Fat Girl by Leigh Carron Page A

past has Mick filed away in his memory bank that he can whip out on a whim, using them to break down my defenses and seduce me…why? As payback? Or just because he knows he can?
     
    It’s after three o’clock when Thomas Jackson calls. Before Lena put him through I was gazing at the flowers, my pattern off and on throughout the day.
    “Ms. Chase,” he booms. “I’ve heard good things about you. It would be a shame if we ended up adversaries.”
    “We shouldn’t if your clients have Dwayde’s best interests at heart. I’m open to discussing visitation under the right conditions. But threatening my client with a court order is going to put us on opposite sides of the fence.” Though I haven’t ever been up against Jackson, his reputation precedes him. If there’s one thing he supposedly can’t stand, it’s being bested by anyone—let alone a woman twenty years his junior. But my work is the one area in which I feel total confidence. “Might we start this conversation with all thoughts of a court order off the table?” I suggest.
    “Ms. Chase,” he says with a trace of condescension, “my clients are eager to see their grandson.”
    “I presume that they don’t wish to do this by force,” I rebut. In Illinois, grandparents don’t have automatic visitation rights. But according to Isabelle, she and Victor are in support of Dwayde seeing the Franklins in a supervised environment. It’s apparently Dwayde who refuses contact. “Given the circumstances, a court order—assuming you’d even be successful—would be inadvisable. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin might end up with visitation, but it would be under duress. Is that the way they want their reunion with their grandson to begin?” I ask, calling his bluff.
    Dull tapping, like a pen striking a notepad, echoes through the telephone line.
    “Ms. Chase, allow me to point out the pertinent facts. My clients’ twenty-year-old daughter—a very troubled girl, owing to drugs and not to any absence of love from her parents—disappeared with their only grandson when he was four. Determined to find him, they spent a small fortune on private investigators. As you can well appreciate, locating a woman and child on the streets of Kentucky or any other state would be akin to trying to find a needle in the proverbial haystack.
    “The picture in the paper was their lucky break. Waiting eight long years, only to have their requests denied—twice—would test the patience of a saint. Surely you can understand that they are eager to see the young man.”
    “I sympathize with their plight, Mr. Jackson, and might I suggest they sympathize with their grandson’s. Dwayde is not a young man. He’s a child who at the age of nine ran away from his physically abusive and emotionally neglectful mother—your clients’ daughter—a junkie turning tricks to support her habit. After miraculously surviving on the streets alone for more than six months, it was Detective Torres who found Dwayde spray-painting an abandoned warehouse he’d been sleeping in. It was Victor and Isabelle Torres who tackled the system to become his legal guardians and loved away the years of neglect and mistreatment.
    “Naturally, he is scared and confused by the sudden appearance of grandparents he says he doesn’t remember, and what’s more, their pursuit of custody. Surely , after reading the psychological reports and statements from his social worker and teachers about how he is thriving, your clients can appreciate the harm they would cause by attempting to remove Dwayde from the security he’s known for the past three years. It would be win-win for everyone involved to drop the case and any thought of court-ordered visitation. We’ll work out terms—”
    “Eloquent argument, Ms. Chase,” he says, cutting me off. “But no dice. My clients will neither consider dropping the case nor waiting any longer to see their grandson.” Tap! Tap! “If Dwayde Franklin is not delivered to them at the