“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.
