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“I don’t want to talk about my son’s anatomy anymore,” Jerry said firmly. “It’s bad enough that they’re making us grandparents way before we ever thought we’d be. Leave Creed’s penis out of this.”
“Well, if he’d done that in the first place, then Anna wouldn’t be pregnant,” Alice observed.
“Ha!” Ian Grant laughed. “Good one! High five!” Hands slapped together.
“What should we do?”
“Just go in!”
“You go first!”
“Dammit, fine, move. Let me peek my head in.”
The door slowly opened, and Creed stuck his head in and found everyone in the courtroom staring at him. Okay, well I was glaring at him, Otter was trying to maintain composure, and the Kid
was rolling his eyes.
Erica looked like she popped a blood vessel, Eddie looked like he wanted the conversation to go on, as he was taking notes, and Georgia looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. The court stenographer kept clacking away, like that whole conversation was necessary to put in the transcripts (I immediately found myself plotting ways to have that stricken from the record, but then I realized I hadn’t gone to law school, and I didn’t even know what “stricken from the record” meant). Judge Higgins apparently didn’t think that my family was amusing in the slightest.
“Hi, Bear!” Creed stage-whispered, oblivious to his impending death at my hands. “We’re here!”
“Can we go in?” someone asked from behind him.
He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, they haven’t even started yet. I think they were waiting for us to show up.”
The doors swung open, the seven of them smiling at us. They moved quietly into the benches and sat down, and some of them waved at us while others waited expectantly for court to begin.
I turned back to the judge. “I don’t know who any of those people are,” I said hastily.
Immediate protests.
Judge Higgins arched an eyebrow, which, given what they looked like, I thought he was about to put a curse on me. “Now that that’s out of the way, I wanted to take a moment to talk with you, Derrick. You’re… twenty-one, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you are in school and work part time as well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you have the help of your… partner, who’s here with you?”
“Fiancé,” Creed coughed quite loudly.
Goddammit. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me something, Derrick. You’ve had Tyson for the last three years.
You’ve survived this long, and your life seems to be more stable, at least according the reports from CPS. You have a… supportive family.” They preened and grinned. “And you have the backing of a social worker and therapist who I’ve worked with for years and know don’t take any bullshit from anyone.”
“Can he say bullshit?” Creed whispered loudly.
“It’s his courtroom,” his mom whispered back. “He can do whatever he wants.”
“But I want to know, Derrick. Why do you want this? What do you hope to achieve?”
I didn’t even have to think. “I want this because he’s my brother,” I said honestly. “And I hope to help him grow up to be the best man who ever walked the face of the earth. People think that I did something noble. They say I saved him by raising him.” I shook my head. “They don’t realize that he was the one that saved me.”
The judge watched me for a moment, and I wanted to squirm under his gaze, but I forced myself to stand where I was and stare right back. Finally, after what felt like days, Judge Higgins nodded. “Good answer. Are there any further issues that I need to be aware of? Any last details before we move forward?”
