“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.” Mr. Barnes leaned back in his plush, leather office chair, tapping his fingers on the armrests. “The bad news is that document she signed isn’t worth shit. It’s not a legal document. It’s not witnessed or notarized. She may as well have written it on a cocktail napkin for all the good it will do you in court. Legally, you have zero right to Hannah.”
My stomach sank, worry filling my belly with the weight of concrete. “Where’s the good news? And if I don’t have a legal right to Hannah, then who the hell does? She doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Is there a father in the picture?”
“No, and there never has been. I don’t think Jessica even knows who it is.” In everything but biology and the fact that I still led a quasi-bachelor lifestyle, I had always been Hannah’s father.
“Well, that’s going for you,” Mr. Barnes noted. “The good news is that her social worker should give you the chance to foster Hannah. Being that you’re her biological uncle, and you have no other living relatives besides your mother, you would be the logical choice, and in my experience, DSS prefers to place children with family.”
That concrete in my stomach turned to molten lava at the mere mention of putting my niece into foster care. Growing up, Jessica and I had spent a fair amount of time in the system between my mother’s spurts with sobriety, and there was zero chance in hell I was putting Hannah through that.
“Why do we have to call a social worker?” I questioned, my temper rising in the pitch of my voice. “What the hell good are they going to do? I’m not even willing to risk that Hannah goes into one of those homes. I’m more than capable of caring for her both emotionally and financially. Why the hell do we have to involve the county?” My fingers dug into the arms of my chair.
“I understand where you’re coming from, but the legal side of this is crystal clear.” Mr. Barnes took off his glasses and rubbed the skin of his nose where they had rested. “I don’t want to involve DSS anymore than you do. But the truth is, you don’t have the legal authority to take care of Hannah. You don’t have a power of attorney, and for all intents and purposes, this child has been abandoned by her mother. Regardless of the fact that you are ready and willing to care for her, and are most likely the best environment for her, you can’t have her seen by a doctor or even enroll her in school. In the eyes of the court, you have something we call standing, but no real legal rights. If you want to keep your niece, we have to do this by the book. There is no skirting the system when it comes to kids, and the longer you put this off, the harder it will bite you in the ass when you’re standing in a courtroom.”
I looked past Mr. Barnes to the Seattle skyline. I’d been born here, raised here, and had been lucky enough to have hockey pull me through both high school and college at UW. But I was also intimately acquainted with a foster system that did great things for kids, until it didn’t. Someone’s experience with the system was as unique as their DNA. There were cracks I was unwilling to let Hannah fall through. Mr. Barnes was right. If Hannah was in a car accident this very moment, I couldn’t even sign her consent for treatment.
I didn’t just need moral authority. I needed legal ground.
“We have to call DSS,” I said, my voice a hundred times more calm than I felt. I was desperate to keep Hannah wrapped in a bubble, safe and loved. It was so fucking ironic that the very thing I needed to keep her safe was the one thing that could take her away from me.
Mr. Barnes nodded. “I agree, and I’ll be with you every step of this process. We’ll make sure she ends up with you.”
I wished I felt as certain as he sounded, but the man literally had my life— Hannah’s life—in his hands.
“Sarah,” he spoke into his intercom, “get me Shea Lansing on the phone would you?”
“Sure thing,” his secretary answered.
“I’ve known Shea for five years, and she’s as fair as they come.”
“What about discrete? The paparazzi would have a field day if they knew what we were going through, and I refuse to have Hannah’s face plastered on those fucking tabloids. I know she wouldn’t care now, but one day she would, and the shit they post on the Internet never dies.” I had to protect Hannah’s future just as much as her present.
“I hear you loud and clear. We’ll make sure this doesn’t get out.” He looked me straight in the eye, his intention and honesty nearly palpable. There was a reason Gage trusted this guy with Scarlett’s case, and Barnes had earned my trust vicariously through Gage.
A moment later, Sarah rang through that Shea was on the line, and Barnes picked up the phone.
The two exchanged pleasantries, or at least I assumed since I could only hear his side of the conversation. Then he got down to business, briefly describing our situation. It was almost surreal, having to hand my personal life over to be decided by another person.
“Now as you can see, this young lady needs the protection of foster care, legally that is. However, her uncle is capable, willing, and very adamant that he retain guardianship of the minor.”
Barnes nodded, listening to whatever Ms. Lansing was saying.
