Leah
Six Years Later
The lawyer Maggie found had told me Jacob could not simply take a wanted baby from me because I was young and broke. She had also told me the fight would be expensive, public, and slow, and that his lawyers could make every weakness cost me.
I could have fought. At eighteen, with my Austin plan deferred, no home of my own, and my pregnancy already turned into a press release, I chose the path that kept Bella with me and let me keep studying. Jacob and I married quietly before she was born. I told myself choosing the least terrifying option counted as consent. It did not.
Being a social worker made you good at reading rooms.
Not in the dramatic way people imagined. Not some magical ability to know what people were hiding. Just practice. Years of sitting in rooms wh
