Chapter 178
Chapter 177: Plans to Meet
Sedona’s POV
The custody case was moving.
Claim
Not quickly-that was the nature of the process, no it didn’t move that way. Janet had told me when I’d asked at the last meeting. The jurisdictional question was still being contested. Logan’s lawyers had filed a response refusing all terms and insisting on the original arrangement being maintained that i had given up custody and they wanted me to honour it and back down from this fight. My attorney had expected
that.
“He’s going to fight this,” she’d said, at the meeting, in the straightforward way I’d come to appreciate. “You should be prepared for it to take time. Possibly a year. Possibly longer p>
“I know,” I said.
“The stalking complaint helps,” she said. “The documentation of ongoing contact with Nick helps. The medical records are strong.” She paused. “What won’t help is anything that looks like-” She chose the word carefully. “Instability. New relationships, significant life changes during the proceedings. Courts look at the full picture of what a parent can offer p>
I’d thought about Dante when she’d said that.
Not that it was going anywhere but what we were building, the walls, the moments together, it wasn’t nothing but it wasn’t stable. Would the court see this as a reason to let Nick being with his fatherm or would it work in my favour. I had no idea bout that.
The attorney’s comment had gone into the filing place, the one I came back to when there was space to think about it, but not yet the right time.
Not yet. When I had more to say, I’d say it.
す
Nick called on a Thursday evening.
I was in the sitting room with a book I wasn’t really reading when the phone rang, his name on the screen- the Chicago landline, which meant Mrs. Peterson had facilitated it the way she’d been facilitating the calls since the first one. I picked up on the second ring.
“Mom?” His voice, the immediately recognizable quality of it, the Nick-ness.
“Hey,” I said. “How was school p>
“Fine,” he said, which was his standard opening before the actual content arrived. “Marcus got in trouble for talking during the math test but he says it wasn’t talking it was breathing loudly and Ms. Harrington is being unreasonable p>
“What do you think?” I asked.
13
Plans To Meer.
Claim
“Hthink he was definitely talking,” Nick said. “But probably not on purpose. He just thinks out loud a lot and didn’t seem to realize it on time p>
“That’s a specific distinction, I said.
“It is different,” he said, with conviction. “Thinking out loud and talking are not the same thing p>
“Fair,” I said.
We talked about the math test and the soccer practice and something that had happened in the lunch line that Nick had opinions about. This was how our calls went-the accumulation of small things, the texture of his days arriving through the phone across the distance between us.
I was building toward something with these calls. Not rushing, not pushing the pace. Just showing up, consistently, every time he called, and letting the calls be what they were.
“Aunt Catherine is going back to play,” Nick said, at some point in the middle of the call.
I kept my voice level. “Is she p>
“Yep. She showed me on her phone-the tournament schedule. Dad said he’d take me to watch.” A pause. “He said I could go to one of the matches. The ones near Chicago so we don’t have to go too far.” Another pause, the quality that meant he was about to say something he’d been working up to. “Could you come p>
I held the phone.
He wanted me to come to a Catherine Voss tennis match. He wanted to sit in a stadium with his mother and his father and watch Catherine play, and in his six-year-old picture of this, that was possible because he didn’t yet understand the geometry of it.
“I want to see you,” he said. “You said we’d meet in person. And if you came to the match then I’d see you and I’d also get to see Catherine play p>
“I know, baby,” I said. “I’m working on the seeing you part. I’m actively working on it.” I paused. “The match might be complicated for other reasons. But the seeing you part-that I’m going to make happen p>
“When?” he asked.
He asked it with the specific directness of a child who’d learned that when was a question that got postponed if you let it be vague.
“I don’t know the exact date yet,” I said. “There are some things I’m sorting out with my lawyers-“I stopped, because lawyers was a word I didn’t want to open up in this conversation.
“About what?” he said.
“Adult stuff,” I said. “Nothing for you to worry about p>
“You always say adult stuff when you don’t want to explain,” he said.
“You always say that when you want me to explain,” I said.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. “It’s true though p>
“It is true,” I agreed. “And it’s still adult stuff. But Nick-I promise you that I’m working toward seeing you.
Plans To Meet
That’s real. It’s not just something I’m saying p>
Clours
“Okay,” he said. The trusting version, the one that took the promise at face value. He’d been doing that across our calls-taking me at face value, which was something I was holding carefully, understanding what it cost him to do and what it meant that he was doing it.
“Catherine’s match is in February, he said. “She said they do a Chicago invitational thing. Dad gets a box or something p>
“That sounds exciting,” I said, which was what said when needed to be neutral.
“You could come and sit in a different part,” he said, with the logic of a six-year-old solving a problem. “You wouldn’t have to sit with Dad. You could just be there and I could come find you after p>
Comments
LUCK DRAW >
Vote
535
Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.