So he made a plan.
The pilots' association kept a general counsel, an old maritime lawyer in Baltimore named Ferris who handled licensing and liability and had never in his life set foot in a family court. Grant called him and asked, in as few words as possible, for the name of the best family lawyer in Anne Arundel County who did not play tennis. Ferris was quiet for a moment, then gave him a name. "Hadley Moss," he said. "She's not nice. You don't want nice."
Hadley Moss was fifty-eight and wore reading glasses pushed up into short white hair and had an office above a bank on West Street with a view of the State House dome. She listened to him for forty minutes without interrupting once. Then she held out her hand for his phone, and read every page of the notebook, and the assessment, and the emails, and Dr. Patel's letter, which he had asked for and which Dr. Patel had written in a single afternoon, and Ms. Okafor's notes, which she had sent from her school email with a cover message that said only, I hope these help.
When she was done, she put the phone face down on the desk and took her glasses off.
"Tell me about the prenup," she said.
He told her. When he married Celeste, he had insisted on one. Not because of money, he didn't have much money, a pilot's salary was good but not that good, but because of the house. It had been June's parents' house and then June's, and when June died, it had passed into a trust for Skyler, with Grant as trustee and with the right to live in it as long as he was raising her. It was not his to give anyone. Celeste had laughed when he brought it up, and said of course, and signed it in a lawyer's office in Severna Park with a little flourish, like an autograph.
"Good," said Hadley Moss. "That makes my life easier. And hers, if she's smart." She pulled a legal pad toward her. "Here's what you need to understand about Maryland. Since 2023, there are basically three ways out of a marriage that matter to you. Six months' separation. Mutual consent, if you have a signed settlement agreement and no disputes, which can go through in a single hearing. Or fault, and one of the grounds for fault in this state, which most people don't know, is cruelty of treatment toward a minor child of the complaining party." She tapped the phone. "This is that. This is that with a bow on it. A pediatrician with thirty years of growth charts. A school counselor. A child's contemporaneous diary, kept in the style of her late mother, which a judge is going to read and then go home and hold his grandchildren. And a fraudulent clinical assessment produced to ship the child to Idaho for a fee."
"I