Unfit
Chapter 02 - Unfit
Rosalind Cho read the petition twice without speaking.
That scared Emily more than the legal language.
They sat in a booth at a twenty-four-hour diner near St. Andrew's Memorial, the kind with cracked red vinyl and chrome napkin holders polished by decades of elbows. Coffee burned on a warmer behind the counter.
Poppy slept in her carrier beside Emily, one fist tucked beneath her chin.
Rosalind turned another page.
“Okay.”
Emily rotated her wedding ring once.
“That didn't sound okay.”
“It isn't.”
Rosalind pushed her black-framed glasses up and scanned the first paragraph again. Her hospital badge still hung from Emily's scrub pocket, forgotten after the end of her shift.
“What does unfit actually mean?” Emily asked.
“It means Barbara isn't asking for more visits. She's saying Poppy isn't safe with you.”
Emily stared at the sugar packet she'd torn open and never poured.
“Based on one daycare pickup.”
“Not one thing.”
Rosalind tapped the paper.
“Erratic work schedule. Reliance on non-family caregivers. Emotional instability after bereavement. Inadequate housing. Alleged failure to follow pediatric recommendations.”
“That last one is a lie.”
“I know.”
“What recommendation?”
“She doesn't say. Which is convenient, because vague accusations make people sound worse than specific ones.”
The waitress refilled Emily's coffee. A dark drop slid down the side of the mug and pooled in the saucer.
Rosalind waited until she moved away.
“This is a paperwork problem,” she said.
Emily looked up.
“You call everything a paperwork problem.”
“Because most disasters arrive with a form attached.”
A tired smile almost happened.
Almost.
Rosalind pulled a yellow legal pad from her tote bag.
“We don't panic. We document. Your work schedule, childcare coverage, pediatric records, rent payments, food, sleep routine, every person who's ever watched Poppy.”
“She locked the nursery door.”
Rosalind's pen stopped.
“With Poppy inside?”
“With Barbara inside. She opened it after I demanded it.”
“Write that down.”
“I don't want this to become two women listing ugly things about each other.”
“Emily, she filed in court.”
The bluntness helped. Rosalind never wrapped bad news in cotton.
“This stopped being a misunderstanding when a clerk stamped it.”
Emily looked at Poppy's sleeping face.
The baby's lashes rested in two soft lines against her cheeks. One pink sock had slipped off again.
Emily fixed it with two fingers.
“What could she actually win?”
“Emergency temporary custody if the judge thinks there's immediate risk. More likely, an evaluator, monitored visits, a guardian ad litem, drug testing, home inspections.”
“I don't use drugs.”
“Facts matter eventually.”
“Eventually?”
Rosalind clicked her pen three times.
“Courts don't know you. They know paper first.”
The sentence stayed between them.
Emily thought of Barbara's house, where every surface looked prepared for inspection. No laundry on chairs. No bottle drying crooked beside the sink. No unpaid utility bill tucked beneath a grocery coupon.
Her own kitchen had a water stain under the window and a cabinet that wouldn't close unless she lifted it.
None of that made Poppy unsafe.
Still, shame moved through her in practical little images. The stack of clean diapers still in plastic. The cereal bowl soaking since Tuesday. The smoke detector battery she'd meant to replace.
“Look at me,” Rosalind said.
Emily did.
“You're not going to hand Barbara your child because your grout needs cleaning.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“Good. Because I'd have to slap you, and apparently the Hale women already have enough courtroom material.”
Emily gave a dry laugh.
Poppy stirred but didn't wake.
Rosalind reached across the table and covered Emily's wrist.
“She's counting on you feeling embarrassed,” she said. “Embarrassed people hide. Don't hide.”
---
That afternoon, Emily stood in Poppy's room with the petition spread across the changing table.
The townhouse nursery was barely large enough for the crib, rocker, and narrow dresser Daniel had found at a church sale. One drawer stuck in humid weather.
The walls were warm white.
Daniel had wanted green.
