“And my daughter is going to be forty years old one day with a mother somewhere, and I would rather that woman be on probation than in a cell, because Wren is going to have to decide what to do about her and I do not want that decision to be made about a prisoner.”

The civil side took another two years.

The commercial insurers denied on the intoxication exclusion, which meant the judgment was personal, which meant it was collectible against actual assets rather than a policy.

Gaddis Timber was sold in the second year.

Gaddis Capital was wound down by the state banking department.

The house on Wolf Pen Road went in the third.

The structured settlement is four point one million dollars, of which the overwhelming majority sits in a special needs trust administered by a bank in Houston that I have no control over, for surgeries and braces and physical therapy for the next fifty years, and which I have never taken a dollar out of for anything that was not a medical bill.