Chapter 20 #2
And it was. For the first time in a very long time, her life felt full to bursting with family and friends, love and laughter. And she knew with a certainty that went all the way to her bones that absolutely nothing else mattered if she had all those things.
She didn’t know how it had happened, but out of the wreckage of her life, something whole and beautiful had blossomed. It had just taken a lawyer-turned rodeo clown-turned lawyer, to come into her life and nurture the seed of happiness planted in her heart for so many years by Liam.
Reno had brought sunlight and joy back into her world and Lily’s. He’d let her grow wild and free in whatever direction she wanted, and he loved her just the way she was. She couldn’t ask for more.
She knew all her WoWS sisters considered themselves pretty darned blessed to have found another wonderful man in one lifetime who loved them and their kids to the moon and back.
But she was pretty sure she was the luckiest one of them all.
Want to spend a little more time with Reno, Grace, and Lily, see who proposes to whom, and find out how Lily reacts? Access an exclusive (and emotional) bonus scene featuring them in my note to you at the end of this chapter.
…and now for a sneak peek at the next yummy hero in the Cobbler Cove series in
A FAMILY FOR HANK …
The courthouse smelled like every government building Hank Steele had ever sat in—old wood, floor wax, and coffee that had been sitting in a pot too long.
He didn’t know a blessed thing about architecture or interior design, but even he knew this courtroom was stuck in an unfortunate furniture time loop dated to about 1973.
As a rule, he only wore ties to weddings and funerals. But he’d worn one today to the custody hearing for his daughter.
Madison sat beside him at one of the two tables in front of the judge’s raised chair She was fourteen and in the midst of a growth spurt, all gangly limbs, sharp elbows, and awkward smiles around her braces, which were almost ready to come off.
Her hands were clenched in her lap, and her stare was fixed on the bailiff’s empty chair. Hank gathered she had no interest in looking across the aisle at her mother seated beside her attorney at the other table.
Not that he blamed her. He wanted nothing to do with his ex-wife either.
Reno looked cool as a cucumber beside him, as if he’d already won the case. But then, he had three precisely labelled folders of information waiting to be entered into evidence in front of him, each one more damaging than the last to Lorraine’s case.
“You good?” Reno murmured to him in a voice that wouldn’t carry more than three feet.
“Yep.”
Reno’s mouth quirked into a not-quite smile. “Then try looking like a guy who’s good.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he snapped under his breath. His daughter’s entire future rode on the next hour. He had to protect Madi from Lorraine and get custody.
“Your tie’s crooked,” Reno said, mildly. “Need me to straighten it?”
“I got it,” he muttered, giving it a yank.
“You’re welcome,” Reno said dryly.
Hank scowled back. “Thank you.”
Across the aisle, Lorraine had a tissue clutched in her left hand, which shook visibly.
Six weeks, he thought automatically, gauging how long she’d been clean this time.
Maybe seven. Just long enough to look sober.
Short enough that one afternoon and a bottle of gin would put her right back in her preferred state of oblivion.
She glanced over every minute or so at Madison. Her gaze could pass for sympathy, love, and maybe sorrow if a person didn’t know Lorraine well. But he wasn’t fooled by her wistful, longing mother act. He just prayed the judge wasn’t taken in by it.
Her attorney was paging through a stack of files with enough bored familiarity that this was clearly just another Tuesday in family court for him.
A man in a uniform stepped into the room from a side door. “All rise.”
Judge Marisol Ramos came in briskly. She took her seat and gave everyone a look that said she had no time or patience for shenanigans in her court. She nodded at the lawyers and everyone sat.
Hank said a quick, fervent prayer for the judge to see Lorraine for who she really was and for the Lord to look out for his baby girl. To put Madi in a safe, loving home away from her erratic, destructive mother.
Lorraine’s lawyer put her on the witness stand.
He asked a set of clearly rehearsed questions, guiding her through clearly rehearsed answers.
She missed her daughter. She’d made a mistake letting their family situation escalate.
She hadn’t understood at the time that Madison’s choice to “leave for a visit” with her father’s people in Bozeman was Madison saying she was unhappy.
That made Hank snort. Madison hadn’t left for any visit. She’d run away from home. Snuck out of the house and bought a bus ticket from Sarasota, Florida to her grandparents’ house in Bozeman, Montana.
