Chapter Twelve #2
“No.” Not unless I have to. I’ll use it if I must, but I don’t want to put Sienna through a custody battle right now.
“Are you going to tell her about the records work?”
“No.”
I hang up before Martin can say the next thing, because I can hear it forming and I don’t want to hear it. I stand at the window. The mountains are turning from gray to blue as the sun reaches them.
I call Casey at 8:15. She answers on the third ring. Her voice is level, and she sounds calm. She’s obviously been expecting this call and doesn’t waste time with a hello. “If this is to set up a DNA test, we can meet for cheek swabs at the practice of your choosing.”
I grit my teeth but manage to speak. “A DNA test will have to be done in the course of treatment, but it’s obvious she’s mine.”
“Yes.” She says it firmly, without any emotion, and certainly not with regret at what she took from me.
I still want to make her pay, but I focus on Sienna right now. “I’d like you to come to Charlotte. You and Sienna. The transplant team at Presbyterian is one of the best in the state. Dr. Osgood is already located ther—”
Her reply is sharp. “Don’t tell me about transplant teams. I’ve been managing Sienna’s care for eighteen months.”
“I know you’ve. Casey, I lost four years. I’m not asking for anything beyond what Sienna needs. I’m asking you to bring her to Charlotte so the transplant workup can happen with both parents available.”
She’s quiet for several minutes, long enough for me to hear a cartoon in the background. “I’ll talk to my attorney and to Sienna’s medical team. If they agree the transfer makes sense for her care, I’ll consider it.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“It had better be.” She hangs up, unaware she’s not holding the cards now.
I might lose the bid for custody, but I can make her go through it if I choose. If she stays cooperative, I won’t have to. I put the phone on the nightstand.
She said she’d consider it. She didn’t say yes.
She said she’d talk to her attorney and the medical team, and she’ll decide based on what they tell her.
Four years ago, I told her to get out. Today, I asked her to come back, and the best she could give me was I’ll consider it, and I have no right to expect more than that unless or until I get the courts involved to enforce my rights.
Rights she stole from me because I wasn’t enough for her in the bedroom, and she took my daughter to punish me for not accepting her infidelity.
I shower and dress, putting on clean clothes from the bag I packed Saturday morning in Charlotte, before I drove three hours to stand on a porch and lose the ability to speak.
I order coffee from room service. When it arrives I move it from the tray to the desk.
I straighten the sugar packets then scatter them with a disgusted motion.
My life is falling apart. Who cares it he sugar packets are centered and tidy?
The room is quiet. The parking lot is filling up outside.
Checkout is at eleven, and I should leave, drive back to Charlotte, go to the office, and sit at a desk in a life that makes sense.
Instead, I sit in a hotel room in Asheville because my daughter is somewhere in this city and leaving feels like abandoning.
I do the math again. I keep doing it, even though the answer never changes. Casey left in November. Sienna was born the following July. Eight months. She was seven or eight weeks pregnant when she walked out of our living room with a bag on her shoulder and a sentence I didn’t hear correctly.
If I leave here, it won’t be alone.
I heard another man. She meant our daughter. I have to believe that now. There was another man. My sister saw her with him, but he’s not the father of my child. She let anger at being caught and my refusal to accept infidelity deprive me of four years of Sienna’s life.
The paternity test will confirm what the math already says.
I still have to have the test done for legal purposes and to absolutely rule out her lover.
Casey will see it as punishment, but it’s to establish the facts.
Looking at Sienna, I’m sure she’s mine, but it has to be legally on the record before I have enough room to maneuver and deploy whatever means necessary to ensure I’m part of my daughter’s life from this point forward.
She hid Sienna. She hid her for four years.
She drove away without telling me. My mother was in the wing chair, yes.
Brittany was on the sofa. Casey walked into a room where the verdict was already in because my sister and mother wouldn’t lie about something like that.
Casey was always mine tenuously, and I understand that even when I didn’t want to believe it.
Her leaving was inevitable, but she took my daughter and disappeared. That, I can’t forgive.
My phone rings, and it’s Martin.
“What do you want me to do with the petition?” he asks again, as though I’ll have changed my mind.
“Keep it on your desk.”
He sighs. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer I’m paying you to accept.” I hang up.