Chapter 13 - Forty-Eight Hours
The next custody hearing was forty-eight hours away when Andrew's attorneys submitted a fresh packet of allegations.
They claimed my father was manipulating me, that Mrs. Alvarez was unfit to care for Lily, and that the child had been coached to fear her paternal relatives.
They demanded immediate transfer of Lily to Eleanor pending a psychological evaluation.
The court ordered both sides to provide verifiable evidence and warned counsel against filing unsupported accusations.
Our lawyer had forty-eight hours to respond.
I thought of every bedtime story Andrew had missed because of business dinners and every school recital Eleanor had attended only to criticize my clothes.
I couldn't believe those same people were now claiming to be Lily's safest home.
Gabriel asked me to write down the ordinary details of her life, not merely the worst things Andrew had done.
Who took her to the dentist?
Who knew the names of her classmates?
Who sat with her when thunderstorms made her cry?
I made the list until my hand hurt.
It filled eleven pages.
Then I opened an old family calendar and found entries Andrew had forgotten existed.
Each one was backed by appointments, school notes, or messages.
They told a consistent story of daily care, which the judge could evaluate alongside all the other evidence.
Nora gave a sworn statement describing the pressure placed on employees to manufacture financial records.
Caroline provided documents showing a similar pattern of identity misuse during her marriage.
Neither woman pretended to know what happened on the stairs.
Their testimony concerned what they had personally observed.
At twenty hours remaining, Mrs. Alvarez received a call from a man claiming to be a court officer.
He instructed her to bring Lily to an unfamiliar address immediately.
She declined and called the court through its published number.
No such instruction existed.
At twelve hours remaining, Andrew sent me an audio recording.
Lily's voice said, “Mommy told me to lie about Daddy.”
For a moment, I could barely see the screen.
But the recording sounded wrong.
The sentence contained a pause where Lily's breathing should have been.
An audio specialist later identified indications of editing and advised that further authentication was necessary.
Gabriel preserved the original file and challenged its reliability.
At six hours remaining, my father received a formal notice requesting that he sit for an interview regarding the memorial trust.
He accepted immediately.
I asked whether he was afraid.
“I'm afraid they'll hurt someone else while everyone watches me,” he said.
The hearing began the following morning.
Before the first witness was called, Gabriel handed me a sealed envelope.
“I wasn't going to show you this until we verified it,” he said.
Inside was a photograph from a service station camera.
It showed Andrew meeting Victor Sloane the night before I fell.
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On the table between them lay a printed copy of my medical insurance policy.
