Page 16 of Can't Help Falling

“Of course not,” Myra said, eyeing him over her almost comically thick glasses. She had the voice of a much younger woman but the face and hair of a sixty-year-old. “Lorraine’s not legally allowed to see Kylie right now. They’re going to charge her with neglect, child abandonment, a dozen other things to boot.”

Tyler’s mind felt both sluggishly slow and dizzyingly fast. There were seven thousand questions rotating in his head, and he had no idea which to ask first. “Jail time?” he choked out.

“Probably,” Myra said, pushing her glasses up onto her forehead and pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes for a moment. “What she did is criminal. But her lawyer is good. I know him. He’ll push for court-ordered rehab and probation. And there’s a good chance he’ll get it.”

“She won’t get Kylie back.”

Myra’s glasses dropped and her eyebrows lifted. “Are you asking or telling?”

“I don’t fucking know.” Tyler leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and he hung his head.

He’d never wanted problems like these. These were father problems. Tyler wanted brother problems. He could maybe deal with Full House–style hijinks. But this? It was too much.

“Why would Lorraine do this, Myra?” Tyler asked after a long pause. “Drugs? Mental illness? Who just abandons their kid like this?”

Myra, apparently taking pity on him, rose up, left the office and came back a minute later with a glass of ice water. “Sorry it’s not bottled. Not a lot of money running through these halls.”

Tyler gulped half of it in one go, coughed and set the rest of it aside.

“It could be both, either,” Myra said gently, finally answering his question. “Honestly, we might never know. Kylie might never know. It’s possible that Lorraine doesn’t even know.”

He leaned forward again, even more vehement than before. “She won’t get Kylie back.”

“You’re right,” Myra said, sitting back in her seat with a barely muffled groan. “Lorraine is most likely not going to get Kylie back anytime soon. But, if she aces rehab, doesn’t make trouble on her probation or jail time, gets a job, holds down a nice clean house, there’s always the chance she could get her back in a year or two. She’s the girl’s mother, and the system likes to see mothers with their children.”

Tyler wasn’t sure what made his stomach clamp down harder: the thought of him being Kylie’s sole guardian for an entire year or two, or the idea of Kylie eventually going back to Lorraine.

“A year or two.” He tried the words out.

“In the meantime, we proceed as we have been. She won’t be allowed to see Kylie for a few months anyhow, most likely. And once she is, it’ll just mean you cart Kylie back and forth between Ohio and New York. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. You’re going to go ahead with the original plan. Taking her back to New York.”

Tyler felt that disorienting lightness associated with relief. His mind might be completely bamboozled, but his body was telling him that he was relieved that Kylie would be coming home with him still. Immensely relieved.

“Do you want to be the one to tell Kylie?” Myra asked.

“God, no,” he answered on instinct, then grimaced. “Sorry. But maybe it would be better if you did.”

Myra nodded that weathered face of hers. “That’s fine. I’ll be in touch in the next few days when I know more. Send Kylie in on your way out.”

Tyler rose, was halfway to the door when he remembered to turn around and shake Myra’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Tyler, I know this is...confusing news at best.”

“I want what’s best for Kylie.” He meant that. Even if he had no freaking clue what it actually meant.

“I know you do. And so do I. It’s human nature. But when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn that ‘best’ isn’t a destination. It’s something you have to make, over and over again.”

Tyler nodded and made his way back into the hallway where Kylie was fiddling with her phone, her feet up on the bench beside her. She was smiling down at the screen but that smile dropped cartoonishly fast the second she saw Tyler’s face.

“Myra wants to see you.”

Kylie brushed past him. And that was it. He waited in the hallway. They said nothing to one another on the car ride home.

He was just turning to say something to Kylie, anything, when she slammed into the house and up to her room, sealing herself off from him. They had about three hours until they had to leave for the airport. They’d gotten everything packed last night and all there was left to do was throw out anything that would go bad. Lock up and leave.

Tyler decided that he’d do himself a solid and take a quick run. Something to settle his nerves.

While he’d waited for the okay to take her home, the only thing that had been keeping him sane was his five a.m. jogs through Kylie’s suburb. Misty autumn runs with no one around, sleeping houses on either side, garage doors haphazardly open, occasionally an early-morning dog walker, but mostly just dawn-blue solitude.

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