“Daddy, is it my fault Mommy’s boyfriend gets mad?”
My daughter is six. Her stuffed rabbit is missing an ear because Wyatt threw it in the pool “as a joke.”
I’m sitting on the edge of her bed at my apartment, and I can’t move.
Three weeks earlier, none of this seemed like anything.
I’ve had Bree every other weekend since the divorce. Most nights she talks about her teacher, her lost tooth, whatever cartoon she’s obsessed with that week. My name’s Curtis. I work at a warehouse in Joliet, double shifts when I can get them, so I can keep this apartment nice enough for her room to feel like hers, not just a place she visits.
Bree started saying things I brushed off. “Wyatt yells a lot.” “Wyatt says I’m annoying.” I figured every kid thinks their mom’s boyfriend is annoying at some point. Her mother, Priya, always said Wyatt was great with her, patient, good with homework.
Then a few weeks ago Bree flinched when I raised my hand to grab a cereal box off the top shelf.
She flinched. Like I was going to hit her.
I asked her about it and she just shrugged and asked for more milk.
That’s when I started watching closer. She stopped wanting to bring toys home from her mom’s, like she didn’t want to remember that house. She started sleeping with the bathroom light on, door cracked, which she’d never needed before. I texted Priya, asked if anything was going on with Wyatt. She said I was overreacting, that Wyatt loved Bree “like his own.”
Then tonight, tucking her in, Bree asked me that question. Out of nowhere, staring at the ceiling like she’d been carrying it around all day.
“Baby, why would anything be your fault?”
She picked at the rabbit’s missing ear.
“Because Wyatt says if I didn’t cry so much he wouldn’t have to hold my arm so tight.”
My hands went cold.
“He HOLDS your arm?”
She nodded, small, like she’d said too much already, and pulled the blanket up over her chin.
“Only when Mommy’s not looking.”
I sat there another minute, phone already in my hand.
Then I called Priya. She didn’t pick up.
So I called the police non-emergency line instead, and while it rang, my phone buzzed.
A text from Priya: “Don’t you dare.”
The Thing She Had Already Sent
The dispatcher answered with a tired “Joliet Police Department, non-emergency.”
I gave her my address first because my mouth had stopped working right. Then I said my six-year-old daughter had told me her mother’s boyfriend was hurting her.
Not “being rough.”
Not “disciplining her.”
Hurting her.
The dispatcher asked if Bree was hurt now. I looked at her. She had turned toward the wall and was rubbing the rabbit’s head against her cheek.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t see bruises.”
“Is the boyfriend at your location?”
“No.”
“Is the mother?”
“No.”
“Then officers can come speak with you and your daughter. Please don’t question her further. Keep her with you.”
I said okay.
My phone buzzed again.
Priya had sent a picture.
It was a screenshot of a text conversation between her and Wyatt. His number was saved under “W,” but I knew the number. I’d seen it on the school pickup forms when we were still married.
The first message was from Priya.
She said Curtis asked about the marks.
Wyatt answered:
Then stop letting her talk to him.
Priya:
She is six. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
Wyatt:
She knows exactly what she’s doing. She plays you.
Then Priya had written:
I told you not to grab her.
His answer came three minutes later.
You told me not to leave marks. Big difference.
I read that line four times.
The phone slipped out of my hand and landed on the carpet.
Bree looked over. “Daddy?”
“Nothing. I’m right here.”
That was a lie, but it was the only thing I had.
I picked up the phone and forwarded the screenshots to my email. Then I sent them to my sister, Melissa, with no explanation. I knew if I waited until morning, I might convince myself I’d read them wrong.
Melissa called before the officers arrived.
“Curtis, what happened?”
“Don’t talk about it in front of Bree.”
“Where are you?”
“My place.”
“I can come.”
“Yeah. Come.”
The officers knocked at 9:42. One was a woman named Officer Hansen, maybe late thirties, with a braid down her back. The other was a young guy named Alvarez who kept his notebook tucked against his chest.
They spoke to me in the kitchen while Bree sat at the table with a cup of apple juice. I told them what she said, word for word. I showed them the screenshot.
Officer Hansen didn’t make a face. She just asked, “Did her mother send this to you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer made me angry. It still does.
They Asked Her One Question
Officer Hansen asked if she could talk to Bree alone.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea of my daughter sitting across from two strangers while I waited in the kitchen pretending not to listen.
But the dispatcher had told me not to question her. So I nodded.
They sat on the floor of her bedroom. The door stayed open. Bree held the rabbit in her lap, hiding the torn ear inside her fist.
Officer Hansen said, “Can you tell me what happened to your bunny?”
Bree looked at me.
I stared at the sink.
“Wyatt threw him in the pool.”
“Why?”
“He said rabbits can swim.”
