I had arrived forty minutes early and sat alone on the back bench, watching clerks move in careful lines and attorneys greet one another with the easy familiarity of people who live inside systems like this every day.
A bailiff had nodded once when I came in. His eyes had paused briefly on the ribbons above my pocket. Recognition maybe. Or habit. Either way, he said nothing. I preferred it that way.
I hadn’t come to be thanked.
I had come because I had to.
Two weeks earlier I had been in my backyard trying to fix a broken fence panel Duke had shoved through. He was old now, gray around the muzzle, slower than he used to be, but still full of sudden conviction about squirrels and invisible enemies.
The boards were warped. The nails were bent. My knee ached in that deep old way it always did when the weather shifted or memory wandered too close.
That was when the envelope arrived.
Thick. Official. White paper expensive enough to promise trouble.
Briar County Civil Court.
I didn’t open it right away. I already knew who it was from before I read the return address. Some things announce themselves by weight alone.
Duke came over and leaned against my leg while I slit it open.
Petitioner: Richard Hayes. Respondent: Claire Hayes.
My father was suing me.
Not for money exactly. That would have been easier to understand. Easier to fight. He was suing for control—sole authority over the Hayes family estate, exclusive management of the land, the house, the outbuildings, everything tied to the family name.
The petition dressed itself up in words like continuity, preservation, legacy, and public integrity. Underneath all that language, it accused me of abandonment. Neglect. Failure to fulfill family obligations.
And then there was the phrase that made me laugh once, sharply, before I could stop myself.
Conduct unbecoming.
I read it again just to make sure the absurdity was real.
“Conduct unbecoming,” I said aloud.
Duke lifted his head.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “We’ve been called worse.”
That night I didn’t sleep. I sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee that went cold beside my hand and thought about calling someone. A lawyer. A friend. Anybody. But every possible call came with the same cost: explanation. And I was tired of explaining myself to people who had no intention of really knowing me.
So instead, sometime after midnight, I opened the old footlocker at the end of my bed.