“That’s not true. This is completely unfair.”

The judge raised one hand.

“Sit down, Ms. Ellis.”

The bailiff moved closer to Brooke’s row. She sat again, her face flushed.

Sadie continued, her voice faint but steady enough to carry.

“Daddy heard her say it. He laughed and said she was joking.”

The judge asked what else had happened while Sadie was away from me. Sadie swallowed and curled her shoulders inward.

“One night, Daddy and Brooke were arguing in the kitchen. Daddy said Clara wouldn’t sign the papers if she knew where the money was.”

Owen’s attorney, a man named Peter Sloan, turned sharply toward him.

“What money is she talking about?”

Owen said nothing.

Sadie went on. “Brooke said they had to make Clara think everything was her fault. She said Clara was getting confused.”

Suddenly, the last several months lined up in my mind. Bank papers had gone missing from my desk, and Owen said I must have misplaced them. The home security app stopped working, and he told me I was worrying over nothing. When I found one of Brooke’s earrings under the sofa, he insisted she had only stopped by for a business meeting.

Each time, he had told me I was jealous, exhausted, or imagining things. He had said it so calmly that I had begun to question what I had seen.

The judge asked Sadie what had happened when Brooke found her in the hallway at home.

Sadie gripped Barnaby’s ear.

“She grabbed my arm and took me downstairs. She put me in the laundry room and turned out the light.”

I covered my mouth.

“How long were you there?” the judge asked.

“I don’t know. A long time.”

“Where was your father?”

Sadie looked toward Owen.

“He was in the kitchen. He was drinking wine.”

I couldn’t hold back any longer. The grief and anger in my voice seemed to fill the room.

“Owen, tell me you didn’t let that happen.”

He stared at the table.

Sadie began to cry. I moved toward her, and this time the judge gave me a nod.

I lowered myself awkwardly to the floor beside her chair. Sadie climbed into my arms and clung to my blazer.

“I’m sorry, Clara,” she sobbed. “I tried to call you.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

She pulled back just enough to look at me.

“Daddy took my pink tablet. He put it in his briefcase so I couldn’t talk to you.”

I looked at Owen.

“You told me she dropped it in the bathtub.”

He gave no answer.

The Pink Tablet

Sadie leaned closer to my ear.

“But I made a video before he took it.”

The room went still. Judge Caldwell looked down at the tablet in Sadie’s backpack.

“You have the tablet with you now?”

Sadie nodded and reached into the small canvas bag. She brought out a pink tablet with a cracked screen. Owen’s face changed as soon as he saw it.

“That device belongs to me,” he said quickly. “Anything on it was recorded without permission.”

His attorney grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back into his chair.

The judge’s expression sharpened.

“No one has played the recording yet, Mr. Mercer. Your reaction is noted.”

Sadie explained that Lydia had found her that morning. She had not been staying with Lydia, as Owen had told me. For three weeks, Sadie had been at Brooke’s apartment. Lydia had gone there after receiving a message from Sadie on an old watch Owen had forgotten she still owned.

The message had said: Aunt Lydia, please help me.

Sadie said she had kept the tablet hidden beneath her pillow. Lydia brought her to the courthouse before the hearing began.

A clerk took the device and connected it to the courtroom screen. Sadie’s folder was called “Secret.” It held seventeen recordings.

The first showed Owen and Brooke speaking in the foyer of our house. The camera shook slightly, as if Sadie had filmed from behind the staircase railing.

“Don’t use the joint account for anything large until the hearing is finished,” Owen said on the recording.

Brooke laughed.

“It won’t matter after she signs the papers. She’ll walk away with nothing.”

Owen replied, “That’s the idea.”

The clip moved on. Brooke asked whether I might seek support for the baby after he was born.

Owen’s answer was quiet and cold.

“We’ll deal with that later. She won’t be in a position to fight me.”

The recording ended. No one in the gallery moved.

The next file was audio only. Brooke asked about the company’s financial records and the debts Owen had listed in his divorce paperwork. He told her that the official books did not show the company’s real value. The accurate records, he said, were in an off-site storage unit in St. Paul, under a company name that would not lead back to him.

Dana was writing so quickly that her pen seemed to skip across the page.

A third recording showed Owen and Brooke arguing in a guest room. Brooke demanded to know when she would get the house. Owen told her the deal depended on my signing away my rights. He said he had spent months making me doubt myself and had threatened to seek full custody of the baby if I tried to challenge him.