PART 2: The Blue Notebook and the Message
Judge Parker turned toward Nathan.
“Mr. Whitmore, did you discuss financial settlements and your wife’s intentions with your six-year-old son?”
Nathan hesitated.
“I was frustrated and mentioned changes that might happen, but I never intended to frighten him.”
Leo lowered his head.
“I wrote everything in my little blue notebook because Daddy kept telling me different days when Mommy would disappear.”
Rebecca’s face tightened with anger.
“Nathan, he is six years old, and you’ve been making him responsible for understanding your divorce.”
The judge directed the attorneys to arrange for the notebook to be produced through proper procedures.
Then she asked whether anyone had ever told Leo that I intended to abandon him.
I stepped forward.
“Leo, whatever happens between your father and me, I have never stopped loving you, and I never told anyone I wanted you gone.”
He looked at my pregnant stomach.
“Will you still love me after your little girl gets here, even though she really belongs to you?”
I came closer only after the child specialist signaled that it was appropriate.
“You are part of my family because I love you, sweetheart, and your little sister will never change that.”
He began crying again.
This time, though, he reached toward me instead of hiding behind his rabbit.
The hearing grew far more complicated when Rebecca revealed a disturbing message she’d received from Nathan’s telephone.
It told her to collect Leo immediately and warned her not to let the child go home with Vanessa.
Nathan denied sending it.
Leo remembered seeing Vanessa use his father’s telephone the previous evening, although he couldn’t say what she had done with it.
Vanessa insisted she’d merely borrowed the device.
Judge Parker ruled that the message and its origin should be examined without treating the child’s recollection as conclusive evidence.
Soon afterward, Nathan’s office manager, Patricia Ellis, arrived with records requested through the attorneys.
Patricia was a woman in her forties who had spent years managing schedules and financial correspondence at Whitmore Holdings.
She carried Leo’s blue notebook, which had been found in a drawer in Nathan’s office.
But she had also brought something that frightened Nathan far more than the notebook.
“Two days ago, I discovered a folder containing financial statements that didn’t match the reports Mr. Whitmore had prepared for these proceedings.”
