By the end of that afternoon, Judge Halloway had signed a stack of orders that changed our lives.
He granted me full legal and physical custody of Rory.
He granted Lyle zero visitation.
He issued an emergency protective order, and he ordered my ex-husband’s assets frozen to cover two years of unpaid child support, my legal fees, and restitution for what the record now called, in its flat official language, the deliberate sabotage of my housing.
Each order was read aloud, and with each one I felt something I had carried for two years shift a little, some weight I had stopped noticing because I had forgotten what it was like to set it down.
I signed where I was told to sign.
My own hand, on my own paper, in my own custody case, for the first time — not a surrender document forced onto a hospital blanket or a hallway threat, but the plain machinery of the law finally moving in the direction of the truth.
It is a strange thing to feel grateful toward a stack of paperwork.
I felt it anyway.
When it was done, Rory walked back to the table.