Chapter 269. What Comes After.
SEDONA
The judge granted emergency temporary custody on a Tuesday morning, over the phone, in a hearing that lasted eleven minutes.
Adaeze had warned me it would be fast, given the circumstances, given a public park full of witnesses and a six-year-old's stitches and a father already in custody facing charges that made the custody question almost an afterthought, there wasn't much left to deliberate.
I didn't feel the way I expected to feel, hearing it.
I had imagined this moment for seven months, the victory of winning Nick, the relief of finally having the legal ground beneath me solid enough to hold Nick's whole weight. What I actually felt, standing in the Lincoln Park kitchen with the phone against my ear, was something quieter than triumph.
It wa
