“What? Hold on, let me take you off speaker. I want to hear this, but I don’t want to risk Riley hearing it,” he says.
“My father has apparently found a lawyer who’s willing to take his money in exchange for filing paperwork to give me full custody of Riley,” I say once Ethan gives me the go-ahead.
“What?” I hear him catch himself and wonder just how close Riley is to him. I should have gotten better control over myself before I called him, but I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the patience, either.
“Dad just called me and said that he and a lawyer filed paperwork to try to get me full custody of Riley, with some bullshit argument about how if I move in with him and Riley comes with me we can, him and I, give her a solid home life instead of ferrying her back and forth,” I explain.
“That’s f… that’s ridiculous,” Ethan says.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree. “Please believe me when I say that I don’t want to take Riley from you.”
“I know, Lara. Thank you for letting me know. What the hell are we going to do?”
That’s a good question, and one I don’t have an answer for. I’d only gotten as far as the need to tell Ethan in my thought process. Even now, I don’t really know what we do about this.
“The first thing is going to be for me to keep Riley away from him,” I say after thinking about it for a moment.
“Isn’t that going to make him angrier?”
I shrug. Some of the adrenaline is finally ebbing out of my system and I can, to some degree, think again.
“I told him that if he didn’t stop pushing things, I was going to remove myself and Riley both out of his life. I need to follow through on that,” I say.
“If you think that’s the way to handle him, then I can’t tell you not to,” Ethan says. But I can hear the hesitation in his voice.
“You should let your parents know, too, what Dad did,” I tell him. I don’t want to call my brother-in-law’s parents. While they are not quite as angry at me as Dad is concerning Ethan, it’s become obvious to me that they think that I’m far more likely to side with my father than with Ethan, and I can’t completely blame them for that. In theory, I don’t have any real reason to side with Ethan in this, not given our history. But it would be wrong of me not to, and I’m not the slightest bit tempted to try to screw him over, no matter what our history is.
“I’ll call them as soon as I get off the phone with you,” Ethan promises. “Christ, this is just… insane.”
“It is,” I agree. I take a deep breath, and realize that I’ve come to the end of what I might be able to do about the situation. “Let me know what they decide to do, and how I can help. I’m going to get dinner going and let you take care of the things on your end.”
I end the call feeling as unsettled as ever, but at least I’ve done something.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ethan
“Thanks for taking Riley at the last minute like this,” I say to Mom as I get ready to leave for the day. I’d originally been planning to leave Riley with Nathan, but after he filed paperwork a few days before to try to get my own daughter away from me out of spite, I’d agreed with Lara’s idea that he needed to face the consequences. Neither of us would include him in Riley’s life, and Lara was doubling down on that by not taking his phone calls.
“We’re happy to have her,” Mom says, smiling at me. Dad comes into the living room, leaving Riley to finish her morning sleep in the guest bedroom.
“We wanted to tell you, we’ve made arrangements with our lawyer,” Dad says. I raise an eyebrow at this.
“What?” I can feel the low dread starting up in the pit of my stomach, at just the mention of a lawyer.
“After you told us what Nathan had done, we contacted a lawyer of our own,” Mom says.
I cross my arms over my chest.
“And just what are you trying to do?” My sense of how awful this is going to be deepens.
“We’re going to counter-sue, basically,” Dad explains.
“Connie says that we have an argument for disregarding Alexis’ final wishes. Since Lara’s father is trying to get full custody for her as Riley’s guardian, with him attached as a caregiver, we’re going to sue to give you full custody, with no visitation rights for either Nathan or Lara that you don’t grant,” Mom says.
For a second, I just stare at the two of them. What they’re saying is insane. They’re suing Nathan, but for Lara to lose custody or visitation? Lara was the one who came to me, right away, when her Dad filed paperwork.
“What the hell?” I shake my head. “No.”
“Yes, Ethan,” Mom says.
“Your mother and I want to make sure that your rights as Riley’s father are intact, and this is the best way to do it,” Dad adds.
“No, this is the best way to guarantee that Riley is going to be stressed out and pulled in a hundred different directions before she even turns three,” I tell them.
“We need to settle this once and all, and we need to make sure that Nathan doesn’t get away with his petty little attempt to punish you,” Mom counters, her voice firm.
“So why involve Lara in it at all? Why not just press the case that Alexis’ last wishes need to be respected?” I shake my head again. Whatever I’d had planned for today is going totally pear-shaped in the face of this.
“Lara might have let you know about her father’s stupid legal maneuvering, but ultimately the only way to make sure that you keep primary custody of Riley is to
