Page 81 of His Stepdad Wears Leather

“I’m Mariah St. Claire.” She turned to Brody. “And you are?”

“Hisstepfather,” Brody mumbled before shaking her hand.

“Your mother and I spoke on the phone this morning.” She glanced around. “Is she here, as well?”

“No. Brody brought me in.”

“Ah… she did say something about your father staking her house out, so maybe that’s for the best. No need to alert him you’re visiting an attorney.” She turned. “You guys can follow me on back.”

“I’ll stay out here,” Brody murmured.

“I could use someone in there. To navigate all this,” Noah said under his breath. When Brody didn’t move an inch.“Please.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have another brain to bounce ideas off… and to support Noah. If that’s what he needs,” Ms. St. Claire said before forging ahead.

Brody sighed before urging Noah on. They followed the attorney into her office and sat in the comfortable armchairs across from her desk. Ms. St. Claire opened a folder and scanned something there.

“Okay, from what your mother told me, your father and stepmother never returned you after a court mandated visitation—and then proceeded to use your stepmother’s connections in the judiciary to have your mother’s parental rights stripped from her. You haven’t seen your mother for over a decade—until you ran away on your eighteenth birthday and returned to her home. Your father and stepmother were there, waiting your arrival, and then used a forged birth certificate in order to claim you were still underage and have the police escort you from her home—but she was able to show the true birth certificate and the police stood down. Now you’re here to figure out what you can do, legally, to protect yourself. Do I have all that right?”

“Yes,” Noah murmured. “Well, technically I was still seventeen when I ran away. I left a few days before my eighteenth birthday.”

The attorney shrugged. “Point is, you’re eighteen now and that’s really all that matters.” She eyed him. “Are you of sound mind? No mental health issues I should aware about?”

“No mental health issues,” Noah replied.

“Well, there is the fact that his father and stepmother are very religious and…” Brody turned to Noah. “Knowing your father, they might try claiming mental incapacity. I think you need to tell her the thing that forced you to run, so she’s prepared to defend you.”

Noah nodded and turned back to Ms. St. Claire. “I’m gay. They assume there’s something wrong with me and wanted to send me away to conversion therapy. I ran before they had the chance.”

“Lovely,” the attorney said, raising an eyebrow. “Has there been any abuse?”

“Mostly mental.”

“Which is harder to prove,” she said. “Go on.”

Noah told his story, trying not to leave anything out. He shared the lies, the manipulations, the refusal to allow him college attendance, and the hours upon hours of physical labor he’d been forced to do, all in the name of their church.

She sighed. “Well, it sounds like they did their best to skirt the line between abuse and tough love.” She paused a moment. “The fact we have it on record that they didn’t return you to your mother, had her rights stripped, and then recently lied about your age, forging a legal document in order to abduct you illegally—thatwill work in our favor. It will hopefully illustrate years of manipulation and their desire to control you by any means necessary. Hopefully we can get a judge to sign a protective order. I’ll need a written statement by you, explaining in detail any abuse, any threats, or anything else that could help sway the judge—basically what you just told me. I need you to get that together and into my office as soon as possible, along with a notarized copy of your birth certificate—which I believe your mother is working on. I’ll get us before the judge as soon as I have those, so I need you to get to work.”

“This protective order, what does it mean?” Noah asked.

“Legally—they have to stay away from you. If they ignore it, they could land in jail,” she answered.

“Walt and Abbie Lee have already shown their utter lack of regard for the law,” Brody said. “They already stole him once. I wouldn’t put it past them to bust on through a protective order and attempt it again.”

Noah eyed Brody and then the attorney. The expression on her face spoke volumes. He wouldn’t be safe. Not at all.

“Isn’t there anything else I can do?” he asked.

“Outside of getting a gun and learning how to use it? No. Your stepmother’s connections have likely caused them to believe they’re above the law. I don’t know if they’d abide by the order.”

“California doesn’t have an official Stand Your Ground law,” Brody said.

“No, but there’s enough cases out there where it’s been used as a defense over the years, so there’s precedence.”

“I can’t shoot my father,” Noah said. “No matter how evil he was. There’s no way I could do that.”

“You’re staying in my home,” Brody said. “It’s my ground to stand on.”

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