The Other Mothers (Chop, Chop Series Book 5)

by L. N. Cronk

  Wednesday morning, Dorito was at school and Laci had taken Lily to speech therapy. I was home alone when the doorbell rang. I answered it to find a man standing on my front porch.

  The first thing I noticed about him was his gold badge with black letters that was attached to his light, brown dress shirt. The badge read: N. Daly. He had on dark brown pants that had black stripes running up each leg and that were being held up by a shiny, black belt (which matched his shiny, black boots). The shiny, black belt was also holding a set of keys, a nightstick, pepper spray, a flashlight, a radio, handcuffs and a 9mm Glock. His cap pronounced that he was a Deputy Sheriff and (just so you know), when someone like this shows up on your doorstep, it’s never a good thing. Never.

  “Are you David Holland?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have papers to serve you, sir,” he said, handing me a bulky envelope.

  “What is this?” I asked, taking it from him.

  “I have no idea, sir. I don’t read ’em, I just serve ’em.” He wrote something down in a notebook. Then he touched the brim of his hat and said, “Have a good day.”

  “Thank you,” I said vaguely, as he turned and walked down the stairs. I closed the door and looked at the envelope in my hands. I slit it open with my finger, pulled a thick set of papers out of it, unfolded them, and began skimming the pages.

  David Holland, Petitioner, v. Savanna Evita Torres Escalante, Respondent-Mother.

  Savanna Evita Torres Escalante, Counterpetitioner v. David Holland and Laci Cline Holland, Counterrespondent.

  No. SD 8011983.

  Motion to Set Aside Judgment.

  Timothy R. Beckham, Carlos Riojas, for Respondent S.E.T.E..

  Caleb S. Michaels, for Petitioner Kawartha County Juvenile Office. Alden C. McClure, Madison Snider for Petitioners D.H. & L.C.H..

  Savanna Evita Torres Escalante (“Mother”), a citizen of Mexico, hereby moves to set aside the judgment granting a petition for termination of parental rights (“TPR”) and subsequent adoption of her minor son, Doroteo Alano Fernandez (“Child”), filed by David Holland and Laci Cline Holland (collectively, “Respondents”), and entered by the Circuit Court of Kawartha County. There are four bases for this motion. Through no fault of her own, Mother was unlawfully prevented from participating in prior proceedings. Mother had no knowledge of prior proceedings . . .

  It went on for eleven pages:

  The court found that Mother “abandoned” Child, as used in sections 102.065(7) and 113.096.4(2)(b) . . . recognition of foreign adoption . . . the court stated that Mother had no contact with Child nor attempted to communicate with him from the time he was found . . . not a party to original hearing . . . excusable neglect . . . Biological father, (“Father”) did without lawful authority, physically asport Child without consent from Mother (Model Penal Code § 512.1) . . . Additionally, nothing in the record indicates that Mother knew how to contact Child or where to find him either before or after he was placed with Respondents . . . father further denied mother the opportunity to contest adoption through physical and psychological means . . . judgments are void . . . it is of course true that the [adoption] statute is to be liberally construed with a view to promoting the best interests of the child, but such liberal construction is obviously not to be extended to the question of when the natural parents may be divested of their rights to the end that all legal relationship between them and their child shall cease and determine . . . [I]t must always be borne in mind that the rights of natural parents to the custody and possession of their children are among the highest of natural rights[.] . . .

  There it was – my worst fear – right before my eyes in black and white.

  Savanna Escalante was trying to reverse our adoption of Dorito.

  ~ ~ ~

  TANNER WAS AT school and I was planning on leaving him a message, so he surprised me when he answered his phone.

  “Yo,” he said.

  “She wants Dorito.”

  There was a long, long pause.

  “Are you sure?” he finally asked.

  “A sheriff’s deputy just showed up at my front door and served me with papers,” I said shortly. “How much more ‘sure’ do you want me to be?”

  “Do you want me to call Madison?” he asked, ignoring my rudeness.

  “I already called her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I’m meeting her at her office in thirty minutes.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” he asked.

  “Aren’t you teaching?”

  “I’m inflating basketballs,” he said. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he said and I called Laci next.

  “You still think Savanna Escalante’s just some poor woman who’s been misunderstood and who wants nothing more than a few moments with her long, lost son?” I asked her.

  I got just about as long of a pause from her as I had from Tanner.

  “What’s going on?” she finally asked quietly.

  “Oh, nothing much,” I said acidly. “She’s just trying to get the adoption overturned so she can take him back to Mexico and we’ll never get to see him again.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, really? Then why did a sheriff ’s deputy just served me with papers?”

  I got another long pause and then she said, “I’ll . . . I’ll be home in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” I snapped and I hung up the phone.

  Twenty minutes later I was waiting in the lobby of Madison’s office with Tanner.

  “Let me see what you got,” Tanner asked. I handed the papers to him.

