The first supervised visitation Julian was granted occurred in a neutral facility with soft chairs and educational toys arranged to imply safety. Eleanor did not go in. She waited in the car outside with a legal observer on call and a pulse too steady to be calm. When the boys came back out forty-five minutes later, Adrian was quieter than usual and Elias angry in the way children become angry when sadness feels too exposing.
“How was it?” she asked gently once the doors closed.
Adrian stared at his shoes. Elias said, “He talked about court stuff.”
Eleanor gripped the steering wheel. “What did he say?”
“That people are trying to take things from him,” Elias replied. “And that we should remember he’s the one who built everything.”
Of course he had.
She breathed once before answering. “You do not need to carry grown-up stories for anybody.”
Adrian looked up. “He said Vanessa won’t be around anymore.”
Eleanor closed her eyes for the briefest second. “All right.”
“He asked if we miss the penthouse,” Elias added, almost accusingly, as if ashamed that part of him did miss the tall windows and the game room and the elevator that opened into the apartment.
“It’s okay if you miss places,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you want the bad parts back.”
Later that night, after the boys slept, she called Martin.
“He used the visit to recruit them into his self-pity.”
“I’ll have it added to the record,” Martin said.
There was a pause. “How are you?”
She almost answered automatically. Fine. Moving forward. Busy. But Martin had known her too long.
“I am angry,” she said instead. “Not theatrically. Not cleanly. Just… densely.”
“That sounds about right.”
“He still thinks this is about him losing assets.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think he has ever understood what he damaged.”
Martin’s voice softened. “Some people only understand loss when it’s translated into inventory.”
The legal proceedings stretched through summer. Julian’s confidence eroded into something uglier and less coherent. He gave one interview against counsel’s advice, implying Eleanor had manipulated public sympathy by weaponizing her family background. The interview was disastrous. He sounded petulant, evasive, and contemptuous toward questions about the children. Sponsors distanced. Former colleagues leaked stories. A narrative of genius collapsed into a portrait of a man who had mistaken proximity to brilliance for possession of it.