Three months went by before Tom finally enrolled in the court-ordered therapy and parenting classes. His therapist contacted mine to discuss how to handle future visits and make sure Luna’s safety came first. They scheduled the first supervised visit at a family center where trained social workers would watch everything.
Tom showed up 20 minutes late and spent most of the hour complaining about how unfair the supervision was instead of playing with Luna. The social worker wrote in her report that Tom seemed more interested in his grievances than bonding with his daughter. Luna cried most of the visit and reached for me whenever Tom tried to hold her.
The next few visits went the same way, with Tom arguing about the rules and barely interacting with Luna. After the fourth failed visit, the supervisor recommended extending the supervision period indefinitely. She wrote that Tom showed no progress in focusing on Luna’s needs over his own anger about the situation.
The court agreed, and Tom’s lawyer told him he needed to actually try during visits if he ever wanted unsupervised time. Tom just stormed out of the courthouse, and I heard later he’d punched his car window in the parking lot. Around this time, I started going to a single parent support group at the community center.
That’s where I met Travis Bullock, who was raising his son alone after his wife passed away from cancer. Travis was patient and kind and never pushed for more than friendship at first. Luna loved him immediately and would giggle whenever he made silly faces at her during the meetings.
We started getting coffee after the group sessions, and he listened without judgment as I told him everything about Tom and the custody battle. He said he understood how hard it was to protect your child while dealing with a difficult situation. After a few months, we started officially dating, and Travis was amazing about taking things slow and respecting my boundaries.
He never complained when I had to cancel plans because of Luna or when Tom’s drama interfered with our time together. Tom found out about Travis when he saw us at the grocery store together with Luna in the shopping cart. He took photos of Travis helping me load groceries while Luna giggled at him and filed an emergency motion the next day, claiming I was exposing Luna to dangerous strangers.
Lauren called me laughing because Tom’s lawyer had actually tried to stop him from filing it, but Tom insisted. At the hearing two weeks later, the judge looked at Tom’s evidence, which was literally just photos of us grocery shopping, and asked if he was serious. Tom started ranting about how I was replacing him as Luna’s father, and the judge cut him off to remind him that supervised visits existed because of his own behavior.
She dismissed the motion and told Tom that if he filed another frivolous claim, she would consider sanctions. Tom stormed out, and his lawyer apologized to Lauren in the hallway. Six months after Luna was born, Tom’s grandmother had a massive stroke and passed away within days.
At the funeral, Tom sat in the front row expecting to be mentioned in the will reading afterward, but the lawyer skipped right over him. Everything went into a trust for Luna that I would manage until she turned 25, and the will specifically stated that Tom was excluded due to his treatment of his pregnant wife. Tom stood up and started yelling that I had poisoned his grandmother against him, but his own mother told him to sit down and shut up.
The trust included the grandmother’s house, her investment portfolio worth almost 2 million dollars, and a letter to Luna explaining why her father wasn’t included. Tom spent months trying to contest the will, but every lawyer told him he had no case. It took Tom eight more months to finally complete all his therapy sessions and parenting classes because he kept missing appointments or arguing with the instructors.
When he finally got approved for unsupervised visits every other weekend, I packed Luna’s diaper bag with detailed instructions for everything. The first Saturday, he picked her up at 9 in the morning, and by noon, he was calling me in a panic because Luna had a dirty diaper and he didn’t know how to change it properly. I told him to figure it out and hung up.
20 minutes later, he called again because Luna was crying and wouldn’t take her bottle. Then he called because she needed a nap but wouldn’t sleep. By 4 o’clock, he brought her back early, claiming she must be sick because she was so fussy.
The next visit, he lasted until Sunday morning before bringing her back because he couldn’t handle the night feeding schedule. After a year of dating, Travis proposed to me at the park where we first took Luna and his son to play together. Luna was walking by then, and Travis had taught her to carry the ring box to me.
She toddled over in her little pink dress and handed me the box saying, «Mama Pretty,» which made everyone at the park start clapping. We planned a small ceremony at my parents’ backyard with just family and close friends. Tom wasn’t invited, but his mother asked if she could come and I said yes because she had been nothing but supportive.
She sat in the second row crying happy tears as Luna walked down the aisle, throwing flower petals everywhere except where she was supposed to. Travis’ son walked next to her as the ring bearer, trying to help her stay on track. Tom found out about the wedding from social media and sent nasty messages, but we just forwarded them to Lauren for our records.
About six months after the wedding, Tom met a dental hygienist named Ashley at his new job and started dating her seriously. After three months, he filed a petition for increased custody, claiming he was in a stable relationship and could provide a better environment for Luna. Lauren responded with our boxes of documentation, including all his missed visits, early returns, and panicked phone calls about basic parenting tasks.
The judge denied his request, and Ashley apparently found out the real story during the hearing because she dumped him that same week. By Luna’s second birthday party, Tom had finally stopped fighting everything and accepted his every other weekend schedule. He paid his child support on time through automatic withdrawal and stopped sending angry emails.
At Luna’s party, he dropped off a present and left without making a scene, which was the first time he had acted normal in two years. His mother stayed for the whole party and helped with cake cutting while Tom went home alone. I had started nursing school during the custody battle, taking night classes while my mom watched Luna.
It was hard juggling everything, but I wanted a stable career to support Luna properly. Travis helped me study and took care of both kids when I had exams. After three years, I graduated with honors and got a job at the pediatric ward of our local hospital.
Luna sat in the audience at graduation wearing a tiny cap someone had made for her and cheering, «Mama did it!» which made everyone around us smile. Tom’s mother was there too, taking pictures and telling everyone how proud she was of me. Two months after graduation, Tom called asking to meet about something important, and when we met at a coffee shop with our lawyers, he looked tired and defeated.
He said he wanted to terminate his parental rights if I would waive the back child support he owed from when he missed payments during his unemployment. Travis had already said he wanted to adopt Luna officially, and Tom knew it would happen eventually anyway. We signed the papers that day, and Tom walked away from Luna’s life forever.
Travis’ adoption went through six months later, and Luna started calling him Daddy, which she had been doing unofficially anyway.