“Can they?”
“No.”
That was the first thing Bree said that sounded like the old Bree.
Officer Hansen asked what happened after Wyatt threw the rabbit in the pool.
“Mommy got mad.”
“At Wyatt?”
Bree shook her head.
“At me.”
My fingers dug into the edge of the counter.
“Why did she get mad at you?”
“Because I cried.”
Officer Hansen glanced toward the kitchen. Just once.
“And when you cry, what does Wyatt do?”
Bree pulled the rabbit’s remaining ear straight, then folded it back down.
“He puts me in the laundry room.”
“Does he lock the door?”
“Sometimes.”
“For how long?”
“Until I say I won’t cry.”
Officer Alvarez wrote something.
Bree kept talking, not fast, but without looking up now.
“One time the washer was on and it was loud, and he said I had to sit on the floor with my hands under my legs so I couldn’t scratch the door.”
I almost knocked the dish soap into the sink.
Officer Hansen asked, “Did he ever hold your arm?”
Bree nodded.
“Show me how.”
She put the rabbit down and wrapped one hand around her opposite upper arm. Her fingers didn’t meet.
“Like this. Then he squeezes.”
“Where was your mother?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Did she see?”
“She told him to stop.”
“Did he stop?”
“He stopped when Mommy came in.”
That sentence sat there.
Officer Hansen asked if Wyatt had hurt her anywhere else. Bree said no. Then she said, “He said if I tell Daddy, Daddy will go to jail because Daddy doesn’t have a house big enough.”
I closed my eyes.
That was the turn.
Wyatt hadn’t just been grabbing her. He’d been teaching her that I was dangerous too.
When the officers came back to the kitchen, Officer Hansen asked me to write down everything I remembered. Dates if I had them. Words exactly if I could.
I opened the notes app on my phone.
March 3: Bree said Wyatt yells a lot.
March 10: flinched when I reached for cereal.
March 17: stopped bringing toys home.
March 24: asked to sleep with bathroom light on.
Tonight: told me Wyatt holds her arm when Priya isn’t looking.
It looked stupid on the screen. Small. Not enough.
Then Officer Alvarez said, “It’s not nothing.”
I hadn’t said that out loud.
Priya Came to My Door
Melissa arrived at 10:18 and hugged Bree so hard Bree made a small sound.
Melissa let go right away. “Sorry, bug.”
Bree climbed onto her lap and asked if she could sleep at Melissa’s house. Melissa looked at me.
“Not tonight,” I said. “She’s staying here.”
A little after eleven, Priya showed up.
She didn’t knock. She hit the door with the flat of her hand.
“Curtis, open the door.”
Bree was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. I stood in the hall with my phone in my hand.
Priya hit the door again.
“Where is she?”
“You need to leave.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“And she told me Wyatt locks her in the laundry room.”
Priya stopped.
Not for long. Two seconds, maybe three. But I saw it.
Then she said, “She exaggerates.”
“She told the police.”
“You called the police on me?”
“I called them about Wyatt.”
“She’s six, Curtis.”
“She said you knew.”
Priya’s face changed. She looked past me toward the bathroom.
“Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“You’re making this worse.”
“How?”
She looked at the floor. Her left hand was wrapped around her right wrist, squeezing it.
“I need to explain.”
“What exactly are you going to explain?”
“That I didn’t know what to do.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I opened the door but kept the chain on.
“Start there.”
She wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand. No tears yet.
“Wyatt moved in last November. He lost his job in January. He started drinking again around Christmas.”
“Again?”
Priya nodded.
“I knew he had a temper. I didn’t know it was like this.”
“You sent me the screenshot.”
“I took it from his phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
She looked at me then.
“That if I left, he’d hurt her. If I stayed, he’d hurt her. I kept thinking I could keep him calm.”
I wanted to ask her how many times she had stood in that kitchen and heard Bree cry in the laundry room. I wanted to ask why she was telling me now, after I had called the police, instead of three weeks ago when I first asked.
Instead I said, “You told me he loved her like his own.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed you to stop asking questions.”
Bree opened the bathroom door.
Priya turned toward her.
“Mommy.”
Bree took one step into the hall, then stopped.
Priya’s whole body went toward her and then stopped too.
“I brought your blue coat,” she said.
“It’s not cold.”
“I know.”
There was a wet spot on the shoulder of the coat. Maybe rain. Maybe not.
Bree moved behind me.
Priya saw it.
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
The School Had a Folder
The next morning, I took Bree to the children’s advocacy center in Naperville. Officer Hansen had arranged it before leaving my apartment. She gave me a card with a case number written on the back in blue ink.
The person who interviewed Bree was named Denise Pruitt. She wore red sneakers and had a plastic tub of toys under her desk. She didn’t ask Bree to tell the story right away.
