The judge clears his throat in warning, but his eyes are gleaming with something that looks like amusement beneath his glasses. “I understand you have some material to present.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Slade pulls out a manila folder and pushes it over to the judge. Then he requests for the bailiff to dim the lights in the room, pulls out his phone and a small handheld projector, and beams an image onto the blank white wall.
It’s me on the mudroom floor at six in the morning with a puppy against my chest, laughing at something Slade said that I can’t remember now but clearly found hilarious.
“Never was good with words,” Slade says. “So let these pictures be worth a thousand each.”
He taps to change the picture.
Now it’s the Thanksgiving table at Rosemont, the family photo of the whole huge group of us. Another tap. Another picture from the same day, this one me leaning over Slade as he holds Jonah and the twin babies and Lucky at his feet.
“Lila and I have built a life together,” Slade says. “She’s a Rhodes now. Woven into every part of my family as tight as any of us born to it.”
There’s another photo that Daryl took of us, Slade and I sitting on his truckbed at sunset, our arms draped over Lucky who sits happily in the middle.
Slade’s eyes meet mine as he says, “I fell in love with her fast and hard and completely.”
Next is the triptych from the photobooth, me kissing his cheek and then the two of us lost to the moment kissing each other.
“I’ll dare any one of you,” Slade says, “to look at those pictures and tell me that’s not a love story. Tell me that Lila hasn’t found her home here. Her happiness. You look into my eyes and tell me I don’t love my wife.”
My eyes are burning.
The judge is going through the manila envelope at the same time. There are even more photos printed out there, dozens of them, spread out across the table now.
I press my lips together and stare at the pictures, the evidence of our life, the beauty and the joy in all of them. There are cute photos, like the one Daryl snapped of Slade bottle-feeding the puppy while I rest my head on his shoulder, Lucky’s head on my lap. There are silly moments, like the selfie I took of us biting either end of an eclair I’dmade. Or the photos from my Halloween birthday party, all of us Rhodes’s in costume, mugging for the camera.
Then there are straight-up beautiful ones, like the one he set up on a tripod to capture the two of us on horseback, holding hands, our boots bumping against each other as the sun sets. There’s the wedding photo that Slade keeps on his nightstand, his dramatic, passionate kiss against the backdrop of Wild Rose.
I tell myself not to cry in this room. Not in front ofthem.
The tears tumble down my cheeks anyway as Slade holds my hand.
There’s silence in the room as the lights go back up.
Finally, the judge clears his throat. Still sounding a little hoarse, he says, “Mr. Rhodes. Your income last year.”
“Fourteen million,” Slade says.
The judge checks something on his legal pad. “Approximately three times the value of the trust in question.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And the petitioners’ position is that your motivation for entering this marriage was financial gain.”
Slade cuts a cool glare at my family. “So they say, Your Honor.”
The judge looks at the photographs again. Then at my parents’ lawyer. Then he sits back in his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose.
Peter leans forward. “He has other motivations,” he says.
My father puts a hand on his arm.
Peter shakes it off. “He has?—”
“Peter,” my mother says sharply.
