The Nesting Arrangement. Close Quarters, #1

"A shared home is not a divided one. It is a home with two competing versions of the truth, and only the walls know which one is real."When Darcy and her ex-husband, Noel, agree to a "nesting arrangement" to co-parent their two young children, it seems like the perfect, civilized solution. The kids stay in their Connecticut family home, and the parents rotate in and out on alternating weeks. But three weeks into the arrangement, Darcy finds a warm, freshwater pearl earring in her bathroom drain.
And Darcy doesn't wear pearls. Soon, the disruptions escalate. The thermostat is mysteriously changed. Her closet is reorganized by color. An unknown woman is seen watering her hydrangeas. Noel dismisses her concerns as post-divorce anxiety, gently suggesting to everyone around them that her paranoia is making her unfit to parent. But Darcy is a landscape architect; she measures spaces for a living, and she knows when a structure has shifted.
As Darcy investigates, she uncovers a terrifying architecture of control involving a licensed private investigator, hidden SD cards, and unauthorized midnight entries. Noel isn't just gaslighting her-he is meticulously building a legal trap to steal primary custody of their children and force the liquidation of their home. To survive a machine designed to turn her own competence into evidence of instability, Darcy must do the hardest thing imaginable: stop reacting, and start dismantling the trap from the inside.