And I let him sleep, and I looked out at the city, and I understood that getting him back, whole, was going to be the truest measure of whether any of this had been worth it.

Chapter 24 — Grueling But Clean

The legal war that followed stretched over the next six months, and it was grueling, but I want to be truthful about its character, because it was not the kind of war people imagine.

There were no dramatic courtroom brawls, no shouted objections, no single devastating moment of cross-examination.

There was, instead, an endless grinding procession of financial audits and forensic accounting and deposition transcripts, the slow patient machinery of the law doing exactly what Sarah had promised it would do: establishing the truth on the record, in a form that could not be overturned.

Patricia’s work, once it was done formally and properly by the forensic accountants, laid the whole thing bare.