Chapter 9 - Rebuilding in the Light
Six months later.
Spring had arrived in Pittsburgh, turning the old oak trees along Shadyside's avenues into vibrant canopies of green.
I stood in the sunlit studio space of my new design firm—Hayes Creative—holding a mug of warm tea while looking at the framed graphic posters hanging on the exposed brick wall.
After the court ruling, I had used a small loan from Rachel and the retroactively awarded spousal support to rent a small ground-floor storefront with a residential apartment in the back. Within four months, my freelance graphic design business had taken off. Local boutique brands, law firms, and non-profits in Pittsburgh were hiring me faster than I could take them on.
Emily was seven months old now. She was sitting on a soft play mat near my desk, happily babbling as she tried to stack blue plastic rings onto a peg. She had bright blue eyes and a laugh that filled every corner of my heart.
The front door chimed, and Rachel walked in, carrying a box of fresh pastries from the bakery down the street.
"How's the boss lady doing today?" Rachel smiled, setting the box on the reception desk and immediately dropping to her knees to tickle Emily's tummy.
"Busy," I said, walking over to join them. "I just signed a contract with the regional children's museum to redesign their entire branding package."
"Look at you," Rachel said proudly, looking up at me. "From being told you couldn't handle a checkbook to running a studio in under a year."
"Derek's lawyer sent another settlement proposal yesterday," I mentioned casually, sitting on the floor beside Emily.
Rachel raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"He wants to increase his visitation to unsupervised weekends in Ohio," I said. "In exchange, he offered a one-time lump-sum settlement of two hundred thousand dollars to drop the permanent custody trial next month."
Rachel snorted. "He still thinks everything has a price tag."
"I told Eleanor to reject it within five minutes," I smiled softly, watching Emily successfully get the blue ring onto the peg. "He hasn't even attended three of his scheduled supervised visits here. He comes for twenty minutes, gets frustrated because Emily cries when he holds her, and leaves to catch a flight back to Columbus."
"Because she doesn't know him," Rachel said gently. "He's just a stranger in a suit who shows up with a expensive stuffed animal once a month to satisfy his legal quota."
"He thought he was buying a legacy," I reflected, taking my daughter into my arms and lifting her high into the air, making her giggle hysterically. "He thought a child was just another asset to list on his balance sheet. He never understood that fatherhood isn't something you own—it's something you earn every single day."
My phone buzzed on the desk. It was an email notification from my bank. A direct deposit from the Allegheny County Domestic Relations department had just processed—Derek’s monthly court-ordered support payment, automatically deducted from his firm's corporate accounts.
May you like
I looked at the number on the screen, then down at Emily's radiant, happy face.
The fifteen dollars he had dropped on the granite counter had been meant to show me how little I was worth to him. But it had ended up costing him everything that truly mattered.
