Dana Harland’s office was on the second floor of a brick building downtown, above a coffee shop that always smelled better than the coffee tasted. She was in her mid-forties, with short dark hair, sharp eyes, and the calm posture of someone who had listened to people panic for a living and never once joined them.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
So I did. The dinner. The insult. Three years of financial support. The car payment. The health insurance. The surgery bills. The money transfers. Barbara showing up on my porch, crying first, then threatening custody when crying did not work.
Dana listened without interrupting. When I finished, she tapped her pen once against the legal pad. “How serious do you think she is?”
“Very.”
“Then we treat her as serious.”
She explained what Barbara would probably do. File a petition. Claim I was unstable. Claim she was a better home for Ellie. Claim grief had made me emotional and unfit.
“She’ll try to turn your boundary into evidence of aggression,” Dana said. “So from this moment forward, you do not engage. No texts. No calls. No porch conversations. Everything goes through me.”
“Understood.”
“Now tell me you have records.”
For the first time that week, I felt something like confidence. “I kept everything.”
Dana’s expression changed. “Everything?”
“Bank statements. Cancelled checks. Insurance confirmations. Medical payment receipts. Texts where she asked for money. Proof of every car payment.”
Dana smiled slightly. “Good. Then she picked the wrong father to lie about.”