Confession #14

"Valour and Cowardice" -Alfred Stevens
1817-1876

Over the weekend I got a call from Ex, (He used my daughters phone as I had blocked his). He proceeded to tell me that "something" told him to look at our daughters phone history and low and behold, he finds a number from across the country. He reports that he's been up all night, finally went for a walk at 6 a.m. for an hour and a half because he was so upset.
He and Warthog researched the phone number and have ID'd the owner of the phone who is a registered sex-offender and the wife is incarcerated. He has spoken to our daughter several times and she's denied it every time. He proceeds to give me a long list of misbehavior on her part and informs me that if she wants to continue coming to his home she can't behave this way. As if her behavior determines the level of father-hood he will commit to.
"What if I were dead?" I ask him.
"Well, you're not." he replies.
"Ex, this is your daughter and she is a teenager. Yes, she's going to push against you and disappoint you but that is when you need to be there for her the most," I plead.
"Well she is not the sweet little girl she was and she has to know she can't behave this way," he insists.
I'm frustrated and can't believe my ears. He has no loyalty to his children if they don't fall in step with his ideology and expectations.
"No Ex, she isn't," I confirm. "But that is when she needs you the most. She needs to know you are her rock. That no matter how she behaves you are there for her. She needs to know that in your eyes, she is and always will be your little girl,"
He goes on, cutting me off and insisting he knows what I'm going to say so I needn't say it.
I get all the information he has found on the number he gave me and end the call.
I get onto the internet and can't find anything. Not the names he's given me, nothing he claimed. I search the state for the registered sex-offender and can't find what he said he found.
I call Ex back and ask him to repeat the number. He gives me a slightly different number. I repeat it back to him. He gives me excuses as to why he made the mistake and I let it go.
Again I research the names, locations and nothing is matching up. On a whim, I ask my boys if they've used their sisters phone and son #2 say's he did when he ran an errand for me earlier in the week because his phone was dead. I tell him the number and he confirms that it's his friends but his last name is not the one Ex gave me.
Long story short, Ex and Ratface researched the wrong number that happened to be that of a female sex-offender who is incarcerated.
I call Ex and he's not answering my ten attempts to contact him. He finally calls me back and I inform him of his error. That our daughter didn't even make the calls and was telling the truth. He was relieved, made excuses for his error and admitted that he had, in his words, "some crow to eat."
Mind you, my Sunday was shot to hell but I rested easy knowing that my daughter was "safe" and that I took the higher road. If the tables were reversed, Ex and Ratface would have raked me through the coals but I took the higher road and didn't add to the drama of the day.
I hate what he said about our daughter and the conditions he placed on whether she'd be able to go to his home. What decent parent does that? Children, no matter how ill behaved, are not disposable.
I will never tell my daughter of his words. I will not be the one to break her heart. I wish, as a mother, I could instill in her how valuable she is but unfortunately a girl needs her father for that. Even if he's a craven knight.