I locked myself inside the airplane bathroom because I could not stop crying. When I landed in Boston Julia was waiting in the parking garage with a grim expression.
“She is sleeping at my apartment,” Julia said while we sat in the car. “But there is something else you need to hear.”
She showed me a video recorded by Emma’s tablet that captured Victor Langford arguing with his wife about leaving the girl in the cold basement for hours. In the video he called my daughter a burden and claimed she deserved punishment for crying.
Julia then revealed another discovery from phone records she had quietly obtained through a colleague. My wife had been spending nights at hotels with a man named Adrian Holt for several months while leaving Emma with her parents.
The betrayal twisted inside my chest but anger quickly replaced it because my daughter had suffered while adults chased their own selfish lives. The next morning we met with a family attorney named Diana Porter who studied every recording and photograph carefully.
“This evidence clearly shows abuse and neglect,” she said while folding her hands on the desk. “We will seek full custody and pursue criminal charges against the grandfather.”