Chapter 30
Glenna had spent so long waiting for someone in an office to tell her she had failed that she wasn’t prepared for the woman sitting across the conference table to close the file in front of her and tell her there was nothing left to fight.
For several seconds, she simply stared at the attorney, waiting for whatever qualification came next because there was always something else.
Another hearing. Another assessment. Another requirement she couldn’t meet without money she didn’t have, a home she couldn’t afford or a job that paid enough to satisfy people who seemed incapable of understanding that working more hours meant spending fewer hours with the child they were insisting she prove she could parent.
Even the smallest pieces of progress had always arrived with conditions attached, until she’d stopped allowing herself to hear good news without immediately searching for the part that was going to hurt.
Beside her, Tyrone remained silent. He’d barely said anything since they sat down, which told her he understood this wasn’t something she needed him to fight for her or explain on her behalf.
His forearm rested on the table close enough that she could reach him if she wanted to, but he hadn’t taken her hand, hadn’t wrapped an arm around her shoulders or done any of the other things he usually did when he sensed she was about three seconds away from coming apart.
He was simply there, solid and warm beside her, while she tried to make the words she’d heard fit inside a brain that had been trained by experience not to trust them.
“I’m sorry.” Glenna looked from the closed file to the attorney. “Can you say that again?”
The woman’s expression softened. “The dependency petition has been dismissed. The restraining order has been vacated, there are no outstanding reunification conditions and the state no longer has legal custody or supervision over Kelsey.”
Glenna heard every word. She even understood them individually, but her mind refused to put them together into something she could trust. “So there isn’t another hearing?”
“No.”
“No home inspection when we get back?”
“No.”
“What about the parenting assessment they said I still needed?”
“It’s no longer required.”
“And the placement order?”
“Terminated.”
Glenna stared at her until the attorney apparently understood what she was actually asking beneath all the questions, because she leaned forward slightly and spoke with a deliberate clarity that finally punched through every layer of fear Glenna had built around herself.
“Kelsey is legally back in your sole custody, Ms. Harper. Completely.”
Her fingers went numb as she looked down at the certified copy sitting in front of her, at her own name printed beside Kelsey’s and the dense blocks of legal language beneath them, and something inside her chest seemed to give way so suddenly she couldn’t tell whether she was about to laugh or throw up.
She had imagined this moment so many times during the months after Kelsey was taken from her, usually while lying awake in whatever room she could afford and trying to work out how many extra shifts it would take to save enough for the next thing the court demanded.
In those fantasies, there had always been a judge.
She had always been standing in a courtroom while somebody announced she had finally done enough, worked enough, earned enough, proved enough, and then Kelsey had come running toward her because apparently even her fantasies had required her to pass one final fucking test before she was allowed to have her child back.
Instead, she was sitting in a conference room with Tyrone beside her and discovering the test itself had been corrupted.
Her gaze moved to him before she could stop it.
He was already watching her, and the expression in his eyes almost finished what the attorney had started because there was no triumph there, no hint that Four X’s had won something for her or that he expected gratitude for whatever legal army Gunnar had unleashed after Remi and Jorja proved exactly how Kelsey had been funneled through the Oregon system.
There was only the quiet understanding of a man who knew what those papers meant to her.
Glenna swallowed. “Nobody can come for her?”
“No,” the attorney answered. “Not under the dependency action that removed her from your custody. That case is finished.”
Finished.
The word went through her slowly, finding places inside her that had forgotten what it felt like not to be afraid.
She reached for the papers, then stopped because her hand was shaking badly enough that she was scared she might tear them, and that was apparently the point where Tyrone decided she’d had enough room because his hand turned palm-up on the table beside hers.
Glenna slid her fingers into his hand and he closed them carefully inside his.
“What happens to Vickers?” she asked, because Lauren Vickers had a lot to answer for, and she needed to know the woman who had manually redirected Kelsey into the placement that fed her toward White Shadow wasn’t going to go back to work on Monday morning and do it to another child.
