Blaise shook her head. “You’re not a bad mum. She adores you.”
“I fucked up…”
Her stepmother clucked her tongue. “You did the best you could at the time.”
Ronnie reached for the empty trash can under the desk.
Blaise played with Ronnie’s hair while Ronnie leaned over the bucket. Nothing came up. She blew her nose. “I’m not all right… I’m not all right with this schedule.”
“Ask for a hearing. A judge will review the case.”
Fat lot of good that would do. Adoption was permanent. If she challenged it, she would be the bad guy. She had given up her parental rights.
“I want her so much…”
“We know. We want that for you, too.”
“This is a nightmare.” She sat with her head in her hands. Every time she left the house she feared losing what little she was allowed.
This was a different kind of prison, one nobody talked about.
She rubbed her eyebrows. Only nine more years of walking on eggshells. The girl was halfway to eighteen. Baby steps.
“I don’t know who to be angry at.”
She should have fought harder to keep her daughter. Separation was too humiliating to name. Safer to set a lid on it and live with it, to pretend life started and stopped every other weekend. Every other weekend soaking up toddler giggles, birthdays, school years and lost teeth to pretend she wasn’t missing time—to pretend Rainbow wasn’t growing up six times faster than the girls Ronnie coached.
When Ronnie was alone, the nine-year-old snuck back into the room and sat beside her.
She pulled her shit together in front of her daughter. Rainbow had not missed six-sevenths of her own life. Rainbow would be fine.
Ronnie blew her nose. “I feel better. Sometimes adults need a good cry.”
“Why can’t I decide who I live with?”
“I don’t know, baby. That’s a good question. Someday you will.”
“I want to live with you.”
Ronnie forced a smile, knowing she had to be careful not to say anything that her ex called ‘triangulation’ or ‘manipulation.’ If she admitted to Rainbow that she wanted custody, Maude might punish her for it later. Maude insisted that they never trash-talked each other in front of Rainbow. Good idea, in theory. They had to be on the same team. Consistent messaging mattered.
But she couldn’t lie to Rainbow. Well, she could, but if she did now, what would be the point of any of this?
She put her arm around her daughter. “I want that too, baby. I would take care of you and do everything for you if I could. You know I love you. We can’t change the past, only the future. Right?”
“Mum, focus. How would it work? Like, where would we live? If I lived with you where would I go to school?”
“If you lived with me it would be half of the time, and where you went to school would be up to Maude.”Don’t get her hopes up...She had never asked Maude outright to share custody with her, only dropped hints which Maude ignored.
She should probably swallow her pride and ask, otherwise nothing would change until Rainbow was a teenager, when Rainbow would have to go through the traumatic experience of petitioning a judge in a courtroom, potentially standing across from Maude and losing, which would send the girl off in a direction of teenaged rebellion that Ronnie knew all too well. Ronnie would do anything to spare her daughter having to go through what she went through.
Even if it meant risking losing her.
Since Maude first let her babysit, Ronnie had never been late to pick-up or drop-off Rainbow. After her parole ended six years ago, she had been careful not to get so much as a speeding ticket. She had to stay squeaky clean. Easier said than done when all the police departments on the Tableland knew who she was.
“Can we watch Frozen and eat mac and cheese?”
Ronnie rubbed her daughter’s warm back. “Or we could pitch a tent in the garden and roast snags over a camp fire! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
