Squared Away (Out of Uniform 5)

“You weren’t aware that a lawyer, apparently acting for you, filed a motion to intervene in my guardianship case? You’ve never heard of this guy? And there’s another one for your uncle. Never heard of that either?”

“No. I saw a lawyer,” Mark said, killing any hope Isaiah had harbored that this was all a mistake. “But he was supposed to tell me before the papers were filed. Let me think—”

“Let you think?” Isaiah stared him down. “You didn’t think you might want to do that thinking with me? Might want to tell me that you were getting your own lawyer? At any point in the last six weeks or so?”

“I was going to tell you—”

“Are we going to be late for school?” Daphne’s voice was higher than usual. “It’s pink day, remember?”

“Can you let me run the kids to school?” Mark asked. “We shouldn’t fight right now—”

“Yeah? When would you like to schedule that?” Isaiah got his point that they couldn’t fight in front of the kids, but damn, he was furious. And waiting wasn’t going to help that.

“The second I get back from drop-off. Promise.” Mark gave him a pleading look, but Isaiah was no longer putting any stock in Mark’s promises. “Will you be here? Please?”

Isaiah made him sweat for several seconds before finally grinding out, “Yeah. Okay.”

“We’ll work this out. I promise. I know it looks bad—”

“Go.” Isaiah wasn’t having his excuses, not when he’d effectively curtailed the argument. Then because the girls were still there, looking at the two of them wide-eyed, he added, “It’ll be okay. Nothing for you guys to worry about, I promise.” Unlike Mark, he meant his promises. He wasn’t going to let his anger at Mark bleed over onto the kids.

To that end, he even helped Mark load up, came back in, got Liam out of the high chair, got him cleaned up, put him in the pack-n-play with some toys. And then he returned to the papers, really reading them this time. The papers asserted that Mark should be considered for financial guardian because of his “intimate familiarity with the family’s finances” and as an option for physical placement as well. The filing from the uncle said that he was an “interested party” and asked that he be considered as financial guardian if Mark could not do the task. Like Mark’s papers, it alleged that he or Mark was better suited to manage the “considerable sum of money and property” for the children. And it explicitly stated support for Mark’s case as physical guardian.

Fuck. Fuck. He’d been so sure that Mark believed in him, thought he was the best option for the kids. He’d thought Mark trusted him. How wrong he’d been. And now it was up to him to fight for what was right and fair for the kids. For him. And screw whatever he’d had going with Mark. This was personal now and he was going down swinging.

* * *

Mark managed to keep it cool on the drive to the school and while signing the girls in. He’d half expected Isaiah to insist on coming along so that they could resume their argument that much sooner. Man, Isaiah was pissed. Far more than he’d already been, thanks to Mark’s behavior the day before. Now Mark had given him more ammunition for his anger, not that Mark could really blame him. He’d been totally blindsided and that was all Mark’s fault.

He dialed Clancy Bolton’s office from the parking lot of the school.

“Mr. Bolton is in a meeting with his associate, but he can call you back,” the woman who answered the phone reported.

“This is Mark Whitley. He filed court papers without my permission. You get him on the phone now or I’m coming down there.” Mark used the same “accept no excuses” voice he used with his recruits. And wonder of wonders, it worked, with Clancy on the line in under two minutes.

“Mark. What seems to be the problem?”

“Isaiah—Isaiah James—was just served with court filings from your office. I thought we were going to talk before you actually filed papers?”

“No, that wasn’t my understanding.” Clancy blustered. “You signed the necessary documents when you were in the office. And I called three times last week, told you we needed to get moving on filing because the court investigator meeting’s been set. In the last two messages, I told you I’d go ahead and file if I didn’t hear back because your uncle said we were good to go.”

“Oh, I’m calling him next,” Mark said darkly. “I was trying to save the lives of my recruits. Working long shifts. I might have missed some messages, and that’s on me, but this is not cool. Isaiah’s furious—”

“You didn’t talk to him? Tell him that you were filing? I know it was Tom Yates’s idea that y’all cohabitate with the kids awaiting the court’s decision. I had my doubts on that being a good course of action. But what’s done is done. It’d be easier for everyone if he was amenable to a mediation—that’s probably what the court investigator is going to propose, that this goes to mediation before it goes to the court. I thought y’all had a good working relationship.”