“Sometimes.” She sighed and gave him a faltering smile. “Luckily I’ve got support. I have my parents and you. I couldn’t have gotten through today without you, Simon.”
Heather reached out to him and he took a seat beside her, taking her small hand in his. “Whatever you need, I’m here,” he said.
“All I need is you,” she said gently before leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.
Her soft lips brushing against him was enough to send a strange combination of tenderness and desire running through him. As she pulled her lips away, the feeling inside him gave way to dread. Because he knew just by looking at the pain etched on her face that if the stress of the custody battle really took its toll, he was liable to lose Heather. There was no way their relationship could survive her losing Finn, even if it the loss ended up being a temporary setback. If she lost her son, Simon was certain he would lose her in the process. Lose both of them. And as the icy claw of fear gripped his heart, he realized that he didn’t know how he could possibly survive losing the two people he was already starting to think of as his family.
BY THE TIME HER LAWYER returned, she’d gone over the court schedule he had handed over to her. Simon was in the corner of the conference room, taking a business call.
“How did it go with the investigator?” she asked as Aaron resumed his seat beside her.
“Good. He’s ready to start going over Gary’s life with a fine-toothed comb,” Aaron said. “However, the investigator just gone into a meeting, so he won’t be able to meet with you at the moment. In the meantime, he wants any details you might have on Gary.”
She bit her lip, wracking her brain. “I haven’t lived with Gary since the divorce, so I haven’t exactly been keeping up with his life. If he has any secrets, he’s keeping them well hidden from me.”
“At this point, no detail is too small,” Aaron said. “You don’t have to know any secrets. Even a minor detail could get the ball rolling. He works at a construction company, right?”
“Yes. He’s been there for several years, and seems to be a pretty good employee.” She paused. “But if he was so willing to pressure Simon for millions of dollars, maybe things aren’t going so well for him at work.”
“Good point.” Aaron grabbed a pen and started scribbling in the corner of one of the files. “Do you know how he spends his money?”
“He’s kept up his child support payments,” she responded. “That seems to be the one thing he doesn’t complain about.”
Aaron frowned. “That sounds unusual.”
“Well, maybe that’s why he wanted to squeeze money out of Simon,” she said. “Maybe the child support payments have been getting to him.”
“That’s possible, but like you said, Gary complains about everything,” Aaron said. “Why is this the one area that doesn’t seem to bother him? Seems contrary to his character, don’t you think?”
“It could mean that there’s still hope,” she said. “Hope that deep down he wants to be a good dad.”
Her lawyer gave her an incredulous look and scratched his bushy beard. “I wish I could be as convinced as you, but something doesn’t add up here, Heather. Absent parents often complain about child support payments. It’s actually quite common in family law.”
“Well, what would account for Gary not complaining?” She hated asking because she knew this line of inquiry could lead somewhere even worse than she had ever imagined. But her son needed her to fight. Needed her to ruthlessly protect him like never before. She had to let go of the history they had shared together as Finn’s parents. Gary was more than likely counting on her to be softhearted, and that hadn’t done her son a bit of good. It was time to get tough, no matter how difficult it was.
“He might have tapped into another source of income,” Aaron offered. “Or maybe he got a raise that we don’t know about.”
“Gary was required to give financial information when we first worked out custody details, but maybe he’s gotten a raise. Or maybe he has a source of income that he’s never disclosed. But he’s still paying the child support. Could another source of income really be that shady, if he’s so willing to pay?”