My Life In Pieces (Book #1)

Chapter 1

The father shall maintain majority custodial rights.

The words that ended life as I knew it.

"The father will maintain majority custodial rights and be required to complete the necessary paperwork and process to allow the minor to gain residency with him within the next 120 days. If he fails to do so the secondary custodial petitioner may request a motion to gain temporary primary custody while the case is being reviewed. The secondary custodial petitioner acknowledges that they are not a biological parent but has asked that they maintain visitation rights with the minor during at least one school break a year.

This court finds after interviews with the minor, the minor's adult sibling, and both of the petitioners that this would be beneficial for the minor. This court finds that as long as the Secondary Petitioner can afford travel expenses and lodging for the minor and the minor does not have activities that travel would cause an unnecessary interruption to, the Secondary Petitioner can make a formal request to have the minor come during winter or summer breaks in the school year.

The Secondary Petitioner will maintain physical custody of the minor until the 7th of August. The Primary Petitioner has stated this as the date they wish to have the minor join them in Toronto, Canada. The Secondary Petitioner has stated that this arrangement is acceptable. This case will be considered closed unless further motions are formally made with the court. We are now adjourned."

The words had been read off of a sheet of paper by a clerk but had been drafted by the judge. His words felt so cold. The Minor. The Secondary Petitioner. Those labels failed to explain the fact this was a family being ripped apart.

I have a fucking name! Jordan has a fucking name!

Mom.

That title fit her so much more than Secondary Petitioner. She may not have been my biological parent as this asshole of a judge pointed out, but she was more of a mother than my own mother who acts more like an egg donor than a real parent. She hadn't even filed to fight dad on this custody move. She had even signed in favor of his case.

The four months the judge allowed for arrangements to be made somehow simultaneously flew by and dragged on at the same time.

Tim sent over mounds of paperwork and forms for Jordan and I to fill out. If he had been more of an actual father, he might have known more of the answers to the endless questions on them.

I was waiting on my sister Elyse to pick me up for the airport.

Looking up from my phone, I watched Patrick be as zoned out as I wish I could be. I had grown to love this gangly, pale, dweeb during our tenure as step siblings. Years of memories flooded through my mind.

My cheeks felt like they were on fire when the timeline got to this summer.

While we were no longer legally siblings, I had a feeling that it was still a little taboo for us to be attracted to each other. It didn't help that we slept down the hall from one another. I felt like I was living in an episode of the Brady Bunch when I thought about it.

Jordan would have killed us if she found out how many nights we spent trying not to get caught sneaking into each other's rooms. She would have given us a lecture on how we were still somehow a family, how fifteen and seventeen were too young to be hitting so many bases, and how what we were doing could lead to consequences we weren't ready for.