Until that moment.
The petitioner further contends that the respondent's work schedule creates an unstable environment for the minor child...
The petitioner notes that the minor child's grades have declined significantly since placement with the respondent, and that school officials have documented behavioral concerns, including social withdrawal and difficulty forming peer relationships...
The petitioner respectfully requests that custody be transferred to the minor child's stepfather, who can provide a stable two-parent household...
Two-parent household. There it was again. Todd and whatever woman he'd manipulated to marry him this time, presenting themselves as the stable option. The normal option.
I locked my phone. Pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
He wasn't getting her back. I didn't care what I had to do, what I had to sacrifice, what impossible solution I had to find. Todd Harris would not get his hands on my sister again.
Not while I was breathing.
The apartment was quiet when I got home.
I'd practiced my face in the rearview mirror for ten minutes before going inside. Relaxing my jaw, smoothing the furrow between my brows, arranging my features into something that looked like calm. Mia could read me too well. She'd learned the same survival skills I had, spent the same years studying adult faces for signs of danger. If I walked in looking worried, she'd know. And she didn’t need my fear added to everything else she carried.
"Hey, bug."
Mia was at the kitchen table, homework spread in front of her like a barricade. She didn't look up. "Hey."
I dropped my bag by the door, toed off my boots, moved through the routine of coming home. The apartment was small. Two bedrooms barely big enough for beds, a kitchen that doubled as a living room, a bathroom with a shower that onlyran hot for seven minutes. But it was our home. Clean and safe and the rent paid on time, even if the neighborhood wasn't great and the walls were thin enough to hear the neighbors fighting at 2 AM.
"How was school?"
"Fine."
"Learn anything good?"
"No."
I bit back a sigh. This was how Mia communicated most days. Single syllables, eyes down, walls up. I recognized the strategy. I'd invented it.
"I'm making spaghetti for dinner. Your favorite."
Something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile, but close. "With the good sauce?"
"Is there any other kind?"
I moved into the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans, filling the silence with the clatter of cooking. The sauce was from a jar. I didn't have time to make it from scratch. But I'd learned which brand Mia liked best, learned to add extra garlic and a pinch of sugar the way our mother used to before everything went bad.
Our mother. I tried not to think about her too often. It was easier to be angry than sad, easier to focus on everything she'd done wrong than to remember the woman she'd been before the pills and the men and the slow erosion of everything good. But sometimes, in moments like this, I caught myself doing something she used to do. A particular way of stirring the sauce, a hummed melody I didn't consciously remember learning. And the grief hit me like a punch to the chest.
She'd loved us. In her way, in her broken and insufficient way, she'd loved us. It just hadn't been enough.
"Riley?"
I looked up. Mia had abandoned her homework and was watching me with those dark eyes that saw too much.
"Yeah, bug?"
"Is everything okay?"
The lie came easily. Smoothly. The way lies always did when you'd been practicing them your whole life.
"Everything's fine." The words tasted like ash, but I’d gotten good at swallowing ash. I smiled, letting it reach my eyes, letting it look real. "Just tired. Long shift."
