Chapter 6: Emergency Order

The woman with the baby pulled him closer.

Every face in the lobby turned to me.

"Your father was home," I said. "Asleep down the hall. So was your daughter."

"You didn't wake him."

"My mother was dying."

"I know." He made his voice gentle. "And you weren't thinking clearly. You still aren't."

He nodded at Rafael.

"You're standing in a police station with the man who killed her."

The detective put her pen down.

"Mr. Chen, I'll need a statement from you too. Today."

"My attorney will call you," Daniel said.

He looked at me one more time.

"Come home, Grace. Before this gets worse."

Then he walked out, and his lawyer held the door for him.

The process server found me Thursday morning at the counter.

I was standing on a stool scrubbing grease off the menu board when the bell over the side door rang.

A thin man in a windbreaker held out a thick envelope.

"Grace Chen?"

"Yes."

"You've been served."

He was gone before I climbed down.

I read it at my mother's counter, on stool four, where she used to do the books.

EMERGENCY PETITION FOR TEMPORARY CUSTODY.

The words came at me in a row.

Emotionally unstable following a family bereavement.

Abandoned the minor child, who is disabled, alone at night.

Removed the minor child to a condemned commercial building.

Paid bail, using marital funds, for the man charged with her mother's death.

Associates with him.

The hearing was set for Monday morning.

I read it twice.

Then I put my head down on my arms on the counter.

Lily was upstairs napping in Grandma's chair. I could hear her through the ceiling, talking to her whale in her sleep.

The bell rang again.

I lifted my head.

The young mechanic from Rafael's shop was in the doorway with a toolbox.

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