Phelps held my gaze for a moment. Then she picked up her pen. "Okay. Let's talk about what that requires."
* * *
"How would you describe your relationship with Lily?"
"Limited. I saw her a year ago. Before that, two years."
"Does she know you?"
"She knew who I was." I thought about the drawing again. "We weren't close, I suppose."
"Current living situation?"
"I've been working rigs. No fixed address."
"Employment?"
"I walked off the rig yesterday when I got the call."
She wrote it all down in the same careful hand, no reaction, every answer given the same weight. Which was the point. She wasn't judging; she was just stacking things. And the stack wasn't looking good.
"Criminal record?"
"Bar fight. Eight years ago. Misdemeanor assault, pled down, community service. Nothing since."
Eight years ago. A bar in Whitehorse, a man twice my size with his hands on a woman who was trying to walk away from him. I'd stepped in and it had gone the way those things go. I'd done the community service and I'd also stopped getting wasted, which wasn't a condition of the sentence but felt like the right conclusion to draw. I still had a beer now and then, but I'd walked away from the hard stuff. The kind of drinking that made the world go blurry at the edges and let the worst parts of my father’s voice sound like common sense… that had to go, so I cut it out.
I wasn't sure that counted for anything in this room, but it was the truth of it.
Phelps wrote it down and didn't look up. "Any other incidents? Domestic, DUI, anything of that nature?"
"No."
She set her pen down and looked at me for the first time since we'd started going through the list.
"Mr. Henley. I want to be honest with you." She said it the way people said it when what followed wasn't going to be easy. "No fixed address. No current employment. Limited contact with the child. And a criminal record, however minor." She pursed her lips. "Individually, I can work with each of these things. Together, they make my job harder. I want you to understand that going in."
I understood it well enough. I'd been understanding it for the last twenty minutes, watching the pile grow.
"What do I need to do?" I asked.
She picked her pen back up. "Let's start with housing. Do you have a place to stay? Here in Cedar Falls, or close?"
"I'll find something."
"Mr. Henley." She looked at me steadily. "You've just told me you have no address, no employment, and limited contact with the child. I need something more concrete than that."
"What about Cassie's house? In Clear Creek?"
She paused. "Do you know the situation there?"
"Not exactly. But Cassie was stable. She had a job, she had a life. She was likely paying a mortgage." I was thinking out loud and I knew it. I had the impression Cassie had had a mortgage, but what the hell did I really know? "I can look into taking it over. Speak to whoever I need to speak to."
It was all moving too fast. I was aware of that, in the same distant way you’re aware of things when you were operating on no sleep and the wrong side of a shock. I didn't know if Cassie owned or rented. I didn't know what her finances looked like. I didn't know anything about any of it, and I was sitting in this room sayingI'll figure itout like that was a plan.
But there was no other option. That was just the truth of it. There was no other option and the only thing worse than me walking out of this building with Lily was me walking out without her.
Something shifted in Phelps's expression. "Cassie's house would actually be significant," she said. "Familiar environment for Lily. If you can sort that out, it might help." She made a note. "I'd need you to confirm the housing situation as soon as possible."