Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
I JUST WANT TO GO HOME
HENRY
The room feels like fucking a morgue.
Sterile. Cold. Not the kind of cold you shiver through, but the kind that settles under your skin and makes your heart quiet down, like it already knows nothing good lives here.
The walls are beige—drab and lifeless, like someone tried to paint over grief and gave up halfway. The fluorescent light above us buzzes with that soft, maddening flicker, like it’s just as restless as the people trapped beneath it.
The entire Wilder clan including the Crosby brothers fill the row behind us—a silent, steady wall of support.
Lou sits next to me in the front row, hands locked in her lap so tight her skin's long lost its blood circulation. Her leg keeps bouncing, jittering against mine. She hasn’t spoken since we walked through those doors. Not since we saw him.
Dallas’s father.
The man who disappeared for nearly a decade—who knew exactly who he was leaving them with.
A woman diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
A woman who refused medication. Who spiraled in and out of psychotic breaks until their home became a war zone.
Dallas was barely old enough to tie his shoes when he started learning to survive her—ducking and hiding, trying to protect his little brother from things no child should ever see.
This piece of shit? He knew, and still, he left.
Now he’s here. Sitting three rows ahead in a stiff, pressed shirt like it erases the blood on his hands. Like he’s got the right to show up and want something.
His lawyer leans in, whispers something greasy in his ear, and he nods like a man who thinks time makes him innocent.
My jaw clenches. Lou’s knee starts bouncing harder.
The judge enters.
We rise.
We sit.
Rue takes the stand.
She looks polished today. Formal. But her voice has that same sharp edge I’ve heard around our kitchen table after too many late nights and too few wins since all this went down. She meets Lou’s eyes before she speaks, and something quiet passes between them—something sacred.
“Dallas Murphy is a nine-year-old child who has endured sustained, complex trauma,” Rue begins, her voice sharp and deliberate in the echoing quiet of the courtroom.
“He was abandoned by his biological father and left in the full-time care of his mother—a woman with a documented diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. A woman who refused medication. Refused treatment, and whose untreated psychosis escalated to catastrophic levels.”
The air shifts—tightens.
“There are multiple reports of prolonged neglect and emotional abuse,” she continues.
“He was isolated for days at a time. Locked in closets. Deprived of food, of sleep, of basic human care. He was screamed at, blamed for things beyond his understanding, punished for imagined threats inside her head. He was a child living in a war zone no one could see.”
I glance at Lou. She hasn’t moved—jaw clenched, eyes locked straight ahead, white-knuckled grip still trembling in her lap.
Rue pauses for just a second. Then drops the weight of it.
“Dallas witnessed the death of his younger brother during one of his mother’s psychotic episodes.”
A rustle goes through the courtroom. I hear someone behind us suck in a breath. Lou doesn’t move.
“He tried to save him. At five years old, he called for help. Then when no one came fast enough, he sat beside his baby brother’s body until emergency services arrived.
The trauma of that event alone would be enough to break most adults.
But Dallas lived through it after years of chronic abuse.
The man who’s sitting here today now petitioning for custody?
” She gestures without looking. “He knew.”
Rue’s eyes darken. “He knew the kind of woman he left Dallas with. He knew her diagnosis. He knew she wasn’t stable. Yet, he left anyway. Not for weeks. Not for months. For years. No contact. No child support. No welfare check. Nothing.”
I watch the judge’s expression shift, ever so slightly.
“Since being placed in the care of Sheriff Henry Wilder and Ms. Wright, Dallas has shown measurable improvements in emotional regulation, attachment, academic performance, and physical health. The difference is not just notable—it’s life-saving.”
Rue’s voice softens slightly. “For the first time in years, this child feels safe. He sleeps through the night. He eats three meals a day. He trusts the adults in his life. He laughs. He smiles. He belongs.”
Rue glances down at her notes, then looks up, voice firm. “Removing Dallas from his current placement would not just be a disruption—it would be catastrophic. It would break him.”
Lou’s arms fold over her stomach like she’s trying to hold herself together. I reach for her, wrapping a hand around her thigh and sliding her closer to me. She immediately wraps herself around my arm in a suffocating grip.
For a long, breathless moment, no one moves.
Then the judge asks, “Is the child present?”
My heart plummets. A sick, hollow drop straight through my chest.
Rue nods slowly. “Yes, Your Honor. He’s in the waiting room. We can bring him in if necessary.”
Don’t! I want to shout. Please don’t make him do this. Don’t make him carry this too.
But the judge nods.
The bailiff crosses the courtroom and opens the side door, and there he is.
Our boy.
