Chapter 250
Chapter 245. On The Record.
CAMERON
The motion died slowly, which was its own kind of satisfying to watch.
Adaeze had built the countering documentation exactly as promised. Dr. Mitchell’s full file, the paediatric records from the fever, three years of pharmacy receipts, and appointment logs all carrying Sedona’s name, all time-stamped, all telling a story that required no interpretation. She walked the judge through it methodically, without flourish, the way she walked through everything. By the time she finished, the medical neglect claim had stopped existing as a credible argument and started existing as evidence against the people who’d made it.
Logan’s lawyer knew this. I watched him know it, the specific shift in his posture, the recalibration of a man whose primary argument had just been dismantled in real time and who needed something else, fast, before the morning ended.
He pivoted.
“Your Honour, I’d like to raise an additional concern regarding the child’s developmental environment,” he
said.
I sat very still in the gallery.
“The petitioner’s brother, Cameron Preston, is in a relationship with a man named Lucian Adeyemi. The minor child has had significant unsupervised exposure to this household during the petitioner’s visitation periods, including overnight stays in a residence where this relationship is openly conducted in front of him.” He said it carefully. Lawyerly. Never using a word that would draw an immediate objection, dressing the entire thing instead in language built to sound clinical, neutral, and concerned only with the child’s well-being. “We would ask the court to consider whether this represents a values-consistency issue relevant to the custody determination, whether the child’s developmental environment in the Preston household aligns with the stability the court should be weighing p>
The politeness of it was the worst part.
す
He hadn’t said anything that could be quoted back as a slur. He hadn’t raised his voice or used language that would let Adaeze stand immediately on procedural grounds and have it struck. He had wrapped the entire argument in the careful, sanitized vocabulary of family court, developmental environment, values consistency, the stability the court should be weighing, and in doing so had made it sound almost reasonable, almost clinical, the kind of thing a careful, concerned attorney might raise in good faith.
It was not in good faith…. the previous two hours knew exactly what it was.
A man who had lost his strongest argument. Reaching for whatever was left. It didn’t matter who it hurt.
I stayed calm and listened. I was glad Lucian wasn’t in the room. I held both of those things at once, sitting there. Gladness and fury. Taking up the same space without cancelling each other out.
Glad, because Lucian was at the Lincoln Park house with Lake, untouched by this specific moment, spared the experience of sitting in a wood-panelled courtroom and listening to a stranger argue, in careful legal
13
On The Report
language, that his existence constituted a risk to a child he loved.
Clam
Furious, for the same reason. Because it meant he didn’t get to see what happened next. It meant the defence of him, and there was going to be a defence; I had already decided that in the half-second after the lawyer finished speaking, it would happen without him in the room to witness it.
I thought, briefly and with great clarity, about standing up.
I didn’t. This wasn’t my moment to take. I sat in the gallery with my hands flat on my knees, the same posture my father had used my entire childhood, and I let Adaeze do what she’d been doing all morning, which was take apart bad arguments with precision instead of heat.
Adaeze rose.
“Your Honour,” she said, “opposing counsel is asking this court to consider the sexual orientation of the petitioner’s brother as relevant to a custody determination regarding the petitioner’s own child. I’d like the record to reflect exactly what was just argued, stripped of the euphemism it was delivered in p>
“Objection,” Logan’s lawyer said. “Mischaracterization p>
“I’m using the words you avoided,” Adaeze said, not raising her voice, not needing to. “Developmental environment’ and ‘values consistency’ are not neutral terms here, Your Honour. They are a euphemism for exactly the argument counsel is too careful to state directly: that exposure to a same-sex relationship within the extended family constitutes harm to this child.
This court has no legal basis to treat that exposure as a risk factor. It is not relevant to fitness, stability, or any standard this court is required to weigh.” A pause, precise and unhurried. “I’d also note that Cameron Preston is not a party to this custody matter. He is the petitioner’s brother. His relationship has no bearing whatsoever on Sedona Preston’s fitness as a parent, and counsel’s attempt to introduce it appears designed solely to prejudice the court rather than to address any legitimate concern p>
The judge was quiet for a moment, looking at something on the bench in front of her, notes, possibly, or simply the weight of the argument she’d just heard restated in its actual terms.
“Sustained,” she said. “The court will disregard the characterization entirely. Counsel is advised that future arguments of this nature will be viewed unfavourably by this court and may bear on credibility going forward p>
Logan’s lawyer sat down.
He didn’t look at Logan. I noted that the specific way a competent attorney distanced himself, even physically, from an argument that had just failed publicly and reflected badly on the judgment that had produced it in the first place.
I didn’t move for a moment after the ruling. I sat in the gallery with the specific stillness I’d carried since the moment the argument began, and I let myself feel, Something closer to a cold, settled anger that I knew, even sitting there, I was going to carry for a long time.
Sedona turned slightly in her seat. She scanned around and saw me across the room. Her expression carried the same thing mine probably did. The look people share after watching someone they love get used as a weapon, and watching that weapon fail.
I thought about calling Lucian the moment I left the building. What I would say. How I would say it.
23
On The Record
Whether to tell him everything or just the part where it failed.
Clam
+ decided, sitting there, that I would tell him everything. He deserved the whole shape of it. Not protected from the ugliness. Not handed a sanitized version meant to spare him.
He had earned, across months of Tuesdays and jollof chips and patient Saturdays with a four-year-old who’d needed time, the right to know exactly what had been said about him in a courtroom he hadn’t been allowed to enter.
I would tell him. But not here. Not yet. I sat in the gallery through the rest of the recess, watching Adaeze gather her documents with the same flat precision she brought to everything, watching Logan’s lawyer avoid looking at his client, watching my sister’s shoulders slowly settle back into something steadier than they’d been five minutes earlier.
The motion was failing comprehensively on every front it had attempted.
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.