What it showed was narrower, and more damning for being narrow: that certain funds, tied to our shared marital assets, had repeatedly moved into private entities in the days and weeks right after specific moments — after I questioned a financial decision, after I raised the idea of going back to work, after I asked for direct access to an account.

Timing alone proves nothing; I of all people knew that.

But timing, laid alongside inconsistent corporate books and account structures built to be hard to follow, was more than enough to justify the court’s continued oversight.

We were never trying to make every unfamiliar transaction look sinister.

We were doing the opposite — separating, with care, the ordinary from the suspect, so that the suspect could not hide inside the ordinary.

And the preservation order had done its one essential job: it had kept the records from disappearing before anyone could read them.