Chapter Twelve
Sterling
THE HOTEL ROOM IS WRONG. The bed is too soft. The curtains don’t close all the way, and a strip of light from the parking lot falls across the carpet at an angle I can’t stop looking at.
She’s mine. I can’t pretend otherwise. I knew it the moment I saw her, approximately seventeen hours ago, when a four-year-old with my eyes appeared in a doorway holding a stuffed elephant and asked her mother who I was.
Her mother said I was leaving.
I left.
I haven’t slept though it’s after two a.m. The strip of light hasn’t moved because parking lot lights don’t move, and I’ve been staring at it long enough to understand it isn’t helping.
I can’t stop calculating the time and the math.
Sienna is four years and five months old.
She was born in July. Casey left in November, so roughly seven to eight weeks pregnant.
She drove away from the house in Myers Park with a bag on her shoulder and a pregnancy she never told me about, because I told her to get out instead of asking a single question.
I think about what the pregnancy must have been like.
Alone, in a city she moved to for reasons I don’t know.
I wonder if it was an easy delivery. My mind jumps to the first time Sienna got sick.
What that phone call sounded like, what the diagnosis felt like, and who held Casey in the waiting room. Whether anyone did.
I don’t know when Sienna got sick, but it’s probably been at least a couple of years, and maybe her whole life.
That means years of medications, clinic visits, blood draws with a stuffed elephant named Bart, and a central line scar that reveal so much of the story I was never part of because I kicked her out.
Four years of a life happening three hours from Charlotte while I ran the firm, straightened papers, jogged on the treadmill, and told myself the empty penthouse was discipline.
I think about Casey in a hospital with a sick child. I wonder if her lover was still part of the picture at all then? Did she have him to turn to for help with my child? Anger swells at the idea.
I think about insurance. Casey was on my plan when she left, along with her own coverage through her hospital job. She would have lost all insurance with the move, but she would have figured it out because she figures out things. She always did.
I think about Sienna learning to walk in an apartment I’ve never seen the inside of, if it’s the same one where they live now. I imagine her saying her first word to a woman who does everything alone because I told her to leave. I think about the missed birthdays, and my chest constricts.
She has auburn hair like her mother, but my eyes. There’s a scar above her collarbone. She held Bart by one ear, and she said hi. I’ve missed every word she’s ever learned.
I’ve addressed hostile boardrooms. I’ve dismissed senior partners mid-sentence. I’ve negotiated with regulators who wanted to shut down the fund. A four-year-old said hi on a porch in Asheville was what rendered me mute.
Casey came to the door in a T-shirt and pajama pants, no makeup, hair pulled back. Her face went through surprise, anger, and an emotion I couldn’t name, then door, and me standing on a welcome mat with a cat on it while a child asked who the man was.
Casey said I was leaving. She said it twice. The second time she said it, the girl was looking at me, and she had my eyes. My body instantly understood what my brain was still assembling. That’s my daughter. I have a daughter. She’s four years with a central line scar and doesn’t know my name.
I came back to this hotel room. I called Martin.
I told him to find me a family attorney in Charlotte by morning.
Now, I’m lying here in the dark, imagining all the things I’ve missed because Casey couldn’t maintain loyalty to our marriage.
I hate her for a moment with such vividness that I resolve to take my daughter and let Casey be the one who lives without her.
MY PHONE RINGS AT 6 a.m., and it’s Martin.
“I’m calling because you need to hear this before you do anything else today,” Martin says. He sounds grim, like he’s about to say something I won’t want to hear. “I spoke to a family attorney in Charlotte who handles this area. She gave me an honest assessment.”
“Tell me.”
“You have standing. The marital presumption makes you Sienna’s legal father without a paternity test, which gives you a right to petition. The court will hear you.” He pauses. “You won’t win custody.”
I remember my decision from last night to take Sienna from Casey and let her experience the agony of not being involved. “Tell me why.”
“Casey has been the sole stable parent since birth. She’s provided documented, excellent medical care for eighteen months.
She built a support network in Asheville with an employer, stable home, and pediatric team that will likely testify she’s been exemplary.
” He flips a page. “You’ve never met the child.