First she asked about school.
Bree talked about her teacher, Mrs. Greer, and a boy named Nolan who ate glue. Denise asked what kind of glue.
“Purple,” Bree said.
“That’s a bad flavor.”
Bree smiled a little.
Then Denise asked Bree to tell her about a time she got scared at home.
I waited behind a dark window in another room. There was a speaker in the wall. I could hear only one side of the conversation.
Bree told Denise about the laundry room.
She told her about Wyatt’s hand.
She told her that her mother stood by the refrigerator and said, “Don’t make him mad.”
That part was new.
It wasn’t a sentence I had expected from Priya. It was worse because it sounded like something a frightened person might say without meaning to make it worse.
Then Bree said something that made Denise stop writing.
“Wyatt has a red folder.”
Denise asked what was in it.
“Pictures.”
“What kind of pictures?”
“Pictures of Daddy.”
I sat up so fast my knee hit the underside of the table.
The detective assigned to the case came in. Her name was Detective Salazar. She asked what Bree meant.
I told her I had no idea.
“Does Wyatt have access to your apartment?”
“No.”
“Any reason he would have pictures of you?”
“No.”
I had seen him once at my building, though. In February. He’d been sitting in a gray Ford Focus across from the mailboxes. I thought he was waiting for Priya.
Detective Salazar asked if I had a doorbell camera.
“Cheap one. It saves clips for thirty days.”
She called an officer to help me pull the footage.
There he was.
February 12, 6:08 p.m. Wyatt stood outside my building holding a grocery bag. He looked up at the camera before walking away.
February 19, 7:41 p.m. He stood beside my car.
March 2, 11:17 p.m. He was near the back stairwell.
He had not tried to come inside. He had just been there.
The officer copied the clips.
Detective Salazar asked, “Did he ever accuse you of something?”
I thought of the texts.
Wyatt had sent one in February: Quit filling her head with garbage.
I hadn’t answered.
Then another: You think you can take her from her mother?
I had shown that one to Priya. She told me Wyatt was stressed.
The folder made those messages look different.
What Was Inside the Red Folder
The police got a search warrant for Priya’s house that afternoon.
Priya called me from the station before they took her phone.
“Curtis, I need you to listen.”
“I am listening.”
“Wyatt had the folder before I met him.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Priya.”
“I swear, I don’t know.”
Detective Salazar had told me Wyatt was gone. His Ford wasn’t at the house. His phone went straight to voicemail.
Priya started crying.
“I found the pictures two weeks ago. I thought he was watching you because he was angry. I didn’t know about the court stuff.”
“What court stuff?”
“I found papers in the folder.”
“What papers?”
She said nothing.
“Priya.”
“There was a petition.”
“For what?”
“Emergency custody.”
My hand went numb around the phone.
She told me Wyatt had printed screenshots of my old eviction notice from 2018. He had found my bankruptcy filing. He had taken pictures of the parking lot behind my warehouse, my car, my apartment door.
He had also printed messages between Priya and me.
The worst ones were from when we were fighting during the divorce. Me saying she was selfish. Her saying I was a deadbeat. Both of us using words we shouldn’t have used around a child, even though Bree wasn’t in the room.
Wyatt had marked sections in yellow.
UNSTABLE.
ANGRY.
UNABLE TO PROVIDE SAFE HOUSING.
“He said he could get you declared unfit,” Priya said.
“Why would he want that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
She breathed into the phone. I heard a chair scrape on her end.
“He wanted Bree.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I don’t know.”
The police found the folder in a vent behind the dryer.
Inside were the papers, the pictures, and a spiral notebook with dates.
Not just dates of my shifts.
Dates when Bree was at my apartment.
Dates when Priya had taken her to the doctor.
Dates beside the words night terrors, crying, won’t eat.
He had been building a story.
A story where Bree was damaged when she came to me, and he was the only person who could control her.
The notebook also had three entries about me.
March 6. Warehouse. 4:50 a.m.
March 13. Followed from Jewel.
March 20. Child says father grabbed her.
That last one wasn’t true.
Not even close.
Then Wyatt Called
At 4:36 p.m., Detective Salazar called and told me Wyatt had been found at a gas station in Cicero.
He had called Priya from a pay phone.
He wanted to speak to Bree.
I said no.
Detective Salazar said, “He doesn’t get to request that. We need to know if he contacts you directly.”
He did.
At 5:02, my phone rang from a blocked number.
I answered because I thought it might be the detective.
“Put Bree on.”
Wyatt’s voice sounded calm. Almost bored.
I moved into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Don’t call this number again.”
“You don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I understand enough.”
“She lies when she’s scared.”
“She told the police about the laundry room.”
“Priya coached her.”
“Priya gave me your text.”
