Our children adored him. Sophie, seven years old and already a force of nature, spent hours building elaborate stories with him in the backyard, using nothing but cardboard boxes and imagination. Oliver, just five, loved their nightly ritual of monster-hunting under the bed before sleep. Daniel had a patience with them that seemed endless, the kind of father who’d say yes to “just one more story” even when his eyes were heavy.
So, when he started taking the kids to visit his mother every Saturday morning, I thought nothing of it. His mom, Patricia, had always doted on Sophie and Oliver. She lived across town, in a small bungalow she’d shared with Daniel’s late father until his passing last year. Patricia filled her days with baking, knitting, and tending to a little rose garden that Sophie liked to “help” with, pulling weeds more enthusiastically than correctly.
