Chapter 28 Sabrina
Georgetown, South Carolina
Present Day
Ellen had lost her mind. I didn’t call her for a few days. I was too angry to talk to her. However, I knew I couldn’t go on like that forever, so I dialed her number.
“Hello, Sabrina.” Ellen’s voice held no special inflection. She didn’t sound like someone who was suing me for custody. “How is Kenni?”
“She’s fine.”
“I haven’t talked to her. Is she there now?”
“She’s in the garden with my grandmother.”
“How is your grandfather?”
I cut through the small talk. She did not care about me or my family or she wouldn’t have done what she did. “Why are you suing me for custody?”
“Because it would be best if Kenni was here in Greer.”
“And you feel that way because...?”
“Because she’s been with me for almost a year. I offer her a stable home and a nurturing environment.”
“Ellen, Kenni has not been living with you. You’ve been babysitting her.”
“Is that what you’ve told yourself?”
“She’s not your daughter. She’s mine.”
“She’s my granddaughter. I want what’s best for her. That is not you, Sabrina.”
I struggled to believe we had reached this point. Ellen and I always got along. “How would you have felt if someone said you weren’t the right person to raise Kendrick?”
“I’m a different kind of mother. No one would have said that.”
Those words sliced through me. What she thought of me was coming out loud and clear. “There isn’t one way to parent.”
“No, but there are better ways. Better ways like not living in a van. Better ways like not coming and going when it suits you. Better ways like taking her for her medical well checks and shots on time—”
“You know how I feel about the immunization schedule, how rushed it is. You and I talked about it.”
“I let you ramble about it. She was attending a good preschool. You’ve taken her away from it now for over a month.”
“It was daycare, Ellen, and daycare is not required.”
“But she was enrolled, required or not. I was paying for it. Now she’s lost her space.”
I didn’t want to fight with this woman, but her insistence that she was better for Kenni was way out of pocket. “Ellen,” I tried to keep my voice even, “Kendrick wouldn’t want this.”
“Kendrick would want what was best for his daughter.”
I held my tongue again before responding. “He would believe that to be her mother. Whether you can handle it or not, he was different from you. He wanted us to get an RV and homeschool her on the road. Those were the things your son and I talked about—”
“Stop it! We all have ideas about what we want to do for our children, and then we have them and figure out some of this child-rearing is more practical than fanciful. And you will not use my son against me. It’s your fault he’s dead.”
I inhaled a deep breath and forced myself to remember who I was talking to. “Ellen, it’s not fair for you to blame me for Kendrick’s death.”
“It’s true, and you know it, and I will not let you raise his daughter any old kind of way. Now I want Kenni back here. I’ll give you a week, or I’ll proceed with the case.”
She hung up on me.
I heard a noise at the door and looked. Grandma was standing there. “What is going on?”
“Oh, Grandma, what’s not?”
I filled her in on the details. I didn’t want to burden her, but she was the only person I could talk to.
Grandma groaned. “You never let another woman keep your child like that, especially a woman who’s grieving the death of her only child.”
An I-told-you-so wasn’t what I needed, but I understood. I hadn’t thought this through from the start. “I never thought she’d do something like this.”
“We never know what people are capable of until they’re caged. She believes she’s fighting for her grandchild’s future.”
“I’m not unstable.”
“I know that, but baby, living in a van is different.” Grandma sipped coffee. “I heard you say Kendrick’s death wasn’t your fault. Why does she blame you?”
“Because I sent him out that night. For ice cream.”
“I don’t understand how that makes you guilty of anything.”
“It doesn’t. Ellen is wrong, but she’s not wrong at the same time.” I dropped my face in my hands before raising my eyes to her again. “I didn’t even want ice cream. Not really. I wanted that scene; you know, in the movies where the woman is pregnant and she tells her husband she’s craving something, and he goes out in the middle of the night to get it for her because that’s how you love a pregnant woman and the baby?”
Grandma was so still. She didn’t blink at my statement.
“I wanted Kendrick to prove he wanted our baby and me because... he wasn’t happy about being a father. He had to grow into it. And I wanted to be sure so... I tested him. I made him go for nothing.”
“Kendrick died in a car accident caused by the other driver. That man fell asleep.”
“But—”
“Sabrina, no buts. Ellen is wrong, and that’s all there is to it. Brother Hambrick from the church is a family court attorney. He can tell you what to do. I’m going to call him.”
I nodded.
Grandma pulled me into a hug and squeezed tight. “We’re going to fix this, baby.” She pulled back and grabbed my hands. Shaking them, she said, “We are going to fix it together.”
She left my room, and I collapsed on the bed.
***
The attorney, Mr. Hambrick, fit us in at the very end of his day. As we sat in his office, the memory of Grandma Tabitha’s visit to the lawyer came to me. It was not lost on me that we were both single mothers trying to navigate issues with people who had more money and power.
