“What can I do?”
“Talk to her, please?”
“Sure thing, baby. Put her on.”
She handed the phone to the lawyer, who to her credit, rolled with it.
“Hello?”
Her dad talked the woman’s ear off for a while. She couldn’t hear what he said, but eventually the lawyer thanked him and returned the phone to her.
The lawyer scribbled in her legal pad, then looked up. “I’m sorry that this is still happening.”
“No worries.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed. I’ve worked on cases like this with Blaise, through the nonprofit she works for at the Community Centre in Lionheart. I’m happy to work with you on this.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“No worries. Now, where were we? The fight that proceeded your arrest. What was it about?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember. We were arguing about money. Things got out of control.”
“Did you try to leave?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Drugs? Alcohol?”
“I never did those things whilst pregnant.”
“After the police arrived, then what happened?”
Ronnie swallowed. She wasn’t comfortable talking about this, but owed it to herself to try. “They arrested me because I look like this.” Ronnie gestured to her six-foot-three self, including the black T-shirt, men’s gym shorts and work boots. “They always assume the unconscious person is the victim.” God, that sounded awful. She sounded like a dick.
Her eyes stung. She blinked. She wasn’t allowed to cry here. “I don’t think it was my fault.”
The room became a sauna. Ronnie broke out in a sweat. She shouldn’t have said it wasn’t her fault. Now the lawyer would think she hadn’t accepted responsibility or been reformed.
“She made it clear that she would, you know, nail everything we had done on me.”
She winced. She could have walked out of Maude’s house that night. She saw that in hindsight. She should have accepted Nev’s offer to stay for chicken parmi. The solution had been right in front of her, but she hadn’t been able to see it. Her life would have gone in a better direction if she had eaten that parmi.
“Shit messes with your head when you’re a kid,” she said.
“Did you gather evidence against her?” the lawyer asked.
Ronnie shook her head. “She was always gathering evidence against me. It never occurred to me to do the same. She’s smarter than I am.”
“Don’t say that. We can’t move forward without her support. Since you don’t feel comfortable asking her, I’ll call her and explain the situation, and then I’ll be in touch to let you know what our next steps will be. Do you have a social worker on the case?”
Ronnie shook her head, palms sweaty.
“We’ll need them to write a report. Start building a paper trail showing how often you care for your daughter, what you pay for, etc. We’ll need a report from the social worker saying that you’re capable of providing equal custody. The state will do a home review where they visit your house.”
