Chapter 20 - THE APPEAL
The appellate court vacated one financial count.
The jury instruction on a specific $38,000 transfer had blurred:
Unauthorized use.
With intent to permanently deprive.
The evidence supported misconduct.
Maybe not that particular theft theory.
Count vacated.
Headline:
MARCELLINE WINS APPEAL.
Piers was six.
He saw nothing.
Good.
Everett saw everything.
“Does it bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it’s wrong?”
He thought.
“No.”
That answer mattered.
Marcelline’s other convictions stood.
Sentence reduced modestly.
Restitution adjusted by a small amount.
False-record findings remained.
Obstruction remained.
Child case remained.
The system corrected itself without rewriting history.
Then my separation reached one year.
Everett remained sober.
Employed.
Stable housing.
Regular fatherhood.
No financial authority over Piers’s accounts.
We attended co-parent counseling.
Not marriage counseling.
One session, therapist asked:
“What would reconciliation require?”
I said:
“I don’t know that it’s the goal.”
Everett nodded.
Good.
No pressure.
Then:
“What do you want from him now?”
“Consistency.”
Everett answered:
“What do you want from Jessamine?”
“Nothing she doesn’t want to give.”
That was new.
Piers slept at Everett’s apartment for the first time at six.
One night.
I checked my phone fourteen times.
No emergency.
He came home wearing mismatched socks.
“Daddy doesn’t know laundry.”
Everett protested:
“I know laundry. You chose socks.”
“They’re cool.”
Normal.
Then Lily told Piers at school that Marcelline had written him a letter.
She did not give it to him.
Good.
She asked if he wanted it.
“No.”
Also good.
Marcelline’s access to him remained his choice within legal boundaries.
The next legal milestone was not hers.
It was Everett’s probation review.
If successful, some restrictions could ease.
Including his ability to manage his own investments.
Not Piers’s money.
His own.
The judge approved partial relief.
He had earned it.
That night he called me.
“I feel like a person again.”
I understood.
Then he asked:
“Can I take you to dinner?”
I said no.
Not because I hated him.
Because co-parenting progress was not courtship.
He answered:
“Okay.”
No sulking.
May you like
No bargaining.
That may have been more persuasive than dinner would have been.
