Chapter 13: The First Legal Steps
On Monday I met with a family-law attorney and placed the entire contents of the suitcase on her desk in the same order I had used on the dining-room table. She examined the birth certificate, the bank transfers, the timeline, and the photographs without visible reaction, then began the practical inventory of joint assets, the house title, and the temporary orders that would keep Richard at a distance while paternity and support for the infant were formally established. Ethan attended the second half of the meeting. He answered questions about the year of silence and the manner of his discovery with the same dry precision he had used when he first opened the suitcase. The attorney noted that the forced removal of an eighteen-year-old on the morning after his birthday, when viewed alongside the concealed second pregnancy, would not read as neutral parenting to any judge. Richard’s philosophy of strength had become part of the evidentiary record.
