Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Jack
Her name was Karen Phelps. It was on a small placard on the table, the kind that had been there long enough to fade at the edges.
She had a legal pad, a pen, and my file, which she opened without ceremony.
She looked at me patiently, as if she’d done this many times already and stopped expecting it to be easy.
"Mr. Henley. First, I'm sorry for your loss.
Genuinely." She meant it, I could tell, but she also said it in a way that indicated this was something we needed to move past. "I want to be straightforward with you about what this conversation is.
I'm doing a preliminary kinship assessment.
That means I need to understand your situation and your intentions before we can talk about next steps for Lily.
" She paused. "So let me start there. What are your intentions? "
I looked at her.
It was a reasonable question. The most reasonable question I’d ever been asked. I'd been on a plane for five hours and in a rental car for forty minutes and in a medical examiner's office for twenty… and I had not once, in any of that time, asked myself what I was actually planning to do.
"I'm here," I said.
"I understand that. But being here and taking guardianship of a five-year-old are two different things." She wasn't unkind about it. "Do you want to raise Lily?"
The truth was… I didn't know.
I was thirty-six years old and I'd spent the last twelve years moving from one rig to the next, one state to the next, accumulating nothing on purpose.
I didn't have a home. I didn't have a routine.
I'd been alone long enough that I'd stopped noticing it.
I knew nothing about children—less than nothing, maybe, given the only example of fatherhood I'd ever had up close.
I thought about my father on that damn porch. The cans on the railing. That comfortable, settled certainty that the math always came out the same way in the end.
"As far as we’ve been able to assess, Lily has no other family. So if not you," Phelps said, carefully, "then we'd be looking at foster placement while we—"
"No." It came out before I'd decided to say it. "She's not going into foster care."
Phelps looked up from her file.
I thought about a girl I’d known a lifetime ago—someone who’d grown up in a system that was fine on paper and indifferent in practice.
I remembered the way she’d described moving from one house to the next, never unpacking her bags because tape leaves marks and marks mean you were there.
I’d spent three years trying to convince her she was permanent, only to prove her right in the end.
I couldn't do that to Cassie's kid. I wouldn't let Lily become another ghost in a file.
There was only me, and that would have to suffice.
"I want to take her," I said. "I'm going to take her."
Phelps held my gaze for a moment. Then she picked up her pen. "Okay. Let's talk about what that requires."
* * *
"How would you describe your relationship with Lily?"
"Limited. I saw her a year ago. Before that, two years."
"Does she know you?"
"She knew who I was." I thought about the drawing again. "We weren't close, I suppose."
"Current living situation?"
"I've been working rigs. No fixed address."
"Employment?"
"I walked off the rig yesterday when I got the call."
She wrote it all down in the same careful hand, no reaction, every answer given the same weight. Which was the point. She wasn't judging; she was just stacking things. And the stack wasn't looking good.
"Criminal record?"
"Bar fight. Eight years ago. Misdemeanor assault, pled down, community service. Nothing since."
Eight years ago. A bar in Whitehorse, a man twice my size with his hands on a woman who was trying to walk away from him.
I'd stepped in and it had gone the way those things go.
I'd done the community service and I'd also stopped getting wasted, which wasn't a condition of the sentence but felt like the right conclusion to draw.
I still had a beer now and then, but I'd walked away from the hard stuff. The kind of drinking that made the world go blurry at the edges and let the worst parts of my father’s voice sound like common sense… that had to go, so I cut it out.
I wasn't sure that counted for anything in this room, but it was the truth of it.
Phelps wrote it down and didn't look up. "Any other incidents? Domestic, DUI, anything of that nature?"
"No."
She set her pen down and looked at me for the first time since we'd started going through the list.
"Mr. Henley. I want to be honest with you.
" She said it the way people said it when what followed wasn't going to be easy.
"No fixed address. No current employment.
Limited contact with the child. And a criminal record, however minor.
" She pursed her lips. "Individually, I can work with each of these things.
Together, they make my job harder. I want you to understand that going in. "
I understood it well enough. I'd been understanding it for the last twenty minutes, watching the pile grow.
"What do I need to do?" I asked.
She picked her pen back up. "Let's start with housing. Do you have a place to stay? Here in Cedar Falls, or close?"
"I'll find something."
"Mr. Henley." She looked at me steadily. "You've just told me you have no address, no employment, and limited contact with the child. I need something more concrete than that."
"What about Cassie's house? In Clear Creek?"
She paused. "Do you know the situation there?"
"Not exactly. But Cassie was stable. She had a job, she had a life. She was likely paying a mortgage." I was thinking out loud and I knew it. I had the impression Cassie had had a mortgage, but what the hell did I really know? "I can look into taking it over. Speak to whoever I need to speak to."
It was all moving too fast. I was aware of that, in the same distant way you’re aware of things when you were operating on no sleep and the wrong side of a shock.
I didn't know if Cassie owned or rented.
I didn't know what her finances looked like.
I didn't know anything about any of it, and I was sitting in this room saying I'll figure it out like that was a plan.
But there was no other option. That was just the truth of it. There was no other option and the only thing worse than me walking out of this building with Lily was me walking out without her.
Something shifted in Phelps's expression. "Cassie's house would actually be significant," she said. "Familiar environment for Lily. If you can sort that out, it might help." She made a note. "I'd need you to confirm the housing situation as soon as possible."
"I'll make some calls today."
"Good." She looked back at the file. "Is there anyone who can speak to your character? Someone local, someone who's known you over time?"
I thought about it.
Hector was dead—a heart attack three years ago, I'd heard through someone.
My father was dead too, and I wouldn't have used him anyway.
Twelve years away from this town was twelve years of not building the kind of life that left references behind.
The guys from the rigs were good men but they'd known me for months at a stretch, not years, and none of them were here.
"I'd need some time on that," I said.
Phelps nodded slowly, like she'd expected as much. "Think about it. Get back to me before the forty-eight hours are up. A local reference would carry some weight." She closed the file and folded her hands on top of it.
"Here's where we are, Mr. Henley. I haven't made a decision.
What I can tell you is that until I have confirmed housing, a completed background check, and a home walkthrough, I can't recommend placement.
" She said it without apology, which I respected.
"If those things aren't in place within forty-eight hours, I'll need to move forward with temporary foster care while the assessment continues.
That's not a punishment. It's the process. "
"Forty-eight hours," I said.
"Forty-eight hours. There's also the matter of a family law attorney. You'll want one engaged before this goes any further." She slid a card across the table. "This office can provide a referral if you need one."
I took the card.
"Can I see her?" I said. "Lily."
Phelps looked at me for a moment, hesitated. Then she said: "I'll take you down myself."