I called Darnell that night and he finally picked up. He was defensive before I even finished my first sentence. He told me Renee was someone he trusted, that Marcus was always safe, that he had every right to have people in his son’s life without running it past me first.

I told him I agreed with that last part actually, he does have that right, but that pulling a child out of school eight times without telling the person who raises him is not a custody decision, that’s a deception. He said I was overreacting. I told him I had the sign-out logs in my hand and that if he wanted to have a real conversation about what comes next we could do that, but I was not going to pretend this was fine.

He hung up.

I haven’t slept great since. Marcus seems okay, genuinely, and that matters more than anything else. He likes Renee, from what he says, and she was apparently kind to him. I’m trying to hold onto that because it keeps me from going to the worst places in my head. But I keep thinking about all those Fridays. All those Fridays when I thought he was in school learning things and eating his lunch and just being a normal kid, and instead he was somewhere I didn’t know about with someone I didn’t know. I keep thinking about what could have gone wrong and didn’t, and how I’d have had no idea where to start looking.

I’ve talked to a lawyer. Just a consultation, nothing filed yet. I wanted to understand what I could actually do here, what my rights are, what the custody order covers. The lawyer was honest with me that it’s complicated because Darnell is the father and his rights don’t disappear.

But she also said that what he did with the school form, listing someone as family when they’re not listed in any legal document, and repeatedly removing Marcus from school during his custody time without notifying the primary guardian, that’s worth taking seriously. She used the phrase “material violation” and I wrote it down.

I don’t know what I want the outcome to be, honestly. I keep going back and forth. Part of me just wants Darnell to understand what he did and why it matters. Part of me wants it in writing somewhere that this cannot happen again without my knowledge. And part of me, the part I don’t say out loud very often, is just tired. I have been doing this for five years. I have given this child my whole life and I would do it again without blinking, but some days it would be nice if the people who were supposed to be helping me didn’t make it harder.