The lawyer slid the papers across the scarred oak table like he was dealing the last hand of a bad poker game. His tie was crooked, his eyes tired.
Gary, he said low. If the judge leans mother’s rights, we might lose.
I felt the blood drain out of my face. The fluorescent lights in the Scott County courthouse buzzed overhead. And somewhere down the hall, a door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass.
My hands—hands that had fixed broken bed rails and clogged drains at Genesis Medical Center for 25 years—were suddenly shaking like I’d never held a wrench in my life.
Across from me, Caleb didn’t flinch. Seventeen years old, tall and lanky now, shoulders slightly hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller in a world that always felt too loud. His eyes were steady, the same calm gray blue that used to stare through the living room window when he was six.
He leaned in close, so close I could smell the peppermint gum he always chewed when he was thinking. And he whispered, “Just let her talk.”
For a second, I didn’t understand what he meant. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, “Talk. Talk is how she left. Talk is how she lied. Talk is how she walked out the door 11 years ago and never looked back.” But Caleb didn’t blink. He didn’t raise his voice. He just sat there like a stone in the river, letting the current rush around him, waiting for it to show what it was carrying.
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and looked at our lawyer again.
“What do you mean? We might lose.”
He exhaled, rubbed his forehead. “Family court is unpredictable. You’re his stepfather. You did the work, you raised him, but biologically—”
“Don’t say it,” I snapped, sharper than I meant. My voice echoed off the bare courthouse walls, and I hated myself for it immediately.
Caleb’s fingers twitched, small quick, then went still again on his knee.
The lawyer held up a hand. “I’m not insulting you. I’m telling you what the other side is going to argue. Elaine’s attorney is going to paint you like you kept her son from her, like you controlled him, like you’re sitting on money that belongs to the mother.”
My stomach rolled. I thought of Elaine’s face—makeup, perfect lips, glossy—that practiced tremble in her voice the last time she stood on my porch in the rain.
“I just want my son back,” she’d said, like she hadn’t dropped him off in my lap like an unwanted suitcase.
Caleb’s whisper echoed in my head again. “Just let her talk.”
The lawyer leaned forward. “We need to stay calm. Let her testify. Let her attorney run his mouth. Don’t react.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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