“Tell me everything,” she said.
The Day Before
The night before the hearing, I made pasta for dinner. It was what we had. Lily helped stir the sauce and Marcus set the table with the focused intensity he brought to tasks that he understood were important even when no one explained why.
We ate together. I asked about their days. Lily talked about a project at school. Marcus told a joke that didn’t quite land but that I laughed at anyway because his face when he told it was worth laughing for.
After dinner, after baths and bedtime stories and the light in the hallway left on because Marcus still needed it, I went back to the kitchen table and sat with my documents.
Support payment histories. Bank statements with the reversals highlighted in yellow. A calendar I had kept tracking the gaps between when payments were expected and when, or whether, they arrived. Texts from Derek that were carefully worded in ways that implied generosity while producing nothing.
Ms. Patel had reviewed all of it. She had told me the case was strong but not certain. Judges saw a lot of custody disputes. Photographs of empty pantry shelves hit differently than bank records, which were harder to read quickly and easier to explain away.
“Be prepared,” she had said, “for it to be difficult before it gets better.”
I folded the papers back into their folder and went to check on the kids.
Lily was awake.
She was sitting up in bed in the dark with her knees pulled to her chest, and when I opened the door she looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read — something between relief and the specific guilt of a child who has been carrying something heavy.
