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She nods, looking far happier than when she first arrived at the office this morning.
Watching her walk out of my office, I think again of how proud I am of the woman Serena grew up to be. Her father would be proud as well if he could see her now. Claw didn’t have favorites among his children, but I watched him nurture their individual interests. My most vivid memories of Serena were of her as a perky, curios tween. She eventually grew into the typical bratty teen. It wasn’t until she came of age that I allowed myself to think of her as a woman.
Then coming back for her father’s funeral, she left me reeling. She was older, wiser, more confident, and unfortunately mired in grief. Seeing Serena’s tears had torn a hole in my heart. I would have done anything to ease her pain, but she hadn’t looked to me for comfort. In fact, her eyes rolled right past me. It had been understandable but it was a crushing blow to my ego none the less.
Thankfully, she had her brother to lean on. That was before their other sister, Nicole had died, and before Cleo came into his life. Back then it was just the three siblings Siege, Nicole, and Serena. Nicole did have the twins with her, but they were just babies at the time.
Our entire club had been devastated by the loss of Claw. Being the founder and mentor for most of us, he was more like a father than anything else. Also, we were enraged at the time because we thought he’d been killed by the Hellfire Hounds MC. After his funeral, we’d retaliated, only to discover that his death had been an inside job. One of our trusted brothers had arranged his death in order to take his place as club president. It took months to lure the turncoats out into the open where we could take them down.
The fact that we couldn’t save Claw makes it all the more important that we protect his loved ones. It’s a sacred duty that I intend to fulfill.
Chapter 11
Serena
Oh, happy days. That is one of my mother’s favorite sayings and it definitely applies to this situation. I’ve been working with Smoke for three weeks now, and today is my first day trying a case before the family law master and I’m legitimately looking forward to it.
Sitting in the courtroom with my client, I shuffle through my paperwork on the case. Barbara is anxious and I want to give her a moment to settle down. Ours is the first case of the day and we arrived early in order to discuss her case. Although Barbara is a good, kindhearted woman, she somehow managed to end up married to a drug dealer. She got a divorce already but now they’re haggling over custody of her toddler, which will set the precedent for her as of yet unborn child.
This ex-husband is just one in a long line of relationships gone wrong for her. My mother says that women who end up in more than one abusive relationship need to fix their picker. I don’t think this is the case with Barbara. She seems fully aware of her ex-husband’s shortcomings. I suspect she is the type of person who picks up baby birds that have fallen from their nest and tries to nurse them back to health. In other words, she tries to see the potential in people with serious problems and thinks she can love them all better. Unfortunately, this need to fix the whole world led to a marriage with a truly detestable man. I hear her divorce had been a nasty one.
Being an attorney means supporting clients no matter their decisions or their guilt. My job isn’t to judge. It’s to assist them with whatever legal problem they’re facing. However, there is also an opportunity to link them with social or mental health services, guide them in making difficult decisions or give opinions if they are open to hearing them.
Regardless of what a lot of people think, attorneys aren’t all heartless ambulance chasers. Some of us actually care about the wellbeing of our clients. Much like the law enforcement officer who supported me when gathering my belongings from Stan’s apartment, I feel protective of Barbara because she is in a similar situation with her ex-husband.
When I look over and see tears sliding down her face, I turn and try to give her options that might make this situation easier to bear. “If you’re not sure what you want to do, we can reschedule your hearing. It’s better to take a little time to think things over, rather than panic and change your mind in front of the judge.”
She runs her hands over her protruding belly as she considers my words. After a few minutes, she explains, “I didn’t want to divorce Dominique. I still love him with all my heart. I don’t want to keep him from seeing his children. I know my decisions are causing him pain, but I have to do this to protect them. It just tears me up to hurt him when I know he’s already had such a hard life.”
“You’re not doing anything to him. He’s doing it to himself by being an abusive husband and a neglectful father. The cold hard fact is that not everyone is cut out to be a parent. If he ends up taking responsibility for the things he’s done, gets some sobriety under his belt and a bit of therapy for his anger issues, I’m sure you’ll be agreeable to talking to the family law master about modifying the order, right?”
Her head comes up and she blinks at me. Sitting up straighter in her chair she wipes the tears away with the back of her hands. “You mean it’s possible to change the order later?”
I nod, “Absolutely. There is a difference between you getting full custody with supervised visitation, and the judge going so far as to terminate his parental rights entirely. We can even set some criteria in the custody order for him to meet, in order to be considered for partial custody.”
“Tell me more about that,” she says eagerly.
We make a bulleted list of things her ex can do to be considered for joint custody and I stress the importance of him having only supervised visitation until he meets the criteria. Her voice becomes stronger, and she seems surer of herself as the courtroom fills, mostly with people associated with the case.
Suddenly looking worried, she asks, “Do you think we have enough evidence to convince the judge to award full custody to me?”
“Oh yes, we’ve got plenty of evidence. Just the testimony of the officers who showed up for the wellness check last month should be enough to ensure he only gets supervised visitation.”
She twists her hands in her lap for a few moments before wrapping her arms around her belly again. “I hope for my children’s sake that nothing goes wrong today.”
“The judge is vested with the responsibility of acting in the best interest of the child,” I explain. “She will review all the evidence presented by both parties and decide if it’s enough to award full custody to you. She’ll also have to decide, based on the information presented, if your ex can have supervised visitation, unsupervised visitation or no visitation at all. That’s a lot of responsibility, but Judge Marsh is very experienced at making judicious decisions and takes her job seriously. I expect she will always err on the side of caution where a child’s safety is concerned.”
“I hate that my kids are going to grow up without a father they can trust in their lives, and I hate that Dominique won’t be allowed to take them on outings and be the father he wants to be, because we simply can’t trust him to do the right thing. Everything about this sucks,” she laments.
I respond quietly, “You have to trust that you’re doing the right thing and everything will work out for the best in the end.”
“The thing that keeps me up at night is thinking that I don’t have any better judgement than Dominique. If I did, I never would have fallen head over heels in love with him.”
“I managed to get away from my own Dominique very recently. My takeaway from that situation was to slow my roll when it came to future relationships, be more cautious about giving my heart away and wait until the man proves himself trustworthy, before I let him fully into my life. If we don’t learn from our bad experiences, it’s like going through life with an anchor around our neck. I won’t allow my past mistakes to weigh me down or give me low self-esteem. I’m learning more every day about the person I want to be, and I’m not going to let any man get in the way of me making a decent life for myself.”
Jesus, I don’t know why I said all that and it really wasn’t professional. She didn’t ask for my opinion after all. A short silence spins out between us.
She looks pensive for a long moment and then lifts her chin. “You’re right. If we can learn from our past mistakes, then so can the men who hurt us. It’s their responsibility to better themselves, not ours to coddle them.”
