Chapter 10
The venue's administrative offices were located down a long, sterile corridor far beneath the grand ballroom, where the thumping bass of the evening's closing ceremonies filtered through the floorboards like a distant, dull heartbeat. The room was furnished with gray metal desks, fluorescent lighting that hummed with a headache-inducing frequency, and plastic chairs bolted to the linoleum floor.
Clara sat beside me on one of the metal chairs, her small legs swinging slightly above the floor. She had not let go of her gray stuffed rabbit or the crumpled paper heart since we left the East Lounge. Every time a door opened down the hall, her entire body stiffened, her gaze locking onto the threshold with a hyper-vigilance that no seven-year-old child should ever possess.
"Mr. Vance," a fresh voice said as a man in a rumpled gray suit walked into the room, holding a thick file folder stamped with county seals. He introduced himself as Detective Miller from the municipal family division, having arrived ten minutes prior in response to Ms. Gable's emergency call. "Let's talk outside for a moment, just the two of us."
I looked down at Clara. She immediately grabbed the hem of my black button-down shirt. "Don't go," she murmured, her eyes wide and glassy with fresh tears.
"I'll be right outside the glass, Clara. I'm not going anywhere," I promised, keeping my voice steady despite the knot of anxiety twisting in my stomach.
I stood up and followed Detective Miller through the swinging glass door into the hallway. The detective leaned against the wall, flipping open the file. Inside were photocopies of old incident reports, a temporary custody authorization form signed by an absentee aunt who had apparently checked out of the hotel across the street four hours ago, and a social services tracking history that painted a bleak picture of administrative neglect.
"You put yourself in a very difficult position tonight, Julian," Miller said, dropping the informal tone. "According to the venue staff, you interfered with an authorized handover. Legally speaking, you're an absolute stranger to this child."
"I was standing three feet away when she walked up to me and asked if she could borrow me as her daddy for a day," I said, my voice dropping an octave as the frustration boiled over. "She was standing in the middle of a room full of four hundred people in tuxedos and evening gowns, and not a single person was looking down. If I hadn't answered her, who would have? Another twenty minutes of ignoring her, and she would have walked out into the street."
Miller sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his wire-rimmed glasses. He closed the file with a sharp slap that echoed down the quiet corridor. "I know the system is broken, Vance. I see it every single night. But good intentions don't bypass family law. Her aunt signed a temporary care waiver with the gala organizers, but she failed to provide a reliable pickup contact before she left the hotel. Right now, social services has to place her in a temporary emergency shelter until a judge reviews the file on Monday morning."
The words hit me like a physical blow. A temporary shelter. A concrete room, a stranger's bed, another set of cold administrative rules for a child who had spent the entire evening looking for someone to hold her hand.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "There has to be another way. She can't go to a shelter."
"Unless you're willing to submit an emergency foster placement application right here, right now, and clear an immediate preliminary background check with the duty judge," Miller said, watching me closely, his eyes sharp beneath the fluorescent glare. "Which means proving you have a stable residence, no criminal record, and a verifiable willingness to take on immediate legal responsibility for a child you met three hours ago."
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I looked through the glass partition into the office. Clara was sitting alone on the metal chair, staring down at the stuffed rabbit in her lap, looking impossibly small against the backdrop of the gray room.
"Give me the paperwork," I said.
