To me, he was still Daniel.
Judge Warren had handled our emergency hearing. Judge Mercer had subsequently been assigned the longer evidentiary proceedings involving our finances and parenting arrangements.
Daniel's lawyers had assembled documents from both hearings, the original corporation, and the acquired business.
Now those different names appeared throughout the records before us.
“The names changed,” I said. “The ownership did not.”
Judge Mercer examined the exhibits.
“Proceed.”
I removed a bank statement dated eleven years earlier.
The balance was $43,218.17.
“I remember this number,” I said quietly. “Because it was everything we had left.”
Daniel looked away.
We had just lost our largest transportation contract. Two buses required engine replacements, and our insurance premiums had increased unexpectedly.
Daniel had wanted to close the business.
I had sold the small house my mother left me.
It wasn't a beautiful house. The basement flooded every spring, the kitchen cabinets were crooked, and the back porch had been repaired so many times that the wood never matched.
But it was the house where my mother taught me to bake bread.
It was where she sat with me after my father died.
It was the last place where I could still imagine hearing her voice.
I sold it anyway.
I remembered sitting on the kitchen floor after the buyers left, holding the brass key in my palm.
Daniel had found me there.
He had knelt beside me, kissed my forehead, and promised that one day he would buy the house back.
