several seconds nobody moved.
Then Melanie let out a shaking breath and covered her face.
Talia remained seated, staring at her reflection in the dark screen of her phone.
Ms. Bellamy began gathering the unsigned pages with careful discretion. “Ms. Price, I can have legal send the next steps this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
Rowan sat down again, the adrenaline draining so fast she nearly missed the chair.
Ranger pressed his head against her thigh.
Melanie lowered her hands. “He took Owen to school this morning,” she whispered.
Rowan’s spine stiffened. “Why?”
“He said he wanted to be the one to tell him things were fine.”
Nothing in the sentence sounded fine.
Rowan looked at the clock on the wall.
10:12 a.m.
School was already in session.
But Owen had called her after midnight and begged her not to leave him there.
And Cal, cornered and humiliated, had driven him to school himself.
A chill moved through her deeper than the sleet ever had.
She stood again, faster this time.
“Which school office signs him out?” she asked.
Melanie blinked. “The attendance desk, why?”
Because men like Cal never walked away empty-handed.
Because power, once threatened, looked for something smaller to grab.
Because Rowan suddenly knew with brutal certainty that the meeting at the bank had only been the first battle.
She picked up her cane, snapped the guardianship file shut, and looked at her mother.
“Call the school,” she said. “Now.”
Then she turned to the door with Ranger already moving beside her, and for the first time since coming home, she did not feel like the one being cast out.
She felt like someone arriving just before the real damage could be done.
