Chapter 6: The Lawyer's Waiting Room
They let me out of the hospital on the third day.
My blood pressure had come down.
The baby was fine — better than fine, the doctor said, which felt like the only sentence in three days that hadn't carried something terrible inside it.
A victims' advocate named Patricia met me at the discharge desk with a bag of clothes someone had donated and a number for a shelter two towns over.
I told her I wasn't going to the shelter.
She didn't argue.
She gave me the number anyway and said to call if I changed my mind.
Detective Reyes had arranged for a patrol car to take me to a legal aid office on the east side of the city.
The attorney's name was Carol Simms.
She had short gray hair and reading glasses on a chain and a desk covered in stacked folders, and she shook my hand like she meant it.
"Sit down," she said.
"Tell me everything from the beginning.
Don't skip anything because you think it's small."
I told her everything.
It took an hour and twenty minutes.
When I finished, she took her glasses off and set them on the desk.
"He's already called this office," she said.
I went still.
"This morning.
He said he wanted to discuss a voluntary family resolution before things escalated.
He said his wife had a history of emotional instability and that he was concerned about her making decisions without proper support." She looked at me steadily.
"He used the word 'voluntary' four times."
"What did you tell him?"
"That we don't take calls from opposing parties without representation present." She put her glasses back on.
"He's scared, Nora.
Scared people make calls like that."
"He's not scared," I said.
"He's calculating."
"Both can be true." She pulled a legal pad toward her.
"Here's where we are.
The criminal investigation is Detective Reyes's territory — the @buse charge, the potential charges related to your sister.
That's not mine.
What's mine is making sure you are protected financially and legally before he has a chance to move anything else."
"The company," I said.
"Calloway Family Holdings."
"Already flagged.
We've requested a freeze on any transfers pending the fraud investigation." She wrote something down.
"He won't be able to touch what's left."
"Is there anything left?"
She looked up.
"Eleven thousand.
He hadn't gotten to it yet."
Eleven thousand out of sixty-three.
I thought about the months of packed lunches and skipped haircuts and the secondhand crib I'd bought because I wanted to save every dollar I could.
"I want it moved," I said.
"Out of anything with his name on it."
"Already in motion." She set her pen down.
"I need to tell you something, and I want you to hear it clearly.
He is going to fight this.
He has resources — not as many as he thinks, but enough to make noise.
He will try to use the pregnancy.
He will try to use your emotional state.
He will find people to say you were difficult, unstable, a problem he tried to manage."
"I know."
"And none of it will matter," she said, "because you spent two days in a backyard recording him."
She said it plainly, without drama.
Like a door being locked from the inside.
"When does it start?" I asked.
"It already has." She stood and extended her hand again.
"Go somewhere safe tonight.
Don't contact him.
Don't respond if he contacts you.
Let me and Detective Reyes do our jobs."
I shook her hand.
In the waiting room on my way out, I passed a man in a good coat sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He didn't look up.
His lawyer came to the doorway behind me.
"Mr.
Calloway?
We're ready for you."
May you like
I didn't turn around.
I walked through the front door and into the afternoon, and I didn't look back, and his footsteps didn't follow me, and that was the first moment in a very long time that I walked somewhere and counted nothing.
