Chapter 11: Her Name on the Line

I did not wait for the court.

I called Garrett from the NICU family lounge with the petition open on my lap.

He answered on the second ring, and I told him to come to the hospital and bring his mother.

"Why my mother?"

"Because she signed something with your name on it."

He was there in twenty minutes.

I had not taken my eyes off the door.

He walked in with his hands in his coat pockets and a gray cast to his face from a night on my porch swing and a day without sleep.

I held out the petition.

"Read the second page."

He read it standing up.

I saw his eyes go across the words abandoned, instability, unfit, and stop.

"I didn't know about this."

"It has your name on the line for 'parent of the respondent's child.' It says you support it."

"I never saw it."

"Then somebody signed for you."

His mouth worked.

He took out his phone and called his mother.

"Mom, come to the NICU right now. No, don't ask why."

Marjorie arrived at the double doors in her camel coat, with a small bag over her arm.

Her hair was perfect.

She stopped in front of the nurses' station, where three nurses and a respiratory therapist were charting, and one of the nurses was pulling a cart.

"Garrett," she said. "What is all this noise?"

"Did you file this?"

He held the petition up so she could see it.

"It's for the baby's sake." She said it without a trace of guilt. "Piper is overwrought. A grandmother has a right to hold her granddaughter."