“I understand that, but we’re coming to you in good faith that she’ll be allowed to stay with her uncle while you run those checks. I think we can both agree that it’s far more traumatic for a child this young to be placed in respite care, rather than left with a suitable family. Also, there are special considerations in this case.” Barnes locked eyes with me as he continued. “We’re talking about a Seattle Shark. Something this high-profile and this private needs to be handled with the utmost care and consideration, which was why I called you directly, Shea.”
Knots formed down my throat, and every muscle in my body tensed, waiting for her answer. Logically, I knew this was the only way. Emotionally, I was kicking myself for not heading for a border with Hannah just to be sure that no one could take her.
“Okay, I see. I’m sure he’d agree to an emergency home study and background check.” Mr. Barnes looked at me with raised eyebrows.
I nodded. “I’ve already had a background check for some of the volunteer work we do with Sharks. So that should be easy.”
“He says he’s more than willing, and he already has a completed background check, so that should be easy for you to access. Today at 4 o’clock?” He looked at me expectantly, and when he read the confusion on my face, elaborated. “Shea will need to come over to your house. She’ll need to see that it’s suitable for Hannah and that you can provide for her, and have a safe and nurturing environment to raise her in.”
My eyes flew wide with panic. Shit. That was in what, three hours? I had three hours to turn my bachelor pad into the fucking Brady house? Not that it was trashed, or dangerous, but I also didn’t think DSS would appreciate my closet stash of sex toys or the kegerator I kept in the third bedroom with the beer pong table.
Noting my shock, Barnes addressed Ms. Lansing again. “Can we do tomorrow? I think this is all catching him a little unaware, and you guys do have a tendency to sift through underwear drawers.” He chuckled but considering the things I knew were in my underwear drawer, I didn’t find it fucking funny. “Oh, I see. No, of course we wouldn’t want her taken into respite over the weekend, so if this is your only appointment, he’ll take it. I’ll send over all of his personal information, and the minor’s so you can get the ball rolling on his paperwork. Thank you, Shea. I owe you one.”
Barnes hung up the phone and gave me a wry smile before digging out a piece of paper from the file cabinet next to his desk. “Looks like you’d best be getting home. A word to the wise, they like food in the pantry, a clean kitchen, and nothing funny under your bed. You hear me?”
Thank God everything was in the closet.
“I hear you.”
“Get to it, then give me a call and let me know how everything went.”
I said my thank you’s, took the paper he was offering me, which was a guideline on how to prep for a home
study, and was already on my phone before I left the office.
“Eric, it’s Connor. I need some help, and it’s all hands on deck.”
Family was a concept I didn’t understand, not really. Sure, I had Jessica, when Mom was sober, or there was a foster family willing to take us both in, but I’d always known the only person I could depend on was me. But, as my Shark friends flooded my small apartment, family was the only word that came to mind.
“I’ve cleaned the beer out of the fridge, and Bailey has stocked both your pantry and fridge with food,” Gage reported. As the Shark with the most kids, I trusted that his wife knew what DSS would look for when it came to healthy food. I had a feeling the lone box of frozen GoGurts wasn’t going to hack it.
“Beer pong table is gone,” Lukas called out as he and Eric hefted the table through my living room and out the door that Chloe held open. “It’s going to look great in my apartment!”
I felt a pang of loss like he wasn’t just carrying out a beer pong table, but the last of my recklessness. The kegerator had already departed, as had any bottle of liquor on the premises.
“This list doesn’t say you had to get rid of that,” Pepper said, stepping back as Rory and Warren carried in a white desk and headed back to where my beer pong room was being transformed by Paige, Rory’s wife.
“I’m not taking any chances,” I told her, straightening the pile of magazines on the coffee table I kept meaning to read. Oh, who the hell was I kidding? Like I had time for that crap. I took the stack to the recycling bin and let it fly.
“I totally get that. Okay,” Pepper’s finger drifted down the list, making sure we’d covered all our bases. “Wait, do you have any guns in the home? Are they in a safe?”
“No guns,” I told her.
“It’s a logical question,” Eric interjected from the doorway. “We keep them on the ranch for hunting and the wolves and stuff.”
“Right, but I don’t do a lot of hunting wolves in Seattle, so we’re in the clear. No guns in the house.”
“Except these sweet babies,” Lukas answered, kissing his biceps as he walked back in the door. “Oh come on,” he said to me. “Don’t you want tickets to the movie?”
“Movie?” I clarified.
“You know? The gun movie?” he tried again.
The guy was killer with his English, but man his slang needed work.