Chapter 7: The Attorney
The attorney’s office sat on the twelfth floor of a building that overlooked the river rather than the town square. Her name was Vivian Cho. She was in her fifties, precise in the way of someone who had stopped needing to raise her voice years earlier, and she had already opened a file with my name on it before I arrived. Garrison had driven me the hour and a half in silence, parked in the underground garage, and then waited in the car. He did not offer to come upstairs. He simply handed me a thin folder containing the photocopied fertility report, a printed timeline of the bank withdrawals from the previous forty-eight hours, and a single sheet listing the date and time the locksmith had been called.
Vivian read everything without commentary. When she finished she looked at me over the top of the page.
“Your husband emptied the joint account at 5:14 a.m., canceled the health policy at 5:31 a.m., and authorized the lock change at 7:02 a.m. while you were already at work. The email from his counsel claiming voluntary abandonment was sent at 11:46 a.m. That sequence will not read as mutual to any judge in this state.”
She set the papers down.
“The house is jointly titled. He can keep you out for a few days with new locks. He cannot sell, refinance, or remove your name without your signature or a court order. The car is a different problem—if the company holds the title, we treat it as a compensation issue rather than a property one. The fertility report is useful, but not for the reason most people assume. It establishes a pattern of concealment. Judges dislike concealment.”
I asked the only question that still felt sharp.
“Can he claim I left?”
May you like
“Only if we let the narrative stand unchallenged. We will not.”
She outlined the immediate filings: a motion for temporary exclusive use of the residence, a request for emergency spousal support, and a preservation order on every account that had ever carried both of our names. The language she used was clinical. I found it steadier than sympathy. By the time I signed the engagement letter the morning had already taken on a different shape—less like the aftermath of being discarded and more like the opening of a process Julian had not budgeted for.
