Not with them, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My ex, Dariel, had custody for the week and was taking our daughter, Lyla, to visit his sister in Denver. I knew the trip was happening, but what he didn\u2019t know\u2014what no one knew\u2014was that I\u2019d booked myself a seat on the same flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Call it paranoia, or maybe just mother\u2019s instinct. Something felt off. Dariel had been acting weird\u2014too polite, too agreeable\u2014ever since the custody hearing didn\u2019t go his way. And Lyla? She\u2019d mentioned \u201ca big surprise\u201d Daddy was planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yeah, I booked the last seat I could get, back row, opposite side. I wore a hat and kept my head low as they boarded. When Lyla smiled and gave those double thumbs up from the aisle seat, I felt a lump in my throat. She had no idea I was just a few rows away, watching, trying to act normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dariel looked tense. He kept checking his watch and staring at his phone like he was waiting for something\u2014or someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We hit cruising altitude, and I saw him pull out a manila envelope from his carry-on. He didn\u2019t open it right away. He just stared at it. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something else: a folded piece of paper with handwriting I recognized but hadn\u2019t seen in months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the letters I\u2019d written to the judge during the custody battle. I recognized the curled \u201cL\u201d in Lyla\u2019s name and the smudge where I\u2019d spilled tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My stomach dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why was he carrying that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The flight was quiet, except for Lyla humming something and flipping through a coloring book. A flight attendant rolled by with snacks, and I pretended to be asleep. But I kept peeking through the tiny gap between the seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not with them, anyway. My ex, Dariel, had custody for the week and was taking our daughter, Lyla, to visit his sister in Denver. I knew the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1847,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yxnews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}