Chapter 11: Ledger
By the fourth month a substantial portion of the missing balance had been preserved or returned under court order.
The exact final figure would depend on the remaining tracing and any further judgments, but the immediate crisis of a nearly empty joint account had been reversed into a controlled recovery process. Claire kept the divorce calendar moving in parallel. Temporary arrangements for support and asset restraint held. Brandon’s attempts to recharacterize the transfers as mutual or misunderstood failed against the absence of my knowledge or consent on the key movements and the timing relative to the accusation against my mother.
I signed what needed signing and otherwise treated the process as a closed professional matter. The emotional inventory of seven years had already been completed in the five seconds I counted in the River North apartment. What remained was arithmetic and procedure.
