We stayed like that on the floor of the judge’s chambers while the room emptied around us. Caleb left first, moving quickly, his attorney close behind him, neither of them speaking. My attorney touched my shoulder once and said she would call me that afternoon.
The judge’s clerk closed the door softly on his way out, and then it was just the two of us, my daughter and me, kneeling on the carpet of an office that smelled like paper and old coffee, holding each other in the silence that comes after something has finally been said.
The weeks that followed moved with the particular momentum of a legal process that has been given new evidence and new urgency. The forensic accounting review found the Arizopa account within days. It contained nearly two hundred thousand dollars that Caleb had moved in increments small enough to avoid automatic detection, routed through three intermediary accounts, and parked in a structure designed to be invisible during asset disclosure.
