All Chapters of HIS WILLING SECRET : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Marsh filed the motion about the contact window on a Thursday. It was exactly what Alex had predicted. Thin documentation, improper pre-deposition contact, violation of witness handling protocols.Soren called immediately. He was still controlled but the quality of the control had changed. It was the control of someone managing something that was worse than expected."Tell me the scope," Alex said.We were both on the call. Alex had put it on speaker without being asked."The motion is technically sound," Soren said. "The contact occurred. It was by the book procedurally but the documentation does not fully support that. A judge will look at thin documentation and give the defense the benefit of the doubt.""So Nolan's testimony is in question.""His testimony itself is intact. The question is its admissibility given the contact window. The judge may limit what he can testify to. In the worst case, his testimony on the Morrison-specific arrangement could be excluded.""And the payment

The six weeks between the verdict and sentencing were quiet in a way that felt different from the quiet before. Not the quiet of waiting for the next crisis. The quiet of a chapter genuinely ending.Morrison was sentenced to twenty-two months and ordered to pay significant restitution. She served the first phase at a facility two states over. Her assets in the civil recovery were unfrozen as a condition of the sentence, which meant the clients' remaining recovery was accelerated. The Ashbourne operation was dissolved and Reeves's permanent disbarment was confirmed. Nolan received a reduced sentence in his own case in exchange for cooperation.Alex came home from the sentencing and sat at the kitchen table and that was all. Just sat. Not processing. Not working. Just still.I sat across from him. Neither of us said anything for a while."Neil cried," Alex said eventually."At the sentencing.""After. When we were outside. He turned away and I could see his shoulders." He paused. "He ha

October brought a call from the agency that was not the call.Not a match. A request for additional documentation. Two forms that had not been fully completed in the initial submission. The agency was thorough in the way agencies are when they are responsible for the most consequential decisions in other people's lives.Alex completed the forms the same evening the call came in. Of course he did.What October also brought was Jonah bringing his family to the city for Ada's birthday weekend. They stayed in a hotel three blocks from us and we spent two full days with them, which was more time than we had managed in a single stretch before.Ada turned four in a restaurant where the staff brought a small cake with a candle and she blew it out with impressive force and looked at the extinguished candle with the specific satisfaction of someone who had done exactly what they intended.She had decided, at some point in the preceding months, that I was her person. Not Alex, who she called Ax

February became March became spring and Benjamin was ours.Not legally. He had been legally ours since the hearing. I mean in the daily, ordinary, accumulating sense. In the way he woke up calling and one of us went to him. In the way he had learned the layout of the apartment and could navigate it in the dark. In the way he brought things to show us, constantly, everything he found interesting, as if everything he found interesting needed to be witnessed by someone he trusted.He brought things to Alex specifically.Not exclusively. He brought things to me too. But there was a specific category of thing, heavy things, things with interesting textures, things he found in the garden on the rare occasions we visited somewhere with a garden, that he brought specifically to Alex. And Alex examined each one with complete seriousness.Alex had been in the process of becoming a parent for ten months before the finalization and he had been a parent for three weeks and he was already the paren

Summer came and the Morrison civil recovery completed its final stage.The last of the traceable assets was released to the Morrison clients under the terms of the sentencing agreement. It was not full recovery. It was not nothing. Tom Adler called Alex and said the family was satisfied, that they had more than they had expected to recover, and that they were done.Done. The word sat in the office for a moment and then in our kitchen when Alex repeated it."Done," I said."All of it. Criminal, civil. The whole thing.""How long has it been running.""From the day Reeves was fired, which was the beginning of all of this, twenty-six months."Twenty-six months. Benjamin had been alive for the entirety of that. He had been in a foster placement for most of it.I looked at the kitchen table where we had sat through so many evenings of case updates and documentation reviews and strategy conversations."What do you do with the space," I said."The space.""When something that has been runnin