"You're not going to have to," she said. She went for Jacob. Behind her she heard Thomas Callahan say in a voice she had never heard him use but recognized completely. "Mr. Vance, let's talk."
Arthur Vance stayed for 40 minutes. Thomas sat across from him at the kitchen table with the documents spread between them and his hands flat on the wood and his face doing the controlled cold thing that Clara had only seen once before and hoped not to see again. She stayed in the kitchen. She did not sit down. She stood at the counter with her arms crossed and listened and said nothing because this was Thomas's table and Thomas's house and Thomas's children.
And she understood the precise boundaries of what she was and was not in this moment. Jacob stood in the doorway behind her. She had told him to stay upstairs and he had come down anyway and she had looked at him and made the calculation that sending him back up was the wrong call. He needed to hear this. A boy who had been carrying the weight of this family for 18 months had earned the right to know what was coming at it.
Vance was professional. She gave him that. He laid out the petition without embellishment. The Harlow family, meaning Martha's parents, Edward and Ruth and her brother George had filed in county court claiming that Thomas Callahan had failed to maintain adequate and stable domestic conditions for the four minor children following the death of their mother. That said conditions had been documented by a county welfare assessment and that as the children's closest maternal relatives, they had standing to petition for custody transfer.
The welfare assessment, Thomas said. Filed by Catherine Harlow. Mrs. Harlow conducted the assessment in her capacity as a county welfare officer, Vance said carefully. And filed it on behalf of her husband's family's custody claim, Thomas said.
Vance opened his mouth. Is that a coincidence, Mr. Vance? A pause. I'm not in a position to speak to the motivations of Is it a coincidence?
Thomas said again with the patience of a man who will ask the same question as many times as necessary. Vance looked at the documents. I represent the Harlow family's legal interests. The basis for the petition is the documented welfare assessment and the established familial connection to the children. The documented welfare assessment, Thomas said, that found nothing wrong.
The assessment documented areas of concern regarding stability of my children, Thomas said, are fed, clothed, healthy, and cared for. That is what the assessment found. Those are the words Mrs. Harlow used on my porch. He looked at the document.
If her written report says something different, I'd like to know what changed between my porch and her pen. Vance said nothing. Clara kept her arms crossed and her face still and stored that particular silence away. When is the court date? Thomas said.
Three weeks, August 14th. And what exactly is the Harlow family proposing? Vance cleared his throat. The petition requests full custody transfer to Edward and Ruth Harlow with the children to be relocated to their residence in Relocated, Thomas said. The word hit the room differently than any other word had.