“The criminal investigation is separate, but the information recovered in Italy has triggered a wider review of every case she touched, along with WestBridge and the individuals connected to it. Federal authorities are involved because Kelsey was moved across international borders, and Oregon is conducting its own investigation into the placement process.”
“Will I have to testify?”
“Possibly, but that won’t happen today and it won’t change Kelsey’s custody status. Your attorneys will deal with it if and when it becomes necessary.”
My attorneys? The phrase still sounded fucking ridiculous.
A few months ago, Glenna had been counting tips at the end of a double shift and calculating which bill she could let slide long enough to pay another.
Now she apparently had attorneys plural, most of whom she had never met because Gunnar McKinley seemed to consider legal representation another form of tactical support and had deployed it accordingly.
She felt the old instinct rise immediately, the need to ask what all of this was costing and how the hell she was supposed to repay people who had spent more helping her in the last few weeks than she could probably earn in years. She almost opened her mouth… but then she didn’t.
Tyrone’s thumb moved once across her knuckles, and Glenna looked at the paperwork again before taking a breath that seemed to reach the bottom of her lungs for the first time in years. “Okay.”
The attorney smiled. “Okay.”
By the time they stepped outside twenty minutes later, Glenna had the certified order tucked into a folder beneath her arm and no fucking idea what she was supposed to do with herself.
Portland continued around them as though nothing had happened.
Cars moved through the intersection, somebody leaned on a horn, a man in a suit hurried past while arguing into his phone and a woman on the opposite sidewalk was attempting to convince a toddler that lying face-down beside a parking meter wasn’t a viable life choice.
Glenna stood in the middle of all of it and thought about the number of times she had walked these streets carrying a fear so constant she’d eventually stopped recognizing it as fear at all.
Tyrone came to stand beside her without touching her. “You good?”
She looked at him. “I have absolutely no fucking idea.”
“Fair.”
“I keep thinking I’ve forgotten something.”
“Like what?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know.” She glanced down at the folder. “There should be something else I have to do.”
“There isn’t.”
“I know.” Except knowing and believing were apparently two different things, and she suspected it might take longer than twenty minutes for her nervous system to catch up with the paperwork.
Tyrone watched her for another moment before reaching for the folder. “Give me that before you crush it.”
She looked down and discovered she had curled the edge beneath her fingers. “Crap.”
“Exactly.”
He took it from her with the sort of care he usually reserved for weapons and tucked it beneath his arm before holding out his other hand. Glenna took it without thinking, and they started toward the truck.
“Where are we going?”
“To your storage unit.”
She groaned. “Can’t we celebrate first?”
“We can celebrate by throwing away all the shit you’ve been paying to store.”
“That sounds suspiciously like work.”
“You’re the one who said you wanted it handled while we were here.”
“I was emotional.”
“You’re always emotional.”
Glenna stopped walking, and Tyrone made it two more steps before her grip on his hand stopped him. He looked back, took one look at her face, and grinned. “You gonna hit me in front of all these witnesses?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Remember, you’ve got a custody order to protect now.”
The laugh burst out before she could stop it, loud enough that a couple passing them glanced over, and something about hearing herself laugh while Tyrone stood there looking unbearably pleased with himself made everything better in her world.
She stepped into him, wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his chest. His arms came around her immediately.
“She’s mine,” she whispered.
Tyrone’s cheek settled against the top of her head. “Yeah, Glens.”
“They can’t take her away again.”
“No.”
That was all she needed from him. No speech, or reminders of everything they had done to get here.
No attempt to convince her the past hadn’t happened or that she should somehow be grateful for what it had taught her.
He simply held her on a Portland sidewalk until she was ready to let go, then kissed the top of her head and opened the truck door for her like the smartass hadn’t spent the last five minutes deliberately trying to get himself punched.