Chapter 5 - Monday
The placement center was called Pine Hollow.
Its website looked gentle.
Trees.
Smiling children.
Words like stability and structure.
Daniel hated it immediately.
The intake coordinator confirmed a file existed for Lily.
The referral listed Dr. Peter Sloan.
Daniel had never heard the name.
“He came here.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Vanessa introduced him as an insurance consultant.
He sat in the kitchen for fifteen minutes while Lily colored.
Asked the child questions.
Do you get mad when Daddy leaves?
Do you ever break things?
Do you ever wish you lived somewhere else?
Maria thought it was strange.
Then Vanessa told her to take laundry upstairs.
Rachel requested the evaluation.
It was three pages long.
Dr. Sloan described Lily as “emotionally dysregulated” and “potentially unsafe in an unstructured home environment.”
He recommended thirty days at Pine Hollow.
“He evaluated her for fifteen minutes?”
“Apparently.”
The report also said Daniel had approved placement.
Then Pine Hollow emailed the financial estimate.
$96,000 for the first month.
Payable from Lily’s trust.
“There it is.”
Pine Hollow’s parent company was registered in Delaware.
Its legal consultant:
Vanessa’s older brother.
Daniel felt something inside him go cold.
“This is a family business.”
Maria whispered:
“They were going to make her look sick and pay themselves to ‘fix’ her.”
The cruelty of it was almost clean.
Send the bill to the child’s own trust.
Then Lily walked into the room holding her stuffed rabbit.
“Daddy?”
Daniel closed the laptop.
“Yeah?”
“Vanessa said I go to school far away because I’m bad.”
“You’re not bad.”
“She said you signed it.”
Daniel looked at Rachel.
She had carried that fear alone.
“No, baby.”
“I never signed anything.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Then she asked the question that broke him.
“Then why didn’t you stop her?”
May you like
Daniel had no answer.
Not yet.