Loraine’s performance droned on. She wanted to fix things between her and Madison. She understood how hard it was to be a teenager these days. She’d been working—she said the word with careful emphasis that set Hank’s teeth on edge—to be the mother her daughter needed and deserved.
It was a good performance. Not her best, but not bad. He kept his face neutral and didn’t look at Madison, whom he heard breathing too fast and shallow beside him.
Reno stood up, looking totally at home in the courtroom. “Your Honor.” He gave the judge a pleasant nod.
He turned to Lorraine and said in a friendly voice, “Ms. Stanley. I have a few quick questions for you. Shouldn’t take but a minute.”
The tension around Lorraine’s eyes and mouth eased slightly.
Reno began. “I assume you’ve communicated with Madison since she left home. Is that correct, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“By phone or by text?”
“Text. She won’t answer my calls.”
“When was the most recent communication you had with your daughter?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks. Help me out, ma’am—is that two weeks? Four? Six?”
“Four, I think. Maybe.”
Reno opened the first of the three folders and produced three stapled packets. He laid one in front of Lorraine’s lawyer, another in front of the judge, and handed the third to Lorraine.
“Ms. Stanley, I would like to show you Petitioner’s Exhibit A. Phone records, for your cell phone from last November 1st through May 31st of this year.”
Her lawyer shot up out of his chair and started to object, but Reno cut him off, saying smoothly, “I obtained a warrant for these records from a judge in Apple Pie Creek, Your Honor.” He reached into the folder for another piece of paper and started to hold it out.
“I believe you.” the judge replied. To Lorraine’s lawyer, she said dryly, “Overruled.”
Lorraine made a show of going through the stapled sheets of paper as she visibly and frantically scrambled to think up a good excuse for the question she knew was coming next.
Reno said pleasantly, “Take your time, ma’am.”
Lorraine stalled until the judge said, “Let’s move this along, Counselor.”
Reno said, “Ms. Stanley, could you walk me through your conversation with your daughter on November 17th?”
Lorraine frowned. “I don’t remember that specific day . . .”
He supplied, “That was the day Madison told you she wanted to go live with her family in Bozeman. How did you respond? Did you tell her she could go?”
“We had a fight. I told her she wasn’t allowed to go.”
“What happened November 29th through December 2nd, ma’am?”
Lorraine didn’t answer.
Reno looked at the judge, “Ms. Stanley doesn’t seem to recall that Madison left Sarasota, Florida by bus on November 29th and arrived in Bozeman, Montana on December 2nd.
The trip took three-and-a-half days, including four bus transfers and an overnight layover in a bus station in Jackson, Mississippi by herself. She was thirteen years old.”
The judge’s eyebrows drew together in a frown at that.
He turned back to Lorraine. “How many times did you text or call your daughter during that four-day period, Ms. Stanley?”
“I—” A long pause from Lorraine. “I don’t recall.”
Hank hadn’t allowed himself to picture what that bus ride had been like for his thirteen-year-old daughter.
Not since Lorraine’s parents called him from Bozeman to let him know Madi had just shown up on their porch unannounced, asking if they knew where her father was and if they could help her get to him.
How bad had the situation with Lorraine gotten for his responsible, mature daughter to do something as drastic as run away? How scared must she have been on that long trip alone?
Guilt seared through him. He should’ve been keeping a closer eye on his ex-wife.
Seen her slipping back into her old ways and found a way to get Madi from her.
He shouldn’t have been traveling the rodeo circuit, licking his own wounds.
He should’ve been looking out for Madison. Protecting her from wounds of her own.
He had to force himself not to look across the courtroom at Lorraine or else he might just give her a piece of his mind right here, right now, for driving their daughter to such desperate measures.
Reno was speaking again, and Hank tuned back in to the proceedings.
“Let me help you recall, ma’am. The phone records show no contact between you and your daughter from November 29th through December 2nd.
In fact, your first text or phone call to your daughter after she ran away wasn’t until February 20th. ”
The judge’s eyebrows sailed up at that revelation.
Reno continued, “The only conversation you had regarding Madison at all was on December 2nd, when her grandparents, your parents, called to inform you that Madison was with them and unharmed. Did you speak to Madison during that call?”
“I—” She opened her mouth angrily, snapped it shut, and said merely, “No.”
“Did you ask to speak with her? Offer to speak with her? Give your parents any message for her?”