“I think you’ve got the strongest case I’ve ever seen. But Wade Prescott has money, and money buys lawyers, and lawyers can do things that make the truth bend in ways it shouldn’t.”
She reached across the table and took my hand.
“I’ve been doing this for twenty-eight years. I’ve seen children go back to parents who beat them because the paperwork wasn’t filed right. I’ve seen kids end up in group homes because there weren’t enough foster families. I’ve seen the system fail more times than I can count.”
She squeezed my hand.
“But I’ve also seen it work. I’ve seen judges who care, lawyers who fight, foster parents who love so hard it changes everything. And I’ve never seen anyone fight the way you fight, Lena. Not once in twenty-eight years.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d spent so long being the one who helped, the one who fixed, the one who stayed professional and distant. I wasn’t used to being seen.
“When did you get so soft?” I asked.
She laughed. “I’m not soft. I’m just telling you the truth. Now sign these papers so I can get them filed before the courthouse closes.”
THAT NIGHT, HARLON FOUND ME IN THE KITCHEN
I was sitting at the steel table, the paperwork spread out in front of me, a cup of coffee going cold beside my elbow. I’d been staring at the same page for twenty minutes, my eyes moving over the words without processing them.
“You need to sleep,” he said.
“I need to finish this.”
“What you need is to stop pretending you’re not running on fumes. You got shot four times, Lena. Your body needs time to heal.”
I looked up at him. He was leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed, his face unreadable.
“I don’t have time to heal. The hearing is in six days. I need to make sure every document is perfect, every argument is airtight, every piece of evidence is where it needs to be. If I miss something—”
“If you miss something, we figure it out. Together.”
He crossed the kitchen and sat down across from me. The chair creaked under his weight, and for a moment, we just looked at each other.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he said. “I know you’re used to being the one who saves everyone. But you’re not alone anymore.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that I’d been alone for twelve years, that I’d learned to rely on myself because relying on anyone else only led to disappointment. But the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, I heard myself say something I hadn’t said to anyone in years.
“I had a brother. Darren. He was two years younger than me, and he was the funniest person I’ve ever known. He could make anyone laugh. Even when things were bad, he could find something to joke about.”
Harlon didn’t say anything. He just waited.
“He started using when he was nineteen. Cocaine first, then meth, then whatever he could get. I tried to help him. I tried everything. Rehab, counseling, tough love, soft love. I spent four years trying to pull him back from the edge.”
I could see Darren’s face in my mind. The way he’d look at me when he was sober, ashamed and hopeful and afraid all at once. The way he’d promise to do better, to try harder, to be the brother I deserved. The way he’d disappear again when the cravings got too strong.
“I was twenty-three when I got the call. A Tuesday morning in November. The detective’s voice was professional, gentle. The kind of gentle people practice in front of mirrors. He told me Darren was dead. Overdose. They found him in a motel room on the south side of Portland.”
I hadn’t told this story to anyone. Not in twelve years.
“I didn’t cry that day. I cried three weeks later, in the shower, with the water so hot it turned my skin red. And when I was done crying, I dried off and sat at my kitchen table and filled out the application for the social work program at Portland State University.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t save Darren. But maybe—if I moved fast enough, cared hard enough, worked long enough—maybe I could save someone else. Maybe I could keep some other family from getting that phone call.”
I looked at my hands, at the scars that were forming on my palms from the glass I’d gripped in the diner.
“I’ve been trying to save people for twelve years. And I’ve lost so many. Kids who fell through the cracks, families that couldn’t be fixed, cases that I couldn’t close fast enough. Every one of them is a failure I carry. Every one of them is Darren’s face in my nightmares.”
Harlon reached across the table and took my hands. His were warm and rough, and they covered mine completely.
“You saved Colton,” he said.
“I took four bullets. That’s not saving. That’s just… being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You threw yourself in front of a gun for a child you didn’t know. You woke up in a warehouse full of criminals and your first thought was whether that child was safe. You built a case that’s going to put a monster in prison and keep a little boy safe. That’s not being in the wrong place. That’s being exactly where you were meant to be.”
I looked at him, and for the first time in twelve years, I let someone see the fear I’d been carrying.
“What if I can’t save him? What if the system fails, and Wade Prescott gets custody, and Colton ends up with a man who sees him as a weapon instead of a child?”
Harlon’s hands tightened around mine.
“Then we fight. We fight with everything we have. We fight in the courts and in the streets and anywhere else we need to. Because that’s what families do. They fight for each other.”
“Families.”
