vendor reimbursements connected to entities associated with the Calloway family over a period of years. Ryan lost his position. His father’s role came under review. The house, the polished dinners, the unexamined certainty of people accustomed to being the ones who set the terms, all of it became quieter.
The Calloways did not apologize. People like that rarely did. They tended to call accountability cruelty, because it allowed them to remain, in their own internal story, the ones who had been wronged. Claire understood this the way she understood most predictable patterns, without contempt, simply as something you accounted for and moved around.
Ryan signed the custody agreement. He signed the support order. He signed the property disclosures, doing so more promptly after his attorney reminded him that his former wife had made a career out of reading financial documents and was unlikely to stop now.
The last time Claire
