“All she ever does is embarrass me.” My father’s voice cracked through the courtroom like a hard gavel strike, but I did not flinch. I did not look at him. I kept my hands folded, palms flat against my knees, and fixed my eyes on the front of the room.
The judge leaned forward, elbows on the bench, his steady gaze resting on my father. His voice was calm, almost gentle. “Sir, you truly don’t know, do you?”
The room shifted.
My father’s lawyer froze mid-motion, papers half raised in one hand. The color drained from my father’s face. “Wait,” he said, blinking hard.
“What do you mean? What don’t I know?”
I had imagined this room a thousand times. Not because I wanted to win, and not because I wanted my father cornered in public, but because I knew sooner or later the truth would have to stand on its own feet.
The Portsmouth courthouse smelled like floor wax and old paper, the kind of place where voices automatically lowered themselves, as if the walls remembered every secret ever spoken inside. Wooden benches creaked softly as people shifted. Somewhere behind me, someone cleared their throat.
I kept my eyes forward. Two days earlier, I had been kneeling in the small front yard outside Norfolk, trimming back weeds that had grown wild along the fence line. My knee had started to ache the way it always did when the weather was about to change.
Knox, my old German Shepherd, lay nearby in the shade, his breathing slow and uneven, one ear twitching at every passing sound. That was when the envelope arrived. Cream-colored, thick paper, county seal in the corner.
I recognized it instantly, even before I opened it. Portsmouth Family Court. I wiped my hands on my jeans and slit the envelope open with my thumb.
The words inside blurred for a second, then sharpened in a way that made my chest feel hollow. Petitioner Thomas Hail. Respondent Rebecca Hail.
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