Chapter 7: The Counter-Move
Grace filed on Friday.
By Monday morning, Julian had a new attorney — not anyone from Hargrove's firm, which had placed him on indefinite administrative leave pending the bar investigation — but a man named Croft who ran a boutique litigation practice in Highland Park and whose primary skill, Grace told me, was delay.
"He'll file a motion to dismiss on procedural grounds first," Grace said over the phone.
"Then a motion to strike Victoria's financial disclosure as improperly obtained.
Then he'll request a sixty-day extension on the asset accounting."
"Can he get all of that?"
"He can get some of it.
The extension, probably.
The rest, no." A pause.
"He also filed the custody motion this morning."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Already."
"I told you he would move fast." Her voice was steady.
"It's thin.
He's claiming that Noah was placed in an emotionally manipulative situation by you, that the wedding incident constitutes evidence of an unstable home environment, and that Noah requires a guardian ad litem."
"A guardian ad litem.
For Noah."
"It's a pressure tactic.
The judge assigned to family matters in this district has seen this move before.
But we do need to respond." A brief pause.
"I need you to bring Noah in for a meeting.
Not a deposition.
Just a conversation, with you present, so I can understand exactly what happened in Julian's office six weeks ago and document it properly."
"He's ten."
"I know.
I will be careful with him." Another pause, softer.
"He sounds like a remarkable kid."
"He is," I said.
I picked Noah up from school that afternoon and told him on the drive over.
He listened without interrupting.
"Is Dad trying to say I'm messed up?" he asked when I finished.
"He's trying to say I made you do something you didn't want to do."
"That's not true."
"I know."
"Can I tell the lawyer that?"
"That's exactly what we're going to do."
Grace's office had a small conference room with a round table and no sharp corners.
She brought Noah a glass of water and a bowl of pretzels and sat across from him without a legal pad, just listening, for the first twenty minutes.
Noah told her everything.
The three-hour wait.
The unlocked office.
The drive left in the open desk drawer.
The way Julian had looked when he came back and found Noah at his desk.
"He didn't say anything about the drive," Noah said.
"He just said, 'What are you doing in here?' And I said I was bored and looking for paper to draw on.
And he believed me.
Or he pretended to."
"Why did you take the drive?" Grace asked.
"Because of how scared he looked," Noah said.
"People don't look scared of paper to draw on."
Grace wrote something down.
"Noah," she said.
"Did your mother ask you to look for anything in your father's office?"
"No."
"Did anyone ask you to?"
"No."
"Did you tell anyone what you found before the wedding?"
Noah hesitated.
"I told one person," he said.
I looked at him.
"Who?" Grace asked.
"Mr.
Hargrove," Noah said.
"I emailed him.
Two weeks ago.
I found his address on my dad's firm website." He looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Mom.
I didn't tell you because I thought you'd stop it."
Grace set down her pen.
"You emailed Robert Hargrove directly," she said.
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said I found something on my dad's computer that I thought he should know about.
I said I didn't know if it was bad but it felt bad.
I said I was going to bring it to the wedding because I thought it should be in front of everyone." He paused.
"He wrote back."
The room was very quiet.
"What did he say?" Grace asked.
Noah reached into his blazer pocket — the same blazer from the wedding, which I had not yet taken to the dry cleaner — and produced a folded piece of paper.
He had printed the email.
Grace read it.
Then she looked up at me with an expression I had not seen from her before.
"Hargrove confirmed receipt," she said carefully.
"He told Noah he would be present at the wedding and that Noah should proceed as planned."
"He knew," I said.
"He knew." Grace set the email down on the table.
"Which means the senior partner of Julian's firm was aware of the evidence before the wedding and chose to allow it to surface publicly." She looked at Noah.
"He used you."
Noah considered this.
"Maybe," he said.
"But the thing still needed to come out."
Grace looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, "You're right.
It did." She picked up the email.
"And this changes our position considerably.
Hargrove is now a witness, not a bystander.
If Julian's attorney tries to claim Noah was coached, we have documentation showing the only adult who had advance knowledge was Julian's own senior partner."
She looked at me.
"Julian's custody motion just became a great deal more difficult to sustain," she said.
My phone buzzed on the table.
Julian.
A text this time.
*I know about the filing.
Last chance to walk away from this.
For Noah's sake.*
I turned the phone so Grace could read it.
She photographed it with her own phone without being asked.
"He said 'for Noah's sake,'" I said.
"Yes," Grace said.
"What does that mean?"
She looked at me steadily.
May you like
"It means he's running out of moves," she said.
"And he wants you to think he has one left."