  “Why does it say Doroteo Alano Fernandez?” he wanted to know after he’d only been looking at it for a minute.

  “It was the name the orphanage assigned him with after he was abandoned in the park and nobody came forward to tell us what his real name was.”

  “So, it’s just like . . . made up?”

  “Basically,” I nodded.

  “You don’t know his birthday either,” Tanner realized slowly. “You celebrate it in January, but you don’t know that that’s when he was really born, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I wonder when it is,” Tanner said, more to himself than to me. I glared at him and he quit talking.

  Eventually, Madison stepped out into the hall.

  “David?” she said, motioning us back.

  We went back into her office and I handed her the stack of papers.

  “What does it mean?” Tanner asked after Madison had finished perusing the document and looked back up at us.

  “She’s entering a motion with the Circuit Court to set aside the ruling on your adoption petition,” she told me, confirming what I already had figured.

  “On what grounds?” Tanner asked.

  “They’re claiming that she never consented to the adoption.”

  “He was abandoned in a park!” I cried. “When she deserted him that made him an orphan and he was adoptable. We didn’t need her consent.”

  “She’s claiming she didn’t desert him,” Madison said, shaking her head. “She’s claiming her husband left him in the park without her knowledge. Essentially she’s claiming that he was kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?”

  “Yes. By her husband. She’s contending that he kept the child from her without her consent and then refused to tell her where the boy was. She claims she was abused and oppressed by her husband and was not able to freely pursue searching for the child until her husband recently became ill and subsequently died. She began searching for the child immediately after her husband passed away.”

  “Does she have a case?” I asked. She hesitated and I kept looking at her – waiting for her to say something that would unknot my stomach.

  She didn’t.

  “If she can prove that the child was kidnapped, the motion potentially could be gran
ted.”

  “But David and Laci have had him for over four years,” Tanner protested. “He’s never known any other parents . . .”

  “There’s no question that returning him to his biological mother may not be in his best interest, but if she can prove that she didn’t abandon him and that she never consented to the adoption . . . it may not matter. A parent’s right to raise her children is one of the oldest fundamental liberty interests recognized by the United States Supreme Court.”

  “They can’t take Dorito away,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “It’s not right.”

  “When her husband took the child from her, he committed a crime,” Madison said carefully. “Unfortunately, when a crime has been committed, things often don’t turn out ‘right’. Almost always, somebody gets hurt.”

  “Can’t you do something?” Tanner asked.

  She looked at him for a moment, and then at me.

  “Mr. Holland,” she finally began.

  “David,” I reminded her.

  “David. Let me explain something to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “My husband and I are partners here at this law firm. It’s just the two of us. We handle everything from divorce and custody cases to DUIs and minor traffic violations. We also do our fair share of real-estate deals, wills, setting up trust funds, that sort of thing.”

  I nodded.

  “My husband takes most of the cases involving criminal offenses and I do most of the family law cases. We don’t always defer to each other, but for the most part, I get the custody and visitation cases. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So I’ve had a lot of experience in this area.”

  I nodded again.

  “If this was a typical case, I would agree to represent you right now, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “This is not a typical case.”

  I may have nodded one more time.

  “Honestly,” she went on, “I don’t even know of any similar situations that could be referred to. I’m sure there are some – somewhere – but I have no idea where I’d even begin. Furthermore, this motion is only addressing the adoption that was granted at the state level – it doesn’t even touch the original adoption in Mexico itself. I have no experience in the international laws that would be at play here and that makes me very hesitant to offer you my assistance.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked in a weak voice.

  “Have you ever heard of Reanna Justice?” Madison asked.

  I knew I’d heard the name before, but it took me a minute to remember where.

  “The frozen embryo case?” I finally asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What frozen embryo case?” Tanner wanted to know. Madison turned toward him.

  “It made national headlines about five years ago,” she explained. “An infertile couple in Idaho purchased four frozen embryos from a fertility clinic in West Virginia. They hired a woman from Michigan to act as a surrogate. All four embryos were implanted and three of them developed. Two healthy boys and one healthy girl were carried to term.”

  She glanced at me and then back to Tanner.

  “About two months before the babies were due, a couple from Canada came forward and claimed that the embryos were theirs and that they’d never given up custody of them. They sued everybody involved . . . the couple from Idaho, the surrogate mother and the fertility clinic. DNA tests revealed that the babies were indeed the biological offspring of the couple from Canada. They wanted five million dollars in damages and full custody.”

  She turned and faced me now. “Reanna Justice was the attorney for the couple from Idaho. She’s the one you need to hire.”

  “She’s an attorney,” Tanner interjected, “and her last name is Justice?”

  “Pretty sweet, huh?” Madison asked, smiling at him. “And I’m stuck here working at Snider and Snider.”

  “But the Idaho couple lost, didn’t they?” I protested. “Didn’t the biological parents get those babies?”