Mr. Hambrick went down the notes he’d taken on a legal pad. “Kenni was sleeping overnight at her house for five months. You had almost daily visitation with the child. You were still the primary decision maker. You have text messages to prove some of that, and she willingly handed her over to you for the trip here, which in itself demonstrates that she believed Kenni would be safe in your care.”
I had been sitting with an elbow on my knee and my jaw propped on my fist. I sat back and looked at Grandma. “Right. All that is true.”
He hunched his shoulders. “She would have to prove abuse, neglect, or abandonment, and without something egregious, that’s difficult.”
I nodded.
“If she won’t drop the case, I’ll get it thrown out. If for some reason I’m unable to do that, you should be prepared to play hard ball with her.”
“What does hard ball look like?”
“You let her know if she proceeds with this and wins, you’ll still have visitation. If she loses, it will impact your relationship with her, which in turn will impact how much she gets to see Kenni.”
“You mean like make her think I’d keep Kenni from her?”
He shrugged.
“I’d never do that.”
“This is not about what’s true. It’s about what she believes. Grandparents have some rights, but she certainly has no right to interfere with you moving to another county in the state or even out of state for that matter.”
I thought about it. It was a strategy. Lawyers had a reputation for being slick. Now she understood why. “Will court be here?”
“I can get the case heard in the county the child resides in. You’ll need a Georgetown address. Change your driver’s license. Start to receive mail. Get a library card. Anything that will establish you live here.”
I nodded. “Of course. I’ve already changed the address for my bank statements.”
“Good,” Mr. Hambrick said. “Do the things I mentioned and your vehicle registration, voter’s registration. You can’t overdo it.”
I nodded again.
“I have to warn you, custody cases can be expensive—very—but unless there is some reason she can ascertain that you are unfit, I can have a judge recommend mediation.”
I covered my face with my hands for a few seconds and then wiped them on my pants. I was glad this wasn’t going to drag on. “You’re sure?”
“I’m certain. Like I said, if there’s nothing in your past that she can use, this won’t be difficult.”
I rolled my lip in and swept my eyes between him and my grandmother, wondering if he thought I had something hidden in my past.
“What are the next steps?” Grandma asked.
He told us about the paperwork and confirmed my contact information. We stood.
“Mrs. Holland, I need to speak to Sabrina alone.”
Grandma looked a little put off by that, but she patted my arm and said, “I’ll be in the lobby.” She extended a hand to Mr. Hambrick. “Thank you for fitting us in so fast.”
Once she was gone, he walked around the desk and closed the door. “Miss Holland, please have a seat.”
I sat and watched as he reclaimed his chair. He picked up his pen again and rested his hand on the legal pad he’d been using.
“It’s important for clients to have the privacy to divulge details without the judgment or even upset of their relatives and friends.”
I swallowed and tried to keep my face even, tried not to cry.
“Do you have any questions for me that you didn’t want to ask before, or is there anything you need to tell me—something you might not want to say in front of your grandmother that I need to know?”
I raised my hand to the side of my face and rubbed my temple. An ache was settling there. It had been building all day. I looked down at my shoes. When I raised my head, my eyes were burning from the tears I was fighting.
“Is this case just about what’s been going on this year since my mother-in-law has been babysitting overnight?”
Mr. Hambrick reached for a tissue box on the credenza behind him and put it on the desk in front of me. I reached in for one and caught a tear just as it fell.
He folded his hands in front of him. “No. It’s not just about this year. It’s about the moment you told her you were pregnant and potentially before that.”
I let out a long breath. “Okay.” I nodded nervously. “Then I have something to tell you, and I think it’s probably pretty bad.”
Mr. Hambrick unfolded his hands and picked up his pencil. “Start at the beginning.”
I took a deep breath and told him my story.
When I was done with him, I met Grandma in the lobby.
“That took longer than I thought,” she said.
“He had to repeat all the client confidentiality stuff and a few other legal things.”
Grandma humphed, but then she fell into step with me as I left the building.
“The next time you’re struggling—if there’s a next time—you reach out to me, you hear?” Her tone was more than a little firm.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“I wish I could go by the restaurant,” Grandma said, settling into the passenger seat of the truck. “How are things looking?”
“Good. The work in the old part is done. The new section should be done in a few weeks.”
We’d told Grandma this, but I think she was nervous. She tended to ask questions when she was nervous.
“Sabrina,” she said, and I knew she was about to probe, “there’s nothing in your past that Ellen can use against you, is there? You need to be sure.”
I turned to my grandmother and looked at her. She’d managed to raise three children, more if we counted the years she and Grandpa took in foster children, official and unofficial, or helped out a homeless family here and there from the church. I could trust her with anything, but sometimes I felt so inadequate in her stead.
“She doesn’t have anything.” I started the truck and backed out of the space. Guilt came over me. I’d never lied to my grandmother before. I felt terrible about it. Not telling the truth didn’t change what the truth was. I had a secret. Ellen knew it, and now Mr. Hambrick knew.