When I got back to Sandra’s office, she read the screenshots and let out a long breath through her nose.
“Well,” she said, “that is an unusually stupid thing for a wealthy man to put in writing.”
The week of the hearing arrived in hard, bright cold. Nora developed a talent for sleeping only in forty-minute bursts unless she was on my chest. I learned how to draft timelines with one hand while bouncing her gently with the other. My hair lived in a clip. My body still felt like borrowed architecture.
The night before court, I laid out my clothes on the back of the bedroom chair: charcoal dress, black pumps, silver studs. I packed bottles for Roz, who would keep Nora during the hearing. I checked the folder Sandra wanted me to bring even though she already had copies of everything. Then I stood in the tiny kitchen of my apartment and looked around.
Lamp glow on the counter. Drying rack full of baby bottles. The river beyond the window, black and quiet. My whole life had been reduced and rebuilt in rooms smaller than the pantry of my old house.
And somehow, standing there, I didn’t feel reduced at all.