Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 162

Custody Questions-2

Janet listened.

When I finished, she was quiet for a moment in the specific way of someone who is not just being polite but is actually thinking.

“Can I ask,” she said, “what the other party’s current position is? The father.”

“Unknown,” I said. “We’ve had no direct communication.”

“And the child is in his custody.”

“Yes. In Chicago.”

“Illinois,” she said, which was the relevant fact-the original relinquishment had been filed in Illinois, which complicated the jurisdiction process because some things were allowed in some cities but not in others.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s a wrinkle,” she said, with the honest directness I’d been hoping for. “Not an insurmountable one. But jurisdiction adds steps. You’d likely need to establish whether the matter is taken up in Illinois, where the original documents were filed, or whether Seattle has grounds to handle it given your current residence.” A pause.

“It would depend on several things, including whether the child has been in Illinois continuously since the relinquishment and whether the other parent has initiated any additional proceedings.”

I thought about Logan in the garden forcing me back home. I shool my head free of that thought.

“I don’t know if additional proceedings have been initiated,” I said.

“That would be something we’d need to establish early,” she said. “If there are existing proceedings, they affect the approach significantly.”

Another pause. “I want to be honest with you about the timeline on something like this. Relinquishment is specifically designed to resist reversal. The legal standard for reversal is high-changed circumstances, yes, but also the court’s determination that reversal serves the child’s best interests, which is the governing principle in any custody matter.”

“Nick’s best interests are the only argument I’m making,” I said.

“That’s the right argument,” she said. “But you’ll need to demonstrate it with more than the mother’s assessment. Independent evidence, documentation of the child’s ongoing attachment, potentially the child’s own expressed preferences given he’s six-courts take those into account, though with appropriate adjustment for age.”

“Good luck,” she said, and it was the warmth without the performance, the genuine version, one that showed that she was rooting for me in more ways than it mattered.

I put the phone down and sat down in my childhood bedroom and went through all the information that you asked assembled in front of me the way information assembled when you’d done the first round of gathering, it was not enough to do any real building but it was enough to know where they lay.

Not impossible. Multi-jurisdictional. Changed circumstances. Nick’s best interests as the governing principle.

Logan as a factor I couldn’t control.

I needed to talk to someone. Not my family. Not yet, not Cameron, who would take this on completely, and refuse to budge from a no and I would feel horrible about adding another problem to his on growing pile of problems.

Not my mother, who would want to help in the specific way of wanting to help that involved taking the problem out of my hands and dealing with it herself, taking all the brunt and not informing me of what they cost.

I thought about who I talked to when I needed to think out loud without the thinking being taken over by the person but just there letting me do all the thinking and showing me ways on how to deal with it.

I knew just the person.