The emergency hearing was set for the following Thursday.
Spencer was ordered to appear in person with Eli.
He did not.
His attorney appeared alone and said that Mr. Langford was unavoidably detained on business and that the child was thriving in an international school and that the mother’s motion was, in his words, “a bitter woman’s attempt to litigate a trust she has no business administering.”
Judge Harwood, who had sat in chambers with my son in September, looked at him for a long time.
Then she played the video.
The courtroom was small, maybe forty people, the morning docket.
Nobody in it breathed for forty seconds.
When it ended, she said, “Counsel, your client has fourteen days to return the child to this jurisdiction. If he does not, I will issue a warrant, I will notify the State Department, and I will refer this matter to the Commonwealth’s Attorney for parental abd*ction. Tell him that. Tell him also that this court has reviewed the trust instrument and finds Mrs. Fenton’s appointment as trustee valid, and that any petition to remove her will be heard by me. Personally.”