  “Yes,” Madison admitted, “and they were awarded two million dollars from the fertility clinic, but there’s no way that that Idaho couple was ever going to be granted custody. Those embryos were sold illegally. Granted, the Idaho couple didn’t know that, but there was no chance that any court was going to award them custody instead of the biological parents when no one had even laid hands on the infants yet. It was a given from day one that those embryos were going to be awarded to their biological parents as soon as they were born. No lawyer in the world was going to stop that from happening.”

  I think she could tell that I wasn’t too impressed.

  “That case should never have even made it to court,” she explained, leaning toward me. “The only reason there even was a trial was because they hired Reanna Justice as their lawyer. I don’t know of anybody else who could have gotten it as far as she did.”

  “So you think she’s good,” I stated.

  “She’s the best,” Madison said. “Plus I bet she’d love to sink her teeth into this. Like I said, this is a really unusual situation. If you don’t want to lose your son, you’ll get her on retainer right away.”

  ~ ~ ~

  LACI AND I had a knock-down, drag-out that night after the kids were in bed. It was a good thing that Dorito was a sound sleeper and that Lily was deaf.

  “She’s his mother!” Laci yelled at me. “She should be allowed to see her child!”

  “Why don’t we just work out a visitation schedule with her?” I shouted back. “Every other weekend with one week at Christmas and then a month in the summer? How’s that sound? Or maybe we could let her move in with us or . . . Oh, no! I’ve got it! Why don’t we move down there with her? That’s what you really think we should do, isn’t it?”

  Laci glared at me.

  “She is not taking my son from me,” I told her. “Do you understand? I will do anything . . . anything to keep that woman from getting my son.”

  “She just wants to see him . . .”

  “Yeah,” I yelled. “That’s why she’s hired a lawyer! That’s why she’s trying to get the adoption overturned and why she’s trying to get her parental rights back!”

  “She hired a lawyer because you backed her into a corner!” Laci cried. “The only reason she even went to an attorney in the first place was because she wanted to see if he could get her permission to meet Dorito somehow! He decided to represent her pro bono and he’s the one that convinced her that they should try for full custody. It wasn’t her idea. None of this even would have happened if you’d just let her see him!”

  “You’ve been talking to her?” I asked, stunned.

  “Yes, I’ve been talking to her! I feel sorry for her!”

  “You can’t talk to her!” I yelled. “Our attorney specifically said that we’re to have no communication with her, whatsoever.”

  “Your attorney.”

  “What?”

  “I said ‘Your attorney’. She’s your attorney . . . not my attorney. I’m not keeping her from seeing Dorito . . . you are. I think it’s heartless that you won’t let her see him and I’m not going to be a part of it.”

  “You’re taking her side on this?” I asked, staring at her in disbelief. “You’re helping her?”

  “I’m not helping her – I’m just trying to do what’s right!”

  I set my jaw and fixed my eyes on her. The next time I spoke, I didn’t yell.

  “You are not to talk to her again,” I said, my voice controlled and even. “Do you understand?”

  Laci was – we were – very conservative in our beliefs about the roles of a man and woman in a marriage. If Laci and I disagreed on something, we tried to talk it out and work out a solution. But if we couldn’t come to a mutual agreement about something, then the final decision was up to me. I realize that in this time of women’s rights and equality, this belief might sound archaic, but – Biblically – we believed that the man was appointed as head of his w
ife just as Christ is head of the Church.

  (I would like to take this opportunity here to point out that I didn’t take my responsibilities lightly, nor did I ever take unfair advantage of my position. When we’d been living in Mexico and Laci had been diagnosed with cancer, I’d insisted that we return to the United States for her treatments – even though she had fought me tooth and nail. That was the only time I had ever used the “A-Man-is-the-Head-of-His-Wife” card.)

  I was about to play it again, though.

  “Do you understand?” I demanded sternly when she didn’t answer.

  She glared at me, her face full of hatred, but she finally gave me the slightest of nods.

  “Good,” I said, and I turned around and stormed out of our bedroom.

  I went into the office and briefly surveyed the full-sized couch that was in there. This was the couch where Lily had snuggled on my lap and first said the word Daddy . . . where Charlotte had told her mother that she was pregnant . . . where I had taught Amber how to play chess . . . where Laci and I had made up after I’d found out that she and Tanner had once loved each other . . . the couch where Dorito had sobbed against my chest after Amber had left us.

  Now, I didn’t pull out the hidden mattress, but I did grab one of the pillows from the closet and I tucked a sheet around the cushions of the couch. Then I laid a second sheet and two blankets down and tucked them in as well. Finally, I pulled back the top sheet and the blankets, took off my slippers and bathrobe, and then I lay down – in the bed that I had made for myself.

  ~ ~ ~

  IF TANNER AND I had not already been planning on going fishing the next day, I probably would have called him and begged him to take me – the thought of spending the entire day with Laci set my teeth on edge. He picked me up before the sun was up, as planned, and I strapped a groggy Dorito into the back of his truck before we pulled away.