Gwen sat in the front row, holding a leather bag so tightly that the handle pressed lines into her fingers.
She did not look at us.
When the judge announced the next date, Gwen stood quickly and moved toward the exit.
A reporter tried to question her in the hall.
She walked past him without speaking.
Sofia waited until most of the crowd had left before rising.
“I don’t want Lena to see that room before she has to,” she said.
“She has enough rooms to worry about.”
I agreed.
We stopped for lunch at a small diner a few blocks from the courthouse.
Sofia ordered tea, then stared at it for several minutes.
“I used to think justice would feel like somebody closing a door,” she said.
“Now it feels like we’re walking down a hallway with more doors than I can count.”
I understood exactly what she meant.
The vandalism investigation was separate from Evan’s case, and I had not yet been told whether Gwen would face charges.
My insurance company wanted final repair costs before closing the claim.
Maya’s school was planning examinations, and she struggled to study when an unfamiliar car slowed near the house.
There was no single moment when life would become easy again.
Sofia asked about Maya’s grades.
I said they had slipped slightly but her teachers were helping.
She told me Lena had cried after her first attempt to walk without the parallel bars.
“Not because she failed,” Sofia said.
“Because she realized how much courage a single step was costing her.”
I looked at the rain collecting against the diner window.
We finished lunch without forcing ourselves to be cheerful.
When we parted, Sofia hugged me tightly.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
I drove home determined to make dinner, answer three client emails, and spend the evening doing something unrelated to court.
I managed two of those things.
The dinner was burned because I forgot the pan while reading a message from Brooks.
Her team had found new evidence linking Gwen to the order to disable my camera.
The evidence did not come from a dramatic confession.
It came from ordinary financial records that Gwen had apparently assumed nobody would examine.
Patrick Lyle’s small contracting company had received two electronic payments from an account associated with Gwen’s property management business.
The payment descriptions referred to exterior maintenance at an address that was not one of her rentals.
