Page 53 of After Midnight

The bailiff darted out of the courtroom and quickly returned escorting a very short, pudgy white guy accompanied by a tall, slender Black man. When the latter man passed me, he smiled and winked as if he knew me, but I couldn’t quite place him.

“What the heck?” I whispered under my breath.

Mr. Langdon smiled and whispered back, “Just watch.”

The short, pudgy man approached the bench.

“Thank you for joining the proceedings today, Mr. Fresco,” the judge said to him. “On what grounds do you petition this court to become a party to the case?”

“Your Honor, as you can see in the documents provided to the court, my client, Mr. Jeffrey Galbraith, is the legal godparent to all three children. My apologies, I mean, the two children and the young man, in this case.”

I gasped.This can’t be true? Who the hell was Jeffrey Galbraith?Not that it even mattered. I wanted to jump up and hug the man, whoever he was. Ask him a hundred questions. But I remained glued to my chair, too stunned to speak. Unlike Margarette’s attorney.

“Objection!” Mr. Clifford bellowed.

I couldn’t help but smile when the judge waved him off. “This isn’t an objectionable thing, counselor. Mr. Fresco, please continue.”

The little man gave Margarette’s attorney the same annoyed look Mr. Langdon often did before he addressed the court again. “As I was saying, you can see both Olivia and Alli’s birth parents and Mr. Lawson’s fathers made my client godparent before their deaths.”

“So, why hasn’t he come forward before now?” Mr. Clifford asked smugly.

“If I may, Your Honor?” Mr. Galbraith, the man who’d winked at me, said. That’s when I recognized his voice. The drag queen from Ashton’s apartment. Jeffrey Galbraith was Fairy Demadre.

When the judge nodded, I sat on the edge of my seat as he continued. “Frankly, I didn’t know where they were until the other night, when I ran into my godson through a mutual friend. First thing the next morning, I contacted my attorney, Mr. Fresco, who discovered this case was underway. All three children were deliberately hidden from me for years.”

Margarette’s attorney blasted another objection, and this time the judge waved her hand and said to him, “Okay, you get this one. Mr. Galbraith, please only state the facts.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, looking over at Margarette, then to me. I could see the sincerity in his eyes, along with the same deep pain often reflected in my own.

“As the documents provided by my attorney show, following the deaths of their birth parents, the girls lived with Patrick andEric. Patrick was my cousin. At the time, we mutually agreed their home offered a more stable, nurturing environment for raising the little girls, including their growing up with an older brother in Dominic. But we shared custody of those children, and I never relinquished my custodial rights. When Patrick passed away, I was on tour in Europe and returned to the States as quickly as possible to offer my support and work through the legal quagmire. So, you can understand my shock upon my return that all traces of the children were gone. They had disappeared. I only later learned, after Eric passed away, that he had married a woman shortly before his death, and that woman had taken the children, “to besafe,” he said and used air quotes around the last word.

At that point, Mr. Clifford tried to object about… well, something… but the judge gave him a warning about letting Mr. Galbraith speak. The more I listened, the more Fairy Demadre’s reaction to meeting me at Ashton’s place made sense. How she’d cried and said it’d been so good to see me,again.

“Dominic’s grandparents, his papa Eric’s parents, knew about our unique shared custody arrangement. They have always been contentious of my claim to their grandchildren and admitted they helped Ms. Shipley hide them from me. Your Honor, until I saw my godson the other night at a mutual friend’s house, I questioned if I’d ever see them again. If you look at the documents we’ve provided the court, you’ll see the lengths I went to for years, hiring multiple private investigators across different states, to find them. These children were and are wanted, Your Honor. They’re part of my family.”

The judge spent several long moments scanning through the documents, and when she looked up, she wore a knowing smile. “It does appear you have a claim to these children. Counselors?” She glanced from my attorney to Margarette’s. “Do either of youobject to my allowing Mr. Galbraith to become a party to the case?”

“I object,” Mr. Clifford said, nearly before the judge had finished speaking.

“That’ll be fine, I’ll hear your objections in a moment. Mr. Langdon, what say you?”

“No objections, Your Honor. In fact, we would welcome Mr. Galbraith and his attorney Mr. Fresco into this case.”

The judge nodded and made the ruling, despite Margarette’s attorney hemming and hawing and basically making no sense.

“Do you need time to prepare?” she asked.

Mr. Fresco cleared his throat. “No, Your Honor, we are ready to proceed.” I didn’t know how I felt about all the stuff I’d just heard. My mind was in such a whirl, all I could do was sit there and listen.

For the next hour and a half, Mr. Fresco presented one piece of evidence against Margarette after another. He even produced a sworn affidavit from my grandparents admitting they helped Margarette alter documents to hide us kids from Mr. Galbraith.

Mr. Fresco also had documentation from before Margarette took custody of us, stating she would only care for her stepchildren if our trust fund stipends came to her and she could spend the money at her discretion, as she saw fit.

Despite the fact that my heart was beating a mile a minute, and I was almost giddy with relief that things were finally looking up, I knew none of this really incriminated her. But it did go a long way toward showing what we’d been saying in court was true?Margarette was a con artist, had been essentially stealing money from the trust funds for years, and wasn’t fit to raise my little sisters.

I still thought Margaret would figure out how to come out the victor, she always did. If she wasn’t such an evil person, her resilience would be an admirable quality. Still, I couldn’t helpbut let a tiny spark of hope lift me up out of the depths of despair that’d been my constant companion for so long.

Mr. Clifford objected time and time again, each time his ridiculous objections were knocked back down by the judge. When all was said and done, Mr. Galbraith had presented a compelling case against Margarette and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt he was the legitimate godparent of all three of us and he had never relinquished custodial rights for me or my sisters.

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