Shattered Illusions: The Wife He Left for Dead novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Ruling
The family court gave its ruling on a Thursday morning, in the same room with the silver-haired judge.
Chantal did not attend.
She was held in a county jail, awaiting trial for the forged report and the abduction, and her lawyer had withdrawn the sole custody petition on Monday.
The judge read from a single page.
"Samuel Lowell, age five, is placed in the permanent guardianship of his half-sister, Mireille Peabody."
"His mother may write to him, and she may see him when the court is satisfied she is fit to."
"Ms. Peabody, do you accept?"
"I accept," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Sammy sat on my lap in a collared shirt that Constance had bought him.
He did not understand the words.
He understood that I was holding him, and he looked up at me with his gap-toothed face.
"Are we done?"
"We're done."
"Can we get a pancake?"
"Yes."
The judge's mouth twitched.
"Court is adjourned," she said. "Someone buy that boy a pancake."
Killian sat in the last row, and he did not come forward.
His right hand was wrapped in white gauze to the wrist, with eight stitches under it.
He had stayed in the back of every hearing, and I had not once asked him to leave.
On Sunday evening Constance called a family dinner.
She said it was an order, and she said it in front of the driver.
"At my table, in the Hayes house. I have moved in to supervise my grandson."
"You have moved in to boss me," Killian said when I arrived.
"I have moved in to feed this child properly."
He opened the front door of the Back Bay house himself.
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