He didn’t speak.
I could hear traffic behind him. A truck horn. A woman’s voice at the gas station counter.
Then he said, “Which text?”
“The one where you said, ‘You told me not to leave marks. Big difference.'”
He laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
“That wasn’t about Bree.”
I wrote down the time on the back of an old receipt.
“Who was it about?”
“Ask Priya.”
“She’s already told them.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Then tell me.”
He breathed into the phone. There was a scratchy sound, like he was rubbing his thumb over his teeth.
“It was about you.”
The bathroom seemed too small.
“What?”
“She told me not to leave marks on you.”
I didn’t answer.
Wyatt continued.
“She said if you saw bruises, you’d go to court. She said I had to scare you without touching you.”
My stomach turned.
I had never been alone with Wyatt before the divorce. Not really. But there had been one night in March when I came to Priya’s house to drop off Bree’s inhaler. Wyatt followed me outside.
He stood close enough that I could smell beer.
He said, “You keep pushing, and somebody’s going to get hurt.”
I told Priya about it. She said he was trying to scare me.
I believed her.
On the phone, Wyatt said, “You think the little girl is the whole story.”
“What did you do to Priya?”
“I didn’t do anything she didn’t ask for.”
I heard a car door slam behind him.
“Where is Bree?” he asked.
“Not with me.”
“She’s always with you.”
“You’re done talking to her.”
“She told me she wanted you gone.”
That was the first lie he told that actually hurt.
Not because I believed it. Because I knew Bree would think she had said it if he repeated it enough.
I kept the phone against my ear.
“You’re going to tell the police where you are.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll give them the recording.”
He went quiet.
I hadn’t been recording.
Detective Salazar had told me to keep him talking, but I hadn’t known what to say. My phone was on the bathroom sink, screen lit, recording app open because Melissa had called me a coward for not doing it sooner.
Wyatt said, “You can’t keep her from her mother.”
“No.”
“Priya will get her back.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Neither do you.”
I hung up.
The recording was eleven minutes and eight seconds.
Detective Salazar listened to it twice.
The second time, she stopped at the part about Priya asking him to scare me.
“Did he ever touch you?” she asked.
I almost said no.
Then I remembered the parking lot. His hand on the back of my neck for one second. Two, maybe. Not enough to bruise. Enough to make me step backward into my car.
“Once,” I said. “He grabbed me here.”
I touched my neck.
She wrote it down.
The Last Thing Bree Told Me
Priya was charged with child endangerment. Wyatt was charged with several offenses after they found the notebook, the photographs, and a video on an old phone.
I won’t describe the video. Bree doesn’t know it exists, and I want to keep it that way.
The video showed Wyatt holding her arm while Priya stood in the doorway.
Priya was crying.
She wasn’t stopping him.
That was the part I couldn’t get out of my head.
She had told him not to leave marks on me. She had told him to stop hurting Bree only when she walked into the room. She had known enough to take a picture of the text, but not enough to take Bree and leave.
People kept asking if I hated her.
I did.
Then I didn’t.
Then I did again while brushing my teeth.
Bree stayed with me under a temporary order. She went to school. She had nightmares for a while and asked if the police were going to arrest me because I called them.
I told her no.
“Are they going to arrest Mommy?”
“I don’t know, baby.”
“Is she bad?”
I had no good answer.
So I said, “She made bad choices.”
Bree thought about that.
“Wyatt made them.”
“Yes.”
“Mommy let him.”
I put down the spoon I was using to stir her oatmeal.
“Yes.”
She didn’t cry. She just pushed the bowl away.
Three weeks later, there was a hearing at the courthouse in Will County. Priya sat on one side with a public defender. Wyatt appeared by video from the jail.
I sat behind Bree’s guardian ad litem, who wore a gray sweater with a loose thread near the collar.
The judge asked if Bree was present.
She was.
The judge asked if she wanted to speak.
She didn’t.
Then Bree tugged on my sleeve.
“Daddy?”
“What?”
“Can I tell you something in your ear?”
I leaned down.
She pressed her mouth near my cheek and whispered four words.
“Don’t let Mommy get mad.”
There it was.
Not a secret about Wyatt.
Not a new detail for a report.
A child still trying to manage the adults around her.
I looked across the courtroom at Priya. She was watching Bree with both hands folded beneath her chin.
I didn’t nod at her.
I didn’t shake my head.
I just took Bree’s hand under the table, and this time she held on first.
Would you have opened the door for Priya that night? Tell me.
For more stories of protecting our kids, check out what happened when Denise Called Me “The Help” Until Her Father Rode Into the Party, or how The Man in the Gray Suit Was Waiting by the Courthouse Stairs, and even My Son Grabbed My Hand and Told Me What Happened on the Nights I Worked.
