My ex-husband cheated on me, left me and our son, and still invited us to his wedding.

The Texas State Bar's offices were on Congress Avenue, fourteen floors up, with a view of the capitol dome that Julian had probably admired from the other side of the table more than once.

Carol Briggs was a compact woman in her late forties with reading glasses pushed up on her head and the manner of someone who had heard a great many stories and was very good at identifying which parts mattered.

She had a copy of Eleanor's documentation already.

She did not need me to bring anything.

What she needed, she explained, was my account.

"Walk me through the divorce proceedings," she said.

"Specifically the asset disclosure phase.

Take your time."

I took two hours.

I told her about the delays.

The amended filings.

The way Fitch had structured the requests so that every time my attorney asked for something, the response came back just incomplete enough to require a follow-up, which required another thirty days, which pushed everything past deadlines that then had to be re-filed.

I told her about the moment my attorney said we could keep pushing or we could settle, and I was so exhausted and so afraid of what another six months of legal fees would do to us that I signed.

Carol Briggs wrote steadily and asked occasional precise questions.

When I finished, she set her pen down.

"Ms.

Vance, I want to be transparent with you.

The Bar's process is separate from any civil action you might pursue.

We investigate attorney conduct.

Gerald Fitch is the primary subject of our inquiry."

"Not Julian?"

"Julian is not an attorney.

His conduct may be relevant to a civil fraud claim, but that's outside our jurisdiction." She folded her hands.

"What I can tell you is that the documentation Eleanor Vance assembled is among the most thorough I've seen from a non-legal source.

She clearly understood what she was looking for."

"She was a bookkeeper," I said.

"For thirty years.

Before she retired."

Carol Briggs looked at me for a moment.

"That explains it."

I took the elevator back down to the lobby and stood on the sidewalk in the October heat.

My attorney — my new attorney, a woman named Sandra Okafor whom Diane Marsh had recommended — was meeting me at noon.

I had forty minutes.

I sat on a bench near the building entrance and called Noah's school to confirm pickup.

Then I sat quietly for a while.

I thought about Eleanor in her house, going through files.

Pulling out letters.

Organizing documents into folders with the careful habit of a woman who had spent her life making sure numbers added up correctly.

Hiring Diane Marsh.

Mailing the Bar complaint herself, certified, return receipt.

Sending Noah a train ticket to visit in March and then sitting with him at her kitchen table, showing him what she'd found, trusting him to know what to do with it.

She had been dying the whole time.

She had done all of it while she was dying.

My phone buzzed.

A text from a number I didn't recognize at first, and then did.

*I know you have no reason to take this from me.

But I am sorry.

For all of it.

— Julian*

I read it twice.

Then I put my phone back in my bag and watched a city bus pull up to the stop across the street.

Sandra Okafor arrived at 11:58, in a dark coat with a leather portfolio under her arm, and shook my hand with the efficiency of someone who billed in six-minute increments and respected your time accordingly.

"Tell me everything," she said.

So I did.

An hour later, she closed her portfolio.

"The transfer is fraudulent on its face," she said.

"Undisclosed marital asset, transferred during the pendency of divorce proceedings.

The valuation alone gives you a strong claim.

Combined with the Bar complaint and the documentation trail Eleanor Vance created—" She paused.

"He's going to want to settle."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Then we go to court, and he loses more." She said it without drama, the way you'd say the sky was blue.

"He knows that.

His new attorney will know that.

Gerald Fitch is no longer in a position to advise him, which means whoever he hires next will give him an honest assessment." She looked at me.

"The question is what you want."

"I want what Noah was supposed to have," I said.

"What we were both supposed to have."

She nodded.

"Then that's what we'll go after."

I walked back to my car in the afternoon heat, past a food truck and a group of tourists photographing the capitol, past a woman pushing a stroller and a man arguing quietly into his phone.

Ordinary Tuesday things.

My phone buzzed again.

Julian's number this time, not a text.

A call.

I watched it ring.

He had resources, he'd said at the wedding.

He had the firm behind him.

Richard had stood up at the back of the room and told him to stop talking.

Fitch had walked out to the parking lot to make a phone call and come back looking like a man who had just been told the building was on fire.