Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
break the chain
SOREN
Rook was still asleep next to me, one arm thrown across my chest like he could anchor me to the bed through sheer proximity. I wanted to stay there. Wanted to burrow into the warmth and safety of his presence and pretend today wasn't happening.
But the clock on the nightstand said six-fifteen, and the hearing was at nine, and there was no universe where I got to hide from this.
I slipped out of bed without waking him and headed to the bathroom.
The face in the mirror looked older than I felt — shadows under the eyes, tension in the jaw, the beginnings of lines around my mouth that hadn't been there a few years ago.
I looked like a man who'd been carrying weight for too long, and I guessed that was accurate enough.
The suit Rook had bought me hung on the back of the door. Charcoal gray, professionally tailored, the kind of thing that said responsible adult instead of struggling musician who sometimes ate ramen three nights in a row. I stared at it for a long moment before forcing myself to shower.
By the time I came back out, Rook was awake and making coffee in the kitchen. He looked up when he heard me, and the expression on his face was so full of quiet concern that I had to look away before it cracked me open.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No.” I pulled on the dress shirt and started working on the buttons. “But I will be.”
He crossed the room and took over the buttons for me, his fingers steady where mine were shaking. When he finished, he straightened my collar and kissed me once, soft and grounding.
“You're going to get through this,” he said. “And I'm going to be right there the whole time.”
“I know.”
The drive into Toronto felt surreal. Morning traffic, coffee shops opening, people going about their normal Thursday like the entire foundation of my life wasn't about to be judged by strangers in a courtroom.
Rook drove with one hand on the wheel and the other laced through mine, and I focused on breathing and not throwing up.
My siblings were already at the courthouse when we arrived, standing near the entrance with Sarah and looking various degrees of terrified.
Talia had her arms crossed and her spine straight, the way she always held herself when she was trying not to fall apart.
Micah kept fidgeting with his tie, and Poppy looked like she wanted to set the building on fire and walk away from it.
“Hey,” I said, pulling all three of them into a hug. “We're ready for this. We've done everything right. Now we just have to get through today.”
“Easy for you to say,” Poppy said, her voice muffled against my shoulder.
“It's not, actually.” I pulled back and looked at each of them. “But we do it anyway. That's what we've always done.”
Sarah appeared next to us, dressed in a navy suit and carrying a briefcase that probably cost more than my rent. “Everyone ready?”
None of us were ready. But we nodded anyway.
She walked us through the plan one more time — what to expect, how to answer questions, the importance of staying calm and letting the facts speak for themselves. I'd heard this briefing twice already, but hearing it again helped settle some of the panic clawing at my ribs.
“Remember,” Sarah said, looking at each of us in turn. “You're not on trial here. They are. All you have to do is tell the truth.”
We headed inside and went through security. People moved through the hallways with briefcases and serious expressions, and everything felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
The courtroom was on the third floor. We took the elevator in tense silence, and when the doors opened I saw them immediately.
My parents.
They were standing near the courtroom entrance with Morrison, and the sight of all three of them made my stomach drop.
My mother saw me first.
“Soren,” she said, and her voice had that wounded quality that used to make me feel like I'd kicked a puppy. “Please. Can we just talk before—”
“No.” Talia stepped between us, her voice hard as granite. “You don't get to do this right now.”
Morrison put a hand on my mother's arm. “Mrs. Vale, we discussed this.”
My father met my eyes briefly across the space between us, and I thought of the coffee shop, of the careful way he'd sat across from me and not quite backed her play. He looked away first.
Sarah guided us past them and into the courtroom, and I made myself not look back.
The room was smaller than I'd expected. Wood paneling, a judge's bench that looked appropriately imposing, tables for both sides, and a handful of seats for observers.
Rook and his parents settled into the back row, giving us space but making sure we could see them if we needed the reminder that we weren't alone.
The judge entered and everyone stood. She was in her sixties with gray hair pulled back in a bun and the kind of face that suggested she'd presided over too many cases like this and had stopped being impressed by anyone's bullshit decades ago.
“Please be seated,” she said, and we sat.
The hearing began with procedural formalities that I barely registered. My brain kept circling back to the fact that my mother was sitting twenty feet away, wearing her concerned-parent mask, about to try to convince a stranger that she deserved access to the daughter she'd abandoned.
Morrison went first, and I hated how good he was.
He painted a picture of a family torn apart by addiction and mental illness, of parents who'd made mistakes but were now working hard to heal, of children who'd been forced to grow up too fast and deserved the chance to reunite with their reformed mother and father.
He talked about rehabilitation programs and therapy and the fundamental bond between parent and child.
His voice was measured and warm and had probably worked on a hundred judges before this one.
Then my mother took the stand, and I watched her perform.
She talked about motherhood like it was sacred ground she'd been exiled from. About mistakes she'd made in her darkest moments. About how much she'd changed, how hard she'd worked to get better, how desperately she wanted the chance to make things right with her children.
She cried. Actual tears, perfectly timed, and I could see the judge's expression shift slightly.
“I know I failed them,” my mother said, her voice breaking at exactly the right moment. “I know I wasn't the mother they deserved. But I'm better now. I'm clean, I'm in therapy, and all I want is the chance to show them that I can be the parent they needed me to be.”
It was a masterclass. If I hadn't lived through the reality of her — the disappearances, the broken promises, the times she'd chosen the bottle over her kids without a second thought — I might have believed her myself.
My father's testimony landed roughly where I'd expected it to after the coffee shop.
He wasn't here to win this for her. His answers were careful and measured, acknowledging the past without embellishing her recovery.
He talked about his own sobriety, about mistakes he'd made, about feeling trapped.
But when Morrison pushed him on reunification, the answer he gave wasn't the one Morrison needed.
“Do you believe reunification is in the best interest of the minor child?” Morrison asked him.
He hesitated, and I recognized that pause. It was the same one he'd had in the coffee shop before he'd said something honest. “I believe Poppy deserves to know her parents. But I also believe she's been well cared for where she is.”
Morrison's jaw tightened by about a millimeter.
My father stepped down without looking at our table. He'd done what he could within whatever limited version of himself he was still working with, and I didn't know yet what to do with that.
Then it was our turn.
Sarah started with the facts. Dates and documentation and the long, ugly record of my parents' absences.
She walked the judge through the timeline — when I'd taken guardianship, how old I'd been, the circumstances that had forced that choice.
She presented the evidence of their instability, the escalating contact attempts that had only started after years of silence, the complete lack of support they'd provided while I'd been raising their children.
The facts were devastating on their own. No embellishment needed.
Talia went first, and she was a force of nature.
She sat in the witness chair with her spine straight and her voice steady, and she didn't flinch once. When Morrison tried to suggest that she might be influenced by her older brother's bitterness, Talia looked at him like he'd just said the stupidest thing she'd heard in her professional life.
“I'm not influenced by anyone,” Talia said.
“I remember. I remember being nine years old and coming home from school to an empty apartment because they'd both disappeared for three days.
I remember Soren making dinner out of whatever was left in the cupboards and pretending it was fine.
I remember him staying up all night to make sure we had clean clothes for school while he was supposed to be studying for his own exams. So no, I'm not bitter. I'm just telling you what happened.”
Morrison tried again. “But surely your mother's current recovery—”
“My mother chose alcohol over us repeatedly. My father enabled her. Soren chose us. That's the difference.”
Micah went next, and his testimony hit differently because it was gentler.
“I wanted them to be better,” he said quietly. “I really did. But wanting it doesn't make it true. And Soren was the one who was there.”
Then Poppy took the stand, and I had to grip the edge of the table to keep from falling apart.
She was seventeen and furious and absolutely clear about where she wanted to be.