I Called Child Services on My Neighbor—Now My Marriage May Not Survive It (2 of 3)

I let them in. What else could I do?

Once inside, I texted her. Politely. “Hey. You need to come back for your kids within 40 minutes or I’ll have to call Child Services.” Silence. I called. She finally picked up—and laughed. “I’m out of town already. Just drop them off at Jennifer’s. She knows them.”

Jennifer is 68. She’s barely able to get out of bed some mornings. Handing over six children, including a baby, to an elderly woman in fragile health? That wasn’t going to happen.

I gave her one last warning: “If you’re not here in 10 minutes, the next time you see your kids might be through a caseworker.” She swore at me. Dared me to do it. So I did.

I called Child Services.

And when they came—two workers, with a police escort—I recorded a short video and sent it to Monica. Her reply? A screaming phone call from halfway to Blackpool, threatening to kill me. I forwarded the call to the authorities. The police had already asked me dozens of questions. Turns out, they often ride along on calls like this, in case a crime’s involved.

But when the house emptied out, the silence hit me hard.

My husband came home from work and found out what happened. He lost it.

You see, he grew up in foster care. To him, I’d just condemned six innocent kids to a system he still has nightmares about. He accused me of overreacting, of tearing apart a family, of not giving their mother enough time to return.

“You should’ve sent them to Jennifer’s, like their mom said,” he told me coldly. “Now whatever happens to them is on you.”

That night, he barely looked at me. The next morning, he left for work without saying a word.