlement fourteen years ago,” I interrupted, clicking open a browser tab. “And I know that Daniel didn't pay a dime in alimony because he didn't have to—he walked away clean with the house on Elm Street while I took my car and my savings and ran like hell.”
I didn't tell Michael everything right then. I didn't tell him about the second apartment on the north side of town, or the woman named Clara who had sent me a certified letter three weeks after I filed for divorce, enclosing copies of ultrasound appointments and grocery receipts dated six months before our wedding anniversary.
Daniel hadn't just cheated; he had maintained a double life with the precision of a spy. And when the whole structure finally collapsed under its own weight, he had played the victim so convincingly that even his own family had looked at me like I was the executioner.
I typed into the search bar: Daniel Vance.
Nothing much came up on the first page—just an old LinkedIn profile showing him as a regional sales director for a mid-tier logistics firm, a couple of corporate headshots where his smile looked like it had been measured with a ruler, and a local real estate registry.
I scrolled down. Second page. Third page.
And then I saw it.
A small, local news blurb from three years ago in the County Gazette about a community charity board. Below Daniel's name was a photograph of him standing beside a sleek, expensive-looking sedan, shaking hands with the director of a youth sports league.
But it wasn't Daniel that caught my eye. It was the address listed for his residence in the property tax records attached to the sidebar.
It wasn't a modest suburban split-level or an apartment. It was a sprawling, four-bedroom colonial in Oakridge—one of the most expensive zip codes in the county.
My fingers froze over the keyboard.
“Oakridge?” I murmured aloud.
“What is it?” Michael asked, leaning closer, his brow furrowing as he read the screen.
“Daniel told his son they were struggling,” I said, my voice dropping an octave as the pieces began to click together with a sickening, mechanical precision. “He told a sixteen-year-old boy that they were drowning in bills and legal debt from my abandonment. He’s been taking that kid’s weekend wages to help pay the mortgage on a six-hundred-thousand-dollar house.”
Michael stared at the screen, his jaw tightening until the muscle ticked in his cheek. “That’s not just manipulation, Elena. That’s financial abuse of a minor.”
“And it gets worse,” I said, clicking on the property history link.
The house wasn't bought three years ago. It was purchased ten years ago—just four years after our divorce—under a corporate trust. But the primary guarantor listed on the mortgage documents wasn't Daniel alone.
It was Daniel Vance and a woman named Clara Vance.
Clara. The woman from the north-side apartment. The woman whose child—a baby boy born three months before our divorce was finalized—had grown up to be the sixteen-year-old who called me a deadbeat while I was lighting candles for my daughter.
For a long moment, the kitchen was dead silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator.
“He didn't just lie to me,” I whispered, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. “He lied to them. He built an entire fortress out of lies, and when the bills for his lifestyle started catching up to him, instead of cutting back, he turned his own son into an ATM.”
“What are you going to do?” Michael asked, his hand coming down to rest firmly on my shoulder.
May you like
I looked at the glowing blue light of the laptop screen, then up at the dark hallway leading to my daughter’s bedroom. I thought about the sound of Kevin’s voice—cracking, furious, and utterly terrified—believing with every fiber of his being that he was defending his father against a wicked, heartless monster.
“I’m going to make a phone call,” I said, reaching for my phone. “Not to Daniel. To the boy.”
