Chapter 8 - The Legal Strike
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The temporary peace Emily had found was shattered on a Tuesday afternoon when a process server knocked on her apartment door.
Emily sat at her scratched kitchen table, staring at the thick stack of legal documents. Margaret Carter had officially filed a petition for full custody of Noah. The papers were a masterpiece of legal character assassination.
Margaret’s high-priced attorneys claimed Emily was an unfit mother who worked excessive hours and lived in an unstable, poverty-stricken household. They cited her reliance on a medically fragile parent for childcare.
The worst part was page four. Vanessa Hale had submitted a sworn statement. It was a fabric of absolute lies, claiming Emily was violent, emotionally unstable, and had recently begun associating with an “unidentified, erratic adult male” who frequented her apartment.
Emily walked into the tiny bathroom, locked the thin wooden door, turned on the faucet to drown out the noise, and slid down the wall. She clamped a hand over her mouth and sobbed until her ribs ached. She was drowning. Margaret had millions of dollars. Emily had a negative bank balance and a broken umbrella.
A soft knock came at the door. “Mom?”
Emily wiped her eyes frantically. “Yeah, baby?”
“Are you crying?” Noah’s voice was small, terrified.
“No, superhero. Just washing my face.”
There was a pause. “You sound like crying. Grandma Linda says people need a glass of water after they cry.”
Emily opened the door. Noah stood there in his pajamas, gripping a plastic cup of tap water with both hands. Emily dropped to her knees and pulled him tightly against her chest, burying her face in his shoulder.
“If Grandma Margaret tries to take me away,” Noah whispered fiercely into her hair, “I’m not going. I’ll bite her.”
Emily let out a broken, watery laugh. “No biting relatives, Noah. Even the mean ones. Lawyers hate explaining that to the judge.”
The next morning, Alexander noticed Emily’s red-rimmed eyes the second she walked into the hospital cafeteria. He cornered her in the dry storage room. “What happened?”
Emily handed him a crumpled copy of the custody petition. Alexander read the first page, and a lethal, cold fury ignited in his chest. His first instinct was to call the most vicious corporate law firm in Charlotte and obliterate Margaret Carter by noon.
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He gripped the paper so hard his knuckles turned white. “I can fix this, Emily.”
Emily snatched the paper back. “No, Jack. You can't. You can't fix this with duct tape.”
