He asked her to read her own message out loud. That was the entire question. Not whether she’d sent it, not what she’d meant — just read it to the court, please, the fourth message down. She looked at her attorney and her attorney looked at the table and the judge waited, and the room waited, and eventually she read eleven words in a voice that got quieter toward the end.
Then he asked whether anything had changed about my mental health between that message in 2021 and her affidavit in March, or whether what had changed was something else. Her attorney objected. The judge withdrew it and said he didn’t need the answer, which everyone in that room understood to mean he already had it. He denied the petition from the bench without recessing.
What changed, for the record, was my father’s estate closing in January. There’s a farm and there’s a number and my husband’s name is not on any of it, and hers isn’t either, and the petition was filed nine weeks later. Nobody had to say that out loud in court. It’s in the dates, and the judge had the dates.
My husband says he didn’t know she’d filed. I believe about half of that on my better days. He’s in the house on Wednesdays and I’m civil and my daughter is nine and doesn’t need to carry any of this. The thread is still on my phone; I’ve never deleted it and I never will. Some nights I scroll up past the exhibit to that message and read it again — good girl, your dad would be proud of you — and I’ve decided I’m going to keep letting it be true, because she meant it in 2021, whatever she became by March.
