My mother set her teacup down with a sharp click.

“That,” she said, “is why they chose a party with a hundred guests.

They needed an audience for you to fall apart in front of.”

The attorney did not promise me anything easy.

He was honest, which I valued: a high-net-worth divorce with corporate assets in play would be long and brutal, every financial record audited, every claim contested, and custody would come down to a careful examination of what was genuinely best for Tommy.

He laid out months of grinding work.