23. Alison #5
The judge looks down for a moment. Then back at me. “The Harringtons make everything easier?”
“Yes.”
“Safer?”
“Yes.”
“Possible?”
I shake my head. “No. They don’t make Tobias possible.” My voice steadies. “They make our life better. Safer. They give us a home full of people who love us.”
I look back at Walter and Cassandra. “But they aren’t why I’m asking for my brother.”
“Why are you?”
“Because he’s mine.” I shake my head at once. “Not the way my father means it.” My chest hurts. “He’s my brother. And apparently Mom knew a long time ago what I didn’t.”
“What was that?”
“That I was already raising him.”
The judge is quiet. Then he nods. “You may sit.”
I do. My legs barely work.
He spends several minutes going back through everything. Nobody speaks. Finally he sets Mom’s will on top of the stack. “This court’s obligation is the best interest of Tobias O’Toole.”
I grip Arthur’s hand.
“The evidence establishes that Alison O’Toole has occupied a substantial and continuous caregiving role throughout Tobias’s life. That finding rests on more than one document or one witness. It is supported by medical providers. Educators. Adults who have known both children since birth.”
My heart pounds.
“It is supported by an adult who knew them only briefly and independently observed the same thing. By Jane O’Toole’s repeated designation of Alison across Tobias’s records.
And by a testamentary document executed in 2019, years before this dispute, in which Jane sought to keep her children together and place Tobias in Alison’s care upon her reaching adulthood. ”
I can’t breathe.
“The court has also considered Roman O’Toole’s objection.
Mr. O’Toole is incarcerated, awaiting prosecution for the death of Tobias’s mother, alongside serious federal proceedings.
The court has before it substantial evidence of violence and coercive control in the O’Toole household.
Whatever the ultimate disposition of the criminal matters, I find no basis on which preserving Mr. O’Toole’s ability to direct Tobias’s placement serves this child’s best interests. ”
My lungs unlock.
“Alison O’Toole is young. She will need help.” I nod through my tears. “But needing help does not make her unsuitable.” Cassandra sobs. “And this court will not treat a strong support system as evidence against the person receiving it.”
Oh God.
He looks down. “Full legal and physical custody of Tobias O’Toole is awarded to Alison O’Toole.”
I stop. Everything stops. Arthur’s hand tightens around mine.
“Roman O’Toole will have no custodial authority and no authority to direct Tobias’s residence or remove him from Alison’s care. Any contact will remain prohibited absent further order of this court.”
The judge signs something. The pen scratches across paper. That’s the sound that does it — not the ruling, not my name. The pen. Because it’s real. It’s on paper. Roman can’t take him. Victor can’t take me and leave him behind. Nobody gets to decide my brother belongs somewhere else.
The judge sets the pen down. “Court is adjourned.”
I don’t move. Arthur does. He turns to me, his eyes wet. “Ally.” I look at him. He smiles. “You got him.”
My face crumples. “I got him?”
“You got him.”
A sob tears out of me. I turn, and Ryan is already there. He stops himself before he crashes into me and catches my face instead, careful, because everyone is always so careful with me now.
“You got him.” He’s crying. Actually crying.
“I got him.”
“You fucking got him.” I laugh through my tears. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, my mouth. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Walter reaches us next. I throw my arms around him. “Mom picked you.” That breaks him. His arms close around me. “You didn’t know.”
“No.” His voice cracks. “God, Ally. If I’d known… I would’ve taken you both. From the second she asked.”
Cassandra wraps around us, crying too hard to speak. “She trusted us,” she manages. “All those times… she was sending him somewhere safe.”
“And he was,” I whisper.
Cassandra pulls me against her. “He always will be.”
Arthur is quietly gathering his papers. I look at him. “No.”
He freezes. Darla laughs. “You’re coming over here.”
“I have done my job.”
“You got me my brother.”
“You got your brother.” That stops me. He looks at me. “I gave the judge evidence.” His voice softens. “You raised Tobias.”
My eyes fill again. Fuck him. I reach for him anyway, and he sighs like it’s a terrible burden and lets me, his arms closing around me a second later. “You did good, kid.”
“Thank you.”
When I let him go, Ryan is waiting. He always is. His hands settle carefully at my waist. I look down at the signed order in my hands. Alison O’Toole. Tobias O’Toole. My mother’s children. Still together. Just like she asked.
Ryan tips my chin up. His eyes are red, his smile wrecked. “You got him.”
Not we. Not his parents. Not Arthur. Me. I press the order to my chest.
“I got him.” And this time when I cry, it isn’t because something was taken from me. It’s because, for once, they couldn’t take him.
The front door isn’t even shut behind us before I hear screaming. “GET HER!”
I freeze on the porch.