The memory came with the smell of paint and takeout pizza.
They had been at Barbara's house, four months before Poppy was born, painting the old Hale nursery because Barbara insisted the baby needed “a proper room here too.”
Daniel stood on a ladder, rolling pale green paint across the ceiling edge.
“My mother thinks trim is a moral issue,” he'd said.
Emily sat on the floor with her swollen feet stretched over a drop cloth.
“She thinks everything is a moral issue.”
“That's because saying ‘preference’ doesn't scare anyone.”
He climbed down and held out the roller.
“You want to do the last strip?”
“I can't reach it.”
“I'll hold you.”
“You'll drop me.”
“Never.”
He had said it lightly.
Ten months after his funeral, the word still had teeth.
Emily folded the petition and placed it in a blue file box. Then she opened a fresh notebook.
WORK SCHEDULE.
CHILDCARE.
MEDICAL RECORDS.
She wrote until her hand cramped.
At six, she called Poppy's pediatrician and requested the full chart. At six-twelve, she emailed daycare for sign-in records and incident reports.
At six-forty, she texted the charge nurse asking for copies of her approved scheduling accommodations.
Action steadied her.
Numbers had edges. Dates stayed put.
People rewrote themselves every time they opened their mouths.
At seven, Rosalind arrived with Thai food, three binders, and a label maker.
“You own a label maker?” Emily asked.
“I work in family law. Of course I own a label maker.”
They ate pad see ew on the floor while Poppy banged a plastic spoon against a bowl.
Rosalind opened Barbara's filing again.
“This missed pickup. What date?”
“February fourteenth.”
“Romantic.”
“I was in pediatric trauma.”
“Who picked her up?”
“You did.”
“And who arrived after me?”
“Barbara.”
Rosalind wrote both names.
“Overnight sitter?”
“My mother came from Rockford when I worked New Year's Eve.”
“That's family, which she conveniently left out.”
“She doesn't count my family.”
Rosalind looked at her over the top of the notebook.
“We will.”
Poppy tossed the spoon and squealed.
For five minutes, they stopped talking about court. Emily fed her banana in tiny pieces while Rosalind made exaggerated chewing faces until Poppy laughed.
It was the first clean sound of the day.
Emily stored it somewhere private.
---
At nine-thirty, Rosalind's phone buzzed on the wood floor.
She read the message and frowned.
“What?” Emily asked.
“I asked someone at the clerk's office to send the docket details.”
“That sounds legal.”
“It is if they're public.”
Rosalind turned the screen around.
The hearing date was nine days away.
Emily read it twice.
“That soon?”
“Emergency petitions move fast.”
“Can she do that without proof?”
“She only needs enough to make a judge look closer.”
Rosalind scrolled.
“Wait.”
Her thumb stopped.
“What now?”
“There are attachments referenced here that weren't in your copy.”
“What kind?”
“Supplemental notes. Dates, times, statements from third parties.”
Emily's ring turned once, twice, three times.
Rosalind went quiet.
“How many dates?” Emily asked.
“Fourteen.”
The room seemed louder after that. The baby monitor hissed. Pipes knocked behind the wall. A neighbor dragged a trash bin along the alley.
“Fourteen incidents?”
“Fourteen entries.”
Emily took the phone.
The dates began five months earlier.
Before the daycare pickup.
Before Emily returned to full-time shifts.
Before Barbara ever said she was worried.
One entry noted a late grocery delivery. Another recorded a night Emily's kitchen light stayed on until 3:10 a.m. A third listed the name of a babysitter Barbara had never met.
Emily's fingers stopped on the screen.
“She didn't build this after the pickup,” she said.
“No.”
“She was already watching.”
Rosalind closed the binder slowly.
“Emily, this case didn't start Friday.”
May you like
The hearing was nine days away, but Barbara's plan had begun months before Emily knew she was in danger.
Keep reading Part 3 — because one detail in Barbara's hallway has never belonged to the Hale family history.
