Jack looked at his desk, trying to sort of out which of the electronic devices was making noise now. His personal cell was silent. So were his laptop and his consortium slate, that just left his work phone. He answered. "Jack Sheridan, state department."
"Mary Hannigan, Norfolk office," the woman on the far end answered.
He tried to place the face with name. He'd only been to the Norfolk office twice and he failed.
"Go ahead."
"I've an alert, tagged for you."
"Okay."
"You wanted to know of any legal filings from a James Suffolk?"
"Yes." Jack's heart was hammering now. "What is it?" Let it be another OWI, or worse.
"It's request for a custody hearing."
Crap.
"Can you scan it and email it to me?"
"Right away, sir. Is it something important?"
He thought hard. They'd had leaks before. "No," he lied. "Just send it, we'll deal with it from this office, from now on. Thanks."
He hoped she wouldn't dig, not enough to figure out it was connected to Cheyenne. The last thing they needed was the press getting ahold of this story.
He started towards his laptop and then on impulse pulled the slate over instead. He found the portal and pulled the email up. He called Barry on his personal phone. "We've got a situation." He explained about the filing.
"Give me the lawyer's name. I'll do some digging." Barry was in Washington, D. C. Working on getting his old office closed and his apartment sub-letted so he could move to the station. "I might even run down there quick. I'll get back to you as soon as I know something."
######
Two days after the supper with Capal Turik, Cheyenne and her family moved into a medical apartment on the bottom floor of Shin station. It was in a section called Spacer's Rest in the local tongue. It was dotted with medical apartments and semi-permanent rooms that served space travelers that were temporarily unable to travel, or wanted to take a rest from travels.
Their apartment was no smaller than her home back on earth and nondescript. It was along an hallway that ran nearly three earth blocks, with almost identical apartments on either side. It opened on both ends into a large court area teaming with shops and restaurants.
The people were friendly enough but Cheyenne couldn't help but name them, in her head at least, a rough crowd. They were tech and worker class, used to being active. Many had injuries and everywhere she looked she saw clacker limbs and black patches. Their neighbor, Kantiva, was a space pilot. Her eyes had been burned out in a shielding accident. She spoke warmly when she welcomed them, but something about the robotic red glow of her temporary artificial eyes set Cheyenne's nerves on end. The man who sold food at the nearest stand had lost an arm in a decompression accident. The rail thin woman that sat nearby had spent months on starvation rations, waiting for their ship to be rescued after an engine malfunction left them stranded on a deep space exploration mission.
James, predictably, loved it. He had an insatiable appetite for asking about people's injuries and they seemed as happy to answer. They all, to a man, laughed off any suggestion that space travel was hazardous, assuring Cheyenne their injuries were rare, freak occurrences. "It just looks that way, cause we are all gathered here to recover," one told her. "But this is a tiny fraction of the people who work in space, I assure you."
The kids had been enrolled in school. They had spent the first three days in testing. Now they were spending part of their day in private tutoring, learning the language and catching up on basic education, and part of the day with other kids their age.
Cheyenne had worried about James' ADHD. She didn't have any of his medication, and she wasn't sure how to go about getting anything here. The healers she tried to talk to about it, didn't seem have any clue what she talking about. "Rapid neuro-kinetics and poor attention control," Janda pronounced. "But within norms. Certainly no disease in his brain I can see."
The teachers shrugged the issue off as well. "He's a highly opportunistic learner. He needs more interactives and hands on. Lots of kids are like that. No big deal." Cheyenne eventually shrugged the question of herself, if the school thought he was doing okay, then she wasn't going to worry about it.
Mackenzie was taking the transition harder. She didn't like the girls in her class. They were standoffish and not very friendly. Cheyenne knew the feeling from her own youth. She'd been a navy brat, traveling frequently with Dad's assignments. But in ways it was the same here. Most of the kids were spacers, their parents traveling to various stations or ships for work. They moved around frequently and they weren't quick to let people in, knowing they'd only have to say goodbye sooner rather than later.
Cheyenne herself felt adrift, lost in this new sea of humanity. She'd been so focussed on her kids that she hadn't seriously thought about what came after. Now she had no idea.
Lana kept assuring her she had time to heal and think about it. That non-answer just irritated Cheyenne more. It didn't help.