Calloway.
My name is Richard Hale.
I represent Carter Welles.
I believe we have something to discuss regarding your grandson.
I'd prefer to handle this quietly.
Please call me at your earliest convenience.*
I showed it to Diane.
She read it twice.
"He already has a lawyer reaching out," she said.
"That means he's moving."
I looked at the shoebox on my table.
The recorder.
The texts.
The lawyer's name was Susan Greer.
Her office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown, and the waiting room had no magazines, just a small table with a water pitcher and two chairs that faced each other.
It felt like a place where people came to say hard things.
I brought the shoebox.
Susan Greer was in her late fifties, with reading glasses on a chain and the kind of stillness that comes from having heard everything at least twice.
She listened without interrupting while I explained.
When I finished, she picked up the recorder and played the voice message once, all the way through.
She set it down.
"How old was your daughter when this was recorded?"
"Seventeen.
They met when she was seventeen.
She turned eighteen before the baby was born."
"And he was twenty-six."
"Yes."
She wrote something on her notepad.
"Has his attorney made any formal filing?"
"Not that I know of.
