rights stayed with me if there was a marital dispute, because my father had worried Graham’s ambition might one day outrun his loyalty.
I had not known that last part until Ruth found a reference to the document in an old email. I had searched for the original everywhere. Graham swore it had never existed.
Ruth held up a cream-colored page, folded soft at the edges.
My father’s handwriting marked the margin.
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
‘Where did you get that?’ Graham asked.
The judge looked at him. ‘Mr. Mercer, you will speak through your attorney.’
Owen answered anyway. ‘Bill Quinn gave me a copy the day it was signed. He said he trusted Leah, but he did not trust charm as much as paperwork.’
A broken laugh escaped me through tears.
That sounded exactly like my father.
Ruth approached the witness stand. ‘Mr. Pike, did that founding loan ever get repaid?’
‘No.’
‘Did Leah Mercer ever sign a release giving up the controlling rights attached to that loan?’
‘No.’
Ruth lifted another page. ‘Did you later see a release in the company file?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it genuine?’
Owen looked at Graham. ‘No. Mr. Mercer asked me to notarize it after Bill Quinn died. I refused.’
The courtroom seemed to hold its breath.
‘What happened then?’ Ruth asked.
‘He found someone else to stamp it. Then he put it in the file and told me if I said anything, he would bury me with the vendor accounts.’
Graham’s face had turned gray.
Sloane slowly removed the brooch from her lapel and set it on the table as if it had burned her.
I watched that tiny silver bird fall onto polished wood, and with it fell the last piece of the woman I had been when I walked into that room. The woman who still wanted an apology. The woman who still hoped Graham might look sorry.
He did look at me then.
Not sorry.
Desperate.
‘Leah,’ he said under his breath, ‘we can fix this.’
I shook my head.
‘You fixed enough.’
Judge Ellis called a recess, but she did not let Graham leave the courthouse. When court resumed, her voice was colder than the February rain tapping against the windows. She denied enforcement of the settlement proposal. She ordered the disputed business accounts and proceeds related to the warehouse frozen pending further proceedings. She directed both sides to preserve all communications and financial records. She also stated, carefully and on the record, that issues raised in the hearing would be referred to the appropriate authorities.
Graham stared straight ahead while she spoke.
Sloane did not touch him again.
As the gallery emptied, she approached me with the brooch in her hand. Up close, she looked younger than she had from across the courtroom, and much less certain.
‘I did not know about your father,’ she said.
I looked at the brooch resting on her palm.
‘But you knew it was mine.’
Her eyes dropped.
That was answer enough.
I took the brooch without thanking her.
Outside the courtroom, Graham caught up to me near the elevators. For a moment, he looked like the man I had married, handsome and tired, rainlight silvering his hair through the courthouse windows.
‘Leah, please,’ he said. ‘I was
