Chapter 7: Counsel
The attorneys spoke in the language of instruments and notice periods, not of ballrooms.
I sat through meetings where my original name appeared on paper without Harold’s commentary attached. The trust’s history unspooled in exhibits: partners, collapse, quiet transfers, years of administrative drift while Anastasia Robbins became Anastasia Prescott and learned to smile when she was described as least interesting. Owen’s team provided what his father had left organized; mine verified what could still be claimed. No one asked me to perform wonder. Wonder was private, and it arrived in uneven waves between signatures.
Harold attempted a different campaign at home—sudden attentiveness, revised jokes that tried to land as affection, a suggestion that we renew vows as a public correction to the gala. I declined the theater. The marriage had trained me to manage his image; I was no longer available for damage control dressed as romance. He accused me of being changed by money I had not yet fully accessed. I told him I had been changed by a microphone and three hundred laughing faces. The money was only the part that came with filing numbers.
