Nina steers me to a bench in the corridor the way you'd guide someone away from a ledge—firm hand, steady pace, no sudden moves. The wood is cold through my skirt, and somewhere down the hall a water fountain drips in a rhythm that sounds like counting.
"The evidence was manufactured. The witnesses were purchased." Nina sets her briefcase between her feet. "A good investigator can prove both—paper trails, payment records, backgrounds that won't survive scrutiny."
"How long?" My voice doesn't sound like mine. It sounds like someone flattened it with an iron.
"Weeks—possibly months, because Jake's team will obstruct at every turn." She pulls a card from her jacket and slides it across the bench. "I have an investigator I trust, ex-federal, very thorough."
"Months." The word tastes like swallowing a stone. "My daughter is supposed to live with that man for months while your investigator is being thorough?"
"We file an appeal immediately and request an expedited review." Nina doesn't flinch—she's heard worse from people in worse shape, and my cracking voice doesn't affect her.
"In the meantime, take the drug screening today—walk into any certified lab, pee in a cup, get the results notarized." She straightens her jacket. "A clean screening is ammunition."
"It's not a screening I need, Nina—it's my kid back." My thumbnail digs into the bench until the wood bites.
Her phone vibrates against the briefcase. "I have to take this—another client, another emergency. I'll call you tonight with next steps, a timeline, everything."
She squeezes my shoulder once—efficient, not tender—and walks toward the elevator with the phone already at her ear. Her heels click a countdown down the corridor until the doors swallow her and the sound stops.
Mom hasn't moved since the ruling. She reaches over and takes my hand the way she used to when I was small and the dentist's waiting room was too bright—no words, just her fingers lacing through mine, holding on.
We sit while the corridor empties. Lawyers with rolling briefcases, a woman crying into a phone, a man straightening his tie in the reflection of the fire extinguisher case. Other people's worst days, shuffling past in dress shoes.
Footsteps—measured, deliberate, the cadence of a man who wants to be noticed arriving. Jake stops in front of our bench, one attorney flanking him, and crouches to my eye level.
The crouch is the worst part. Knees apart, forearms on his thighs, chin tilted up. The posture of a man comforting a child, which is exactly the performance he's selling.
"I didn't want it to go this way, Annie." His voice is soft, carrying just enough regret to fill the hallway. "If you'd come home when I asked, none of this would have been necessary."
His attorney shifts behind him—audience of one, positioned to witness Jake's magnanimity. Every word pitched for the record.
Then Jake drops his volume below the attorney's hearing, and the mask thins to something only I can see. "Sarah asked about you this morning. I told her Mommy was busy."
His mouth curves—not a smile, something adjacent. "Kids adjust, Annie. They adjust to whatever's in front of them."
My stomach folds in on itself. Sarah, sitting at that kitchen island, asking where I am in the careful voice she uses when she's testing whether a question will make someone angry.
"You can still fix this." His eyes hold mine, and the tenderness in them is so convincing I almost forget it's engineered. "Come home. Sarah gets both parents, you get your life back."
My mouth opens, but I don't get the chance. Mom is on her feet so fast the bench scrapes against marble. Five foot three of Lena Murphy stepping directly into Jake's sightline, blocking me with her body and thirty years of retail-hardened fury.
"Don't speak to my daughter." Her voice is low, vibrating through her teeth, and Jake's head tilts back because he wasn't expecting the furniture to move.
"Lena—" His tone shifts to the one he'd use for a confused waitress—warm, corrective, faintly amused.
"I sat in that courtroom." Mom's knuckles have gone the color of bone. "I watched you parade people to that stand to call my daughter an addict. People you bought, Jake—the woman's blouse still had the tags on."
Jake's mouth parts—a fraction of a second, involuntary—and his attorney's hand lands on his arm. Mom doesn't stop.
"I don't have your lawyers, and I don't have your money." She takes one step forward, and Jake actually leans back on his heels. "But I know what you are. I knew it when my Sunday calls stopped and I knew it when my daughter showed up with a handprint on her face."
"If you come near her again—" Mom's breath shudders once through her nose. "Every person in your life will know exactly what kind of man is underneath that suit."
Jake stares at my mother the way you'd examine something unexpected on the bottom of your shoe—not threatened, recalibrating. She was always background noise to him: my quaint little mother with her crochet blankets, harmless and irrelevant.
His attorney's grip tightens. Jake straightens slowly, brushing invisible lint from his sleeve.
"I hope you enjoy the pullout couch, Lena." He adjusts his cuffs without looking at her. "It's all you'll have when this is over."
He walks away, attorney in tow, and neither of them looks back. Mom stands in the center of the corridor with her fists still clenched, her whole body trembling from the elbows down.
I take her arm. She grips it hard enough to bruise, breathing through her nose in sharp pulls, jaw muscles jumping beneath her skin. We walk toward the parking garage without speaking.
The drive home is twenty minutes of silence and Mom's hands shaking on the steering wheel. She grips it at ten and two with a ferocity that suggests the wheel is a stand-in for Jake's throat, and I don't interrupt.
The apartment door opens to absence. The pullout couch is folded and empty, the dent where Sarah slept smoothed flat by physics. Her crayons are scattered across the kitchen table—a half-finished Sparkle Inferno, the red one worn to a nub.
Mom picks up the red crayon and holds it between her thumb and finger, then sets it down carefully, exactly where Sarah left it. Neither of us touches the drawing.
My phone lights up on the counter. Court notification—supervised visitation schedule. I open it with fingers that take two attempts to find the right icon.
First available slot: Thursday, 3 PM. Three days from now, I will sit in a beige room under fluorescent lights and hold my daughter for two hours while a stranger with a clipboard watches.
My four-year-old, who draws dragon-cats and calls this creaky couch home, has been converted into an appointment. I set the phone down and look at the crayons on the table—seven of them, scattered across the outline of a dragon-cat whose fire is still unfinished.
The really orange one—the one Sarah needed to finish Sparkle Inferno's fire—is still missing.