Ryan nearly walks into my back. “What the fuck?”
Behind him, Walter stops halfway up the steps. Cassandra looks toward the house. A second scream comes from inside — this one’s Penny.
“XANDER, I SWEAR TO GOD—“
“YOU CAN’T ESCAPE THE FROG KING!”
Walter sighs. “I don’t even want to know.”
The front door flies open and Penny comes sprinting through it — actually sprinting, hair half out of whatever she did with it this morning, laughing so hard she can barely breathe.
“Help me!”
She makes it three feet before Xander barrels out after her with Tobias on his back.
I just stare. Tobias is wearing a green cardboard crown, a green blanket knotted around his shoulders like a cape, and brandishing a cardboard wand colored aggressively green. And Xander—
“Oh my God.” Ryan starts laughing beside me.
Cassandra covers her mouth, but I hear hers too. Xander has green marker all over his face. Not a little. His cheeks are green. His nose is green. There are lines across his forehead.
“I’m a frog,” he informs us as he thunders past. Like that explains anything.
Walter nods. “Of course you are.”
Tobias spots Penny. “There!”
“I see her, Your Majesty!”
“GET HER!”
Penny shrieks and tries to change direction. Xander lunges. All three of them go down in the grass.
“NO!”
“TURN HER INTO A FROG!”
“I’M YOUR GIRLFRIEND!”
“Not anymore.” Xander uncaps the green marker. “Now you’re amphibious.”
Penny screams. Tobias loses his entire mind, laughing so hard he tips sideways off Xander’s back, crown sliding over one eye, while Xander grabs Penny’s wrist and draws something green across the back of her hand.
“Traitor!”
“Ribbit.”
“Xander!” He kisses her — right in the middle of her yelling at him — then draws another green line on her cheek. Tobias shrieks.
“She’s a frog!”
“She is!” Xander yells.
“I hate you,” Penny says, laughing.
“Language,” Xander tells her, solemn.
Ryan snorts. Walter shakes his head. Cassandra is still laughing.
And for one strange second, standing there with a court order in my hand and my mother’s will still burning behind my eyes, I just watch them.
Tobias laughing. Really laughing. Not the careful version we’ve been getting for three weeks.
Not the one that vanishes the second he remembers Mom.
A six-year-old in a cardboard crown chasing Penny across the grass while Xander Anderson cheerfully lets himself be colored green.
Penny finally notices us. Her eyes widen. “Oh.”
Xander looks over his shoulder. Tobias follows his gaze. And his whole face changes when he sees me.
“ALLY!”
He scrambles up. The crown falls off. He doesn’t even notice. He runs. I barely have time to brace before he hits me, and Ryan’s hand catches my elbow automatically as I bend and wrap my arms around my brother. Cassandra reaches toward us, then stops when she sees Ryan already has me.
“Hey, little frog.”
“I’m not a frog.” He pulls back, deeply offended. “I’m the Frog King.”
“Obviously. My mistake.”
“I turned Xander into one.”
“I can see that.”
Xander gets to his feet — green-faced, grass-stained, completely unbothered.
“We visited Mom and Adeena this morning,” Penny says quietly as she reaches us.
My smile softens. Tobias had wanted to go, and Xander offered to take him when I told them we had court.
“Did you bring Mom something?” I ask.
Tobias nods. “A flower. And I told her Xander’s mom is there too.”
My throat tightens. Xander looks away. Penny reaches for his hand.
“I told your mom she’d better keep an eye on mine,” Xander says. I look at him. He shrugs. “Someone has to.”
My eyes burn. “Thank you.”
Tobias looks between all of us, then down at the papers still clutched in my hand. “What happened?”
I kneel, carefully. Ryan stays beside me but doesn’t speak. Neither do Walter and Cassandra. Nobody explains for me. Nobody makes this theirs. This is mine and Tobias’s.
I take my brother’s hands. “Remember how I told you the judge was deciding where you get to live?” His smile disappears.
He nods. “And remember I promised I’d do everything I could to make sure nobody took you away from me?
” Another nod. His fingers tighten around mine. I smile. “You get to stay with me.”
He stares at me. “Here?”
“Here.”
“With you?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
My heart cracks. “Forever, Toby.”
His eyes get huge. “Forever forever?”
“Forever forever.”
Behind him, Cassandra makes a broken sound. Tobias launches himself at me and I laugh as I catch him, Ryan’s hand going to my back to steady us both.
Tobias squeezes my neck. “Nobody can make me go?”
“Nobody can make you go.”
Over his shoulder, I watch Walter pull Cassandra against him. They’re both crying. I don’t think any of us have anything left today but tears.
Tobias pulls back suddenly. “But when the baby comes?”
I frown. “What about when the baby comes?”
“Do I still stay with you?”