Page 82 of Love You, Mean It
“And you aren’t?” he said. “I see the way you look at her. We all know there’s something going on there.”
“Everyone in town is talking about it,” Kory said from a few feet away.
“I thought you guys were construction dudes. I had no idea I’d hired a bunch of gossipy schoolgirls.”
Jason laughed. “Glass houses, boss. I heard you were at the Brown Bear Diner wearing pigtails and glitter yesterday.”
This fucking town.
There were no secrets.
“Yeah, well, when you have a seven-year-old daughter, you come talk to me about how difficult it is to say no to her.”
“From what I can tell, she isn’t the only one you can’t say no to.” Will smirked, and I gave him the finger.
“Just get back to work. I’ve got a meeting, and then I’ll be over at the hotel the rest of the afternoon if you need me.”
I drove the short distance over to Logan Hawkins’s law office.
Her assistant led me into her office as soon as I arrived, and I whistled at all the custom built-ins. “Nice office.”
“Yeah, it’s nice when the guy before you has it all done before he retires.” She laughed and motioned for me to take a seat. “So tell me what’s going on with Harper’s mom.”
I filled her in on our arrangement, and she listened intently, taking notes and nodding.
There was no judgment at all when she looked up at me.
“Okay, so I understand your concerns. She has clearly abandoned her child, as showing up one day a year is far from anything close to being considered a parent. She hasn’t paid child support or contributed in any way to Harper’s needs,” she said, tapping her pen against her desk. “But I’m not going to lie to you, Charlie. It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“Well, Alaska law does not allow the court to terminate one’s parental rights. The court can restrict access, but it’s not like she has access anyway, so it’s an unusual situation.”
“I’m just trying to do the right thing by my daughter. She was uncomfortable on her birthday, because Caroline feels like a stranger to her. And I get it. I wouldn’t like that either.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “But I don’t know how to handle the situation. I don’t think she should just be able to show up once a year when it’s convenient for her. I think I sort of went along with it all these years to keep the peace, do what I thought was best for Harps. But now it feels strange when she shows up. We have a life now, and it doesn’t involve her in any way, shape, or form.”
“Yep. I get that. We have a few options,” she said as she reached for her coffee mug and took a sip.
“Okay. Let’s hear them.”
“We could get a court order for child support and back child support and force her hand.”
I immediately interrupted. “No. I don’t want money. Her family has a lot of it, and I don’t want this to turn into a pissing match on who has more. Because I’ll lose. This isn’t about the money. There’s nothing more important to me than supporting my daughter and providing a good home for her. I’m happy that I can do that on my own. This is about the emotional effects of a woman showing up once a year and calling herself a mother. It was fine, until it wasn’t. The minute my daughter was not okay with the situation, I felt the need to do something about it.”
“Okay. So we’re not looking for any financial support.”
“We are not,” I said adamantly.
She put her hands up. “Okay, got it. The goal is to just stop with the once-a-year visits. We aren’t looking for a relationship or any support. So we could press her and force her hand.”
“How would we do that?” I asked.
“You know, it’s all risky, Charlie. Because if by chance we press this and she in turn decides that she wants to be a mother, we could be opening a can of worms. She could fight back.”
I nodded. My stomach twisted at the thought. But I knew in my gut that this woman just didn’t have it in her. She was far too selfish to want any sort of custody.
“I get that, and it makes me uneasy. But I’m fairly confident that she doesn’t have any interest in being a parent.”
“Okay, so we can test the waters. We could file a dispute about her visits, point out the fact that she has abandoned her child and has not been there emotionally or financially. We can mention the emotional toll her visits are taking on Harper, as they don’t know one another. Wecan put a bunch of legal jargon in there and suggest that she either step up to the plate or relinquish her parental rights.”
