My Stepmother Claimed I Was Not Stable In Court Until The Judge Removed His Glasses

wer and less rehearsed. “She’s delusional. This is exactly what I’ve been telling you. She makes things up.”

Judge Alderman raised one hand. The room went silent.

He looked at me with an expression I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Not anger. Not shock. The expression of a man who has just understood that he has been brought into a room under false pretenses and is now recalibrating everything accordingly.

“Continue, Miss Callaway.”

I opened the blue tab.

“These are the IP logs from every transfer. Every single one originated from the same device, a laptop registered to the home network at 1847 Willow Creek Lane. My stepmother’s address. The house my father left her.”

I moved to the green tab.

“These are the bank statements for the three shell companies. The pattern is consistent across all forty-seven transfers. Money flows in from the trust, sits for thirty to sixty days, and then transfers again to a personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab, held jointly by Diane Callaway and a man named Trevor Fisk.”

I looked at Diane. Her mouth had opened and then closed. She looked, for the first time since I had known her,