“The judge’s clerk will likely give us a visitation schedule with his order. I will push for you to be allowed a few hours, unsupervised, with JT every day until the next hearing. That will give you time to convince JT to speak favorably of you when he talks to the judge.”
“Excuse me?” I said, glaring at him. “Are you suggesting I attempt to ask my son to lie?”
“Of course not. But the kid’s testimony will weigh heavily with the judge. It would be in our best interest that he says the right thing.”
I stood in a rush, nearly knocking over my chair. “You’re fired.”
Chapter 11
Penelope
I walked out of the courtroom with the intention of running to my car as quickly as I could. But Jack grabbed my arm and pulled me into a small room the sported a small table and a handful of chairs.
“This is a victory, Penny,” he said.
“No, it’s not. They’re going to let him spend time with JT. And the judge is going to make JT choose which of us he wants to live with. Do you really think JT will choose me when he has the chance to live with a billionaire?”
“Don’t panic. JT knows where he belongs.”
“Does he? Sometimes I wonder.”
I moved away from Jack, crossing the room to stand near the small window that overlooked the busy street below. Tears were threatening again, but I managed to hold them back. I still couldn’t wrap my head around all of this. Just this morning I woke with the warm memories of the night before—I still couldn’t stop thinking of the way it felt when he touched me—and now I was fighting for everything that mattered to me. What would happen to me if I lost JT? What point would there be to my life? Everything I’d given up to come back here would have been for nothing. And JT? What would happen to him if he was ripped away from the only home he’d ever known? From all his friends, his neighbors? The life he’d built for himself these last fifteen years?
I couldn’t let this happen.
“We can still fight this. We have time.”
“We have a week. And then he’ll bring his high-power lawyers from…wherever he’s from…”
“Oregon.”
I shot a look at Jack. “You know who he is?”
“I’ve read about him, just like the judge.”
“I had no clue. I thought he was just a high school teacher.”
“We can use that against him, you know. Argue that he lied to you about his identity. Maybe that would mar his character enough that the judge might consider home surveys and interviews with social workers. That would take time, give you more time with JT.”
I shook my head as I turned back to the window.
“How am I supposed to win this if even my lawyer has already accepted that JT going with this man is inevitable?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Jack came up behind me and touched my shoulder. I didn’t want his touch. I didn’t want to be consoled. I wanted to go home and pack a handful of belongings and take JT a long way away from here.
I remember hearing my mom talk about this when they first brought JT home from the hospital. For the first six months of his life, his biological mother had the right to come and take him back. One night I couldn’t sleep and I went to my parents’ bedroom to ask if I could sleep between them, but then I heard my mom crying and I stopped outside the door where they couldn’t hear me.
What if she wants him back? What if she just shows up at the lawyer’s office and demands that we return him to her? What would we do then?
Those words haunted me. Having JT around those first few weeks was a novelty and I loved helping my mom dress him. But after I heard that, I was afraid to love him. I was afraid that if I loved him too much, they would take him away and my mom would fall back into the depression that left her lying in a dark room for weeks at a time before the adoption. I thought that it was my fault then and I was pretty sure it would be again. If I loved JT…I knew now that depression is a medical disorder. I know now that I had nothing to do with my mom’s depression. It was a chemical imbalance that was made worse by the series of miscarriages she had in the years after I was born. And I knew now that loving JT wouldn’t have caused him to leave. And that the grace period birth parents are allowed passed long ago.
But that irrational fear was still alive and well deep in my soul. And that part of me felt like this was my fault; that I was letting my mom down.
“I won’t let him take JT from me.”
I pulled away from Jack and left the room, strutting out of that courthouse like I knew what I was going to do. But I really didn’t.
I needed a new lawyer. I was already running through my finances as I rushed out of the building, trying to figure out what I’d have to do to come up with the money a decent lawyer would require. I didn’t hear him come up behind me, didn’t hear him calling my name until he grabbed my arm.
“Penny, can we talk about this?”
I spun around, my hands clutched into fists.
“I don’t know that we have anything to talk about, Mr. James. Or is it Philips?”