You’ve had no contact. Her nondisclosure is a factor, and a sympathetic judge might weigh it, but it isn’t enough to hand a stranger a sick four-year-old. ”
He’s already guessed why I wanted a family attorney then. I sit on the edge of the hotel bed, and the mattress gives too much under me. I want a solid surface, a wall that pushes back.
Four years. Casey hid my daughter from me for four years.
She made a decision about my child’s existence without telling me, without asking, and without giving me the chance to be wrong or right or anything at all.
She walked out of our house with my child inside her and never looked back.
The anger about that’s real. It’s justified.
It’s the thing that keeps making my jaw ache because I’ve been clenching it since yesterday morning.
She had her reasons. I said get out, and she got out, and now I’m sitting in a hotel room trying to figure out how to undo four years of a decision I made before she finished her sentence.
My blind anger and determination to punish her by taking Sienna starts to fade as reality intrudes, along with the realization that taking my sick daughter from her mother is the last thing that would help the little girl get better. “So what can I do?”
“You can file for emergency visitation and expedited paternity testing. You can seek temporary orders preventing relocation. You can demand supervised visitation while the case is pending. You can force a guardian ad litem evaluation.” Martin’s voice stays level.
He’s reciting tools, not endorsements. “You have enough to disrupt her life. That isn’t the same as having enough to take her child. ”
“I don’t want to take her child.” The sentence comes out spontaneously as the last of my righteous but blind anger fades.
I’m still angry that she cheated on me and took my child, but the idea of taking Sienna from Casey abruptly makes me physically sick.
Casey deserves to suffer, but Sienna doesn’t.
Taking Sienna from Casey isn’t feasible.
“Then tell me what you want,” Martin says.
What I want is simple. I want Casey not to disappear.
She did it once. She proved she could with one bag, one night, and four years of silence so complete that I didn’t know my daughter existed.
Casey Weaver can vanish. She’s done it before.
She could do it again inside a week, take Sienna to another city, another state, and I’d have no instrument to stop her.
“I want the petition drafted,” I say. “Everything. Emergency visitation, expedited paternity, temporary no-relocation order. Include a bid for full custody. Get it fully prepared and ready to file.”
“And then what?”
“Hold it. Don’t file. Don’t serve anything. Just have it ready.”
Martin takes a breath. “Sterling, if you’re not going to file it, why do you want it on my desk?”
“Because Casey has already demonstrated she can disappear. I’m not going to let her disappear again before the transplant.”
“You call that an anchor,” Martin says. “Casey will call it a leash, and I don’t think she’ll be wrong.”
“No, it’s leverage. She doesn’t really get the right to feel constrained after cheating on me and taking my child for four years.”
He sighs quietly, like he disagrees. “What about the records work? The background investigation?”
“Keep going. I want to know employment, addresses, and public records. I want to know where she’s, who she works for, where the clinic is, and I want to know which men she’s brought into my child’s life for the last four years in case therapy is needed.
” The idea of her bringing men around my daughter makes my hands clench into fists.
Most of it is purely protective on Sienna’s behalf, but part of it is more visceral and personal.
“Sterling.” Martin’s voice drops. “You’re building the frame of a custody case against a woman who has been raising your daughter alone for four years. You’re assembling it in secret. You’re not filing it. You’re not telling her about it. I need you to hear what that sounds like.”
“It sounds like preparation.”
“It sounds like fear of losing control and building a contingency.” He hesitates. “Think deeply about if you really want to use this leverage, as you call it, or if you want to build something more stable with the mother of your child.”
I stand up and walk to the window. The parking lot is nearly empty, wet from overnight rain, and the mountains beyond it are gray in the early light. Somewhere in this city, my daughter is waking up. Her mother is taking care of her. Neither of them is thinking about me.
“Draft the petition,” I say again, firmly. “Hold it. Don’t file.” I’ll use it if I have to. Casey doesn’t deserve consideration. This is all about Sienna.
His tone lacks any emotion, which tells me he disapproves. “When will you call Casey?”
“I’m calling her this morning. I’m going to ask her to come to Charlotte.”
“Are you going to tell her about the petition?”