At our divorce hearing, my husband sat there acting calm, his lawyer painted me as the unstable mother, and I could feel the room starting to lean his way. Until my 7-year-old daughter stood up in her little blue dress, clutched her purple tablet with shaking hands, asked the judge if he would please watch something I knew nothing about

My name is Audrey Miller and I am thirty four years old while living in a quiet neighborhood located just outside of Greenfield in the state of Indiana. If you had asked me a year ago what my life looked like I would have told you that it was perfectly ordinary and perhaps even blessed.

I had a seven year old daughter named Macy who was like sunshine in human form with her messy curls and a laugh that made any bad day better. I also had a husband named Patrick whom I believed loved me with all of his heart through all the years we spent together.

The day I received the legal papers Macy was busy coloring a picture of a garden at our kitchen table while I was drinking my afternoon coffee. Patrick did not even wait until she had gone to her room because he simply placed the thick envelope in front of me with a cold and rehearsed expression.

“Audrey, this is not working for me anymore and I have already filed for a divorce,” he said in a voice that sounded like it had been practiced many times. The words did not make sense at first and they felt as if they were being spoken to me while I was trapped deep underwater.

My hands started to shake so much that the coffee in my mug began to tremble as Macy lifted her head because she was confused by the sudden silence. “Mommy, what is wrong with you?” she asked in a very soft and worried voice that broke my heart into pieces.

I forced a smile onto my face and told her that nothing was wrong and that she should just finish her beautiful drawing. But everything was wrong because Patrick moved out only two days later without offering any real explanation or apologies to either of us.

He packed two large suitcases and left our house as if he were just running late for a professional meeting in another city. I cried that night in the bathroom while muffling my sobs with a heavy towel so that Macy would not hear my pain through the door.

But she did hear me because she always noticed things that I thought were hidden safely from her young eyes. One night she crawled into my arms and whispered that I should not cry because Daddy was just acting very confused lately.

I asked her why she would say such a thing, but she just hesitated and said that she simply knew it to be true. I thought she was just trying to comfort me in her own way, so I kissed her forehead and let the moment go without asking more.