So damn small, standing stiff and fragile in that button-up shirt that scratches his neck and those stiff shoes Lou had to bribe him with some of Sophie's hazelnut cookies just to get him to wear them.
He looks like he can barely breathe. Like the weight of this moment is pressing down on his skinny little shoulders and might crush him before he even takes a step.
He hesitates in the doorway—just a flicker—and then walks in like the floor might collapse beneath him.
His eyes search for us, frantic and unsure before they land on Lou—always Lou first—and for a heartbeat, everything in him just…stops.
They guide him forward—past us, away from us—settling him into a single chair in front of the bench. Like he’s not a boy, but a witness in the trial of his own existence.
The judge leans in, voice soft but heavy. “Dallas, do you know why you’re here today?”
He nods once, barely.
“Can you tell me how you feel about your current living situation?”
His throat works. He swallows hard. Eyes flicker sideways—uncertain, guarded.
Then, finally, he turns fully toward Lou. Not me. Her.
Lou’s breath catches, her chest tightening like someone’s just punched her gut.
Her fingers tremble, gripping the edge of her seat so hard her nails bite into her palms. Her eyes flicker with a storm—pain, fierce protectiveness, and a raw, aching love all tangled together.
For a heartbeat, she looks like she might break, but then she squares her shoulders, forcing herself to be the rock Dallas needs.
Yet even as she fights to stay strong, the tight knot of fear and heartbreak settles deep in her bones.
Then in the smallest damn voice I’ve ever heard from him, he says, “They are my home.”
Lou flinches like she’s been shot. But she refuses to look away.
The judge asks more questions. About school. Friends. Daily life. Dallas answers with a kind of mechanical carefulness, like he’s been coached how to survive this. Like he’s used to saying only what’s safe.
Finally, the judge leans in. “Dallas, do you want to live with your biological father?”
Dallas hesitates. His lower lip quivers, just for a second—just long enough to show the storm brewing underneath. Then he straightens his spine like he’s older than nine, like he’s had to be.
“He didn’t want me when it mattered,” he says, voice thin but steady. “He left us with that monster.”
My chest knots, and Lou goes still beside me, fingers digging into my arm.
Dallas swallows hard. His voice is soft, but it cuts through the silence like a blade. “He doesn’t know anything about me. Not what I like. What I hate. Not even how I like my pancakes.”
He glances toward us—his eyes shining, jaw clenched like he’s trying not to fall apart.
“But Henry does. Louis does. Even though she can’t cook, she still tries for me.
Burns the pancakes almost every time.” He gives the faintest hint of a smile, trembling at the edges.
“But she shows up. Every morning. Every time. They didn’t have to love me…
but they chose to. And if Louis has shown me anything, it’s that the love you choose to give—especially when you feel you have nothing left—that’s the love that matters most.”
Silence folds over the room like a shroud.
I hear Lou’s breath hitch like something inside her split open.
If she cries, I will too, and I can’t—not here. Not now.
The judge clears her throat gently. “What do you want, Dallas?”
He blinks, and a tear slips down his cheek. He swipes at it fast, almost angry at himself for crying.
“I just want to go home,” Dallas says, voice small but clear, like he’s holding it together with both hands. “Home. Where Lou sits with me at the kitchen table and teaches me how to draw the feelings that get stuck in my chest—so they don’t eat me up inside.”
He glances toward her, eyes already shining.
“She’s sassy. Real sassy. Always got something to say and never lets anybody talk down to her.
She yells when she’s scared, and hugs so hard it knocks the wind out of me, but never—not once—makes me feel like I’m too much.
She tells me grief doesn’t mean something’s wrong with me.
That it just means I loved real big—and that’s not something to be ashamed of. ”
He swallows, hard. His small hands clench in his lap.
“And Henry…” Dallas’s voice cracks, but he keeps going, steady as he can.
“Henry takes me to Thunder Lake when my chest feels like it’s going to explode.
He lets me scream into the trees and skip rocks until the ache gets quieter.
Sometimes we fish, even if we don’t catch nothing.
He says it isn’t about the fish—it’s about having a place to breathe. ”
He wipes his nose on his sleeve, glancing toward Henry. “He never makes me explain what’s wrong. He just stays.”
A long, aching silence.
“I just want to go back there,” he whispers. “To the people who love me…and who I love more than anything.”
Lou gasps softly beside me. I can’t breathe.
“Thank you,” the judge says, and excuses him.
Dallas passes us, brushes Lou’s fingers just barely with his. She catches his pinkie and doesn’t let go until he’s out of reach. And when that door shuts, we’re left with silence.
Not peace. Just silence.