So, I saw, did the judge, whose eyes moved from Gregory back to me with something that was not quite disapproval but was certainly attention.

“But I didn’t come unprepared,” I added, and I pushed a folder across the table toward the clerk.

The first document in that folder was an evaluation performed by Dr.

Rebecca Collins, a board-certified neurologist who specializes in geriatric cognitive health.

I had sought her out myself, weeks earlier, and submitted to three full hours of testing: memory, judgment, language, spatial reasoning, executive function, decision-making capacity, every domain a court might question.

I had scored, the report noted, in the ninety-fourth percentile for my age.