Page 26 of Never Alone
I held still.
"The video has changed the size of what I told you. Strangers are watching that clip, and they are not watching it as a custody dispute. They are watching a firefighter carry your son out of a building with your hand on his face, and they are calling it a love story. By the time we are in front of a judge, that story will be in the room."
She looked at me.
"I am not going to tell you what to do about that. It isn't my place. But I want you to understand how the room is going to read it. The judge will not say so. The judge will see it."
She paused.
"Can I ask what your relationship with this man is?"
"I—" I stopped. Started again. "I barely know him."
She nodded once. The way she nodded when a piece of information landed said she was filing it.
"Alright. The case stands on its own merits. The story the country is telling about you is not the case. But I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you that the two are going to live in the same room when we walk into court."
She let it sit.
Miranda was not wrong.
She knew exactly what we were up against. She also knew how to play the game. She wasn't going to tell me to manufacture a relationship for the case. She was a lawyer. But she had told mewhat the country was doing with the clip, what the room would look like when we walked into it, and she had let the rest sit.
I had spent ten years reading what a man was not saying. Reading what a lawyer was not quite saying was easier.
I sat across from her with my hands folded.
"If he were in the picture," I said. "Would that help?"
She held my eyes.
"I can't advise you on that, Tessa. Legally, I'm not in a position to tell you to enter a relationship for the benefit of a case. What Icantell you is this: a firefighter who carried your son out of a fire and showed up in his life consistently—that's the kind of stable male presence courts respond to. Especially one the country is already telling a story about."
She let that sit, too.
I thought about Cole. About what I would need to tell him.
Hi. I'm actually Natalie. The ungrateful girl who shouted at you eighteen years ago for saving her life. Can you pretend to be my boyfriend so I can keep my son from being taken from me by my abusive ex-husband?
Ridiculous.
And what would he say?Sure. I'll help you.
There was no way.
I thought about Noah. About him at the prep table, folding pastry boxes. About him asleep on Mrs. Thompson's sofa. About the way he had been calmer and more himself in seven months in Havensworth than he had been in eight years with his father. About what it had taken me seven months to build for him, and what it would take Nicholas a single weekend with a judge to take away.
I had to try. Cole didn't have to say yes. I just had to ask.
"Alright," I said. "I'll talk to him."
I stood. Picked up my bag.
"Thank you, Miranda."
"You have a case, Tessa. A real one."
CHAPTER 6
