We did three things.
We filed, under seal, Celia’s trust instrument and my appointment as trustee, so that there could be no argument later about who had the right to the card.
We filed a motion to enforce the ninety-day return order, with a request that the court take notice of the father’s financial condition and the location of his remaining unencumbered asset.
And we waited for whatever my son was going to send.
It came on the ninth day.
A video, forty seconds, shot from a tablet propped on a hotel nightstand in Lisbon.
Spencer, in the doorway of a bedroom, on the phone, in the voice he used for lawyers.
“No. No, he’s not coming back in December. I’ll get the Portuguese residency sorted by then, and once he’s enrolled here the Virginia order’s a piece of paper. She can fly over and visit if she can afford the ticket, which she can’t, because I set her rent. Just get the trustee petition drafted. Unfit. Unstable. Dependent on the father’s goodwill for housing. Use that. The money’s the only thing keeping the Lisbon property out of the receiver’s hands.”
