Chapter Fifteen #2
He has a twelve-pack in his good hand and his phone is balanced on his bad. I’m more relieved than I want to be that it looks like he hasn’t opened any of the drinks yet. He really doesn’t do that, but the paranoia has been totally unleashed in me.
“Oh, Silas!” he says, looking more energetic than I’ve seen him all day.
I turn to face him, waiting to see what’s got him so worked up. Once he knows he has my attention, he heads to the kitchen to start unloading his drinks while he half-yells to me across the open space, until I wake up and move closer to him.
“Hey, so you remember Wyatt from high school? He used to race with us until he enlisted. Anyway, I had to go to the gas station because the liquor store was closed, and I ran into him. And he was telling me about the custody drama he’s been having with his daughter.
Because he had the kid with Breanna—you remember her, right?
—just before he was deployed. But then Breanna ended up relapsing or something and skipped town, and left the baby with her parents.
So all while he was deployed her parents and his mom took care of the baby.
It sounds like a shitty situation for everyone involved, obviously.
I hope Breanna’s okay, she always had it rough. But that’s not the point.”
Now he has a beer in his hand which he cracks the tab on before taking a swig and turning to look at me.
He’s still animated, using big gestures as he speaks and waving the can in the air.
I’ve seen him get worked up like this a million times before, but normally it’s for a reason I at least kind of understand.
I still have no idea where he’s going with this story. He continues to talk a mile a minute.
“Anyway. So they all made it work for a couple of years and he came back as much as he could, but now he’s home because he decided not to re-up, plus his mom’s MS has been getting a lot worse so he didn’t want to keep putting that burden on her.
No one has heard from Bree this whole time.
But it turns out that he never realized how fucking churchy her parents are.
Like, everyone’s parents are churchy. Except mine.
But I didn’t realize they were Pentecostal churchy.
Not even the regular Pentecostal church in town, the weird one over on Rt 21 that still does like, snake handling or laying hands or whatever.
So they’re saying he’s a demonic influence and so is his mom, and they’re trying to get full custody.
Which should be impossible, right? He’s the kid’s dad and he’s home full-time now, apart from reserves shit once a month. ”
Cade takes another swig, emptying the can before crushing it in his hand and throwing it in the recycling and then grabbing another from the fridge.
“So this whole time—this whole fucking time!—they’ve been building a case against him.
Collecting affidavits and paper records and anything else they can to show that they’ve been the primary caregivers.
It’s not like he’s a shitty dad, he just wasn’t here.
But he’s here now and according to him, they actually have a case and he has to play fucking catch up.
It sounds really stressful. All of a sudden he’s launched into this whole legal battle, and that poor little girl is in the middle of it. ”
There’s a long pause while he drinks and looks at me. When no more words follow, I get the feeling I’m supposed to be responding with something, but I’m not sure what.
“That’s… really sad?”
It is, but I don’t think that’s what he wanted to hear specifically.
“Yes, but that’s not the point,” he says, resting the can on the counter before walking toward me. “It made me realize what I need to do. I think I need to actually start preparing to petition for custody of the girls.”
He must see the expression I make, because he immediately shushes me, holding me by the arm and making a placating expression at me like I’m missing something that makes this whole situation not fucked up.
“No, no, no,” he says. “It’s fine. I know Mom’s been doing better and we were hoping everything would turn out okay, but I think Dad showing up has made it clear that things aren’t okay.
She’s kowtowing to him like the old days, sober or not.
He’s lounging around like he’s Harvey fucking Weinstein sitting on a throne, dragging random sex workers after him and fuck what happens to the girls.
They were both more than happy to ship Maddi and Sky off with us, as soon as something they thought was more interesting came up.
It just makes it clear that they’ll never be safe with either of our parents.
I finally have a stable job and a real house, I need to just pull the trigger and do it.
Fuck them. Fuck their custody. A judge will see that, if I just put the work in.
And then they’ll be here and I can know that they’re safe all the time. ”
The earnestness on his face is fucking killing me.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him get swept up in something, convinced that it’s going to be the answer to all our problems. But it’s normally something less insidious, like buying a blender or trying to buy those crates of unsold goods and then resell them on the internet.
And it’s normally not that hard to distract him until he realizes it was a stupid idea.
This is a whole other level.
“Cade, would you really do that to your mom? I know she’s not perfect, but she does love them and she’s been trying so hard to do good this past year.
We’re around all the time to make sure they don’t slip through the cracks.
Your dad will get bored and move on soon.
Taking them away from your mom and having a whole legal battle sounds expensive and really painful, for not a lot of gain. I think you need to take a breath.”
Cade’s expression falls. For a second, I think I’ve gotten through to him, but then he furrows his brow at me and takes a step back.
“You don’t get it. She could snap. He could snap at any minute.
They’re all one bad trip from becoming a podcast episode about family annihilators.
And every time you hear about one of those cases, you’re like oh but there were so many warning signs, how did everyone ignore it?
This is me not ignoring it. I’ve seen too much happen to too many kids.
I’m not picking them up in a fucking ambulance because I was too lazy to do some paperwork. ”
It’s been a tense, tense day. And somehow, this is the most on edge I’ve felt.
There’s a thread of logic to what he’s saying, but it’s also so displaced from the reality of the situation—or at least such a tunnel-visioned way of looking at it—that I still can’t believe the words are coming out of his mouth.
“Are you asking me if I think we should do this or telling me that it’s happening?”
Cade frowns.
“Neither. I just… I thought you’d agree with me. It seems so obvious.”
“To you, maybe. I don’t think we should be adopting kids without talking about it first, and especially not when it might ruin your mother’s life. I don’t want to do this to Kris.”
She’s not technically my family, but I’ve been willing to take what I can get, and she really has been working hard on herself since I’ve been around. I don’t want to punish her for that.
Cade sighs, not looking angry exactly, but not happy with my response. As if I was going to automatically be thrilled to launch this whole operation with no thought to our future.
“Look, it’s a lot. I sprang this on you. I’ll do more research and I’ll make a plan. It’ll be great, I promise. But I won’t do anything drastic without talking to you first, okay?”
I still feel completely side-swiped, but that’s better than nothing, so I nod.
“Perfect. Love you,” Cade says, stepping in to kiss me fast and hard before turning back around to find his beer.
I’ll drop it for now, because this has been a day. But the thought of him getting fixated on this is going to keep me up at night, I can already tell.
Maybe Tristan can talk some sense into him. He’s better at that than I am.