Chapter 17: Half of Everything

The judge gave us a short morning.

She looked at the photo, looked at Ethan's lawyer, and said she would not decide a child's life on a picture of two adults in a hallway.

The full hearing was set for three weeks out.

Until then Maisie would stay with her mother in Eleanor Sorrell's house, and nobody would leave Connecticut with her.

That was all.

I walked out of the courtroom with Samson at my side and my attorney a step behind, and the corridor was full.

Ethan was waiting by the marble pillar in a fresh navy suit, with his lawyer at his elbow and a woman holding a phone.

She was a reporter, and she looked eager.

"Lena," Ethan said, loud enough for the stairwell. "Tell her what you did last night."

"I'm sorry?"

"My wife of seven years spent the night with my brother, in a hotel she owns."

He turned to the phone.

"I'm filing for half of Fairbanks Hotels. Every share, every property. She hid it from me for seven years, and that's fraud on a marriage."

The reporter swung her phone toward me.

I could feel Samson go still beside me.

He started to speak, and I put two fingers against his sleeve, and he stopped.

This one was mine.

"Say your question," I said to the woman.

"Mrs. Sorrell, is it true you were intimate with your husband's brother?"

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