mother sent a message that said Claire had destroyed the family. Claire saved a screenshot and deleted the original. Old professional habits, the kind that had been trained into her before the Calloways had tried to train them out.
The divorce moved differently than Ryan had planned. He had imagined, she suspected, something cleaner and faster: a woman with a newborn and no income who would accept whatever terms were offered and be grateful for the structure. He had not accounted for the fact that Claire had spent a decade learning to read financial disclosures, and that she was very good at it.
Through her attorney, she requested documented custody exchanges, written communication logs, and full financial disclosures. Ryan’s lawyer described her as vindictive in one early filing. Then the preservation packet became part of the larger compliance review, and the word vindictive began to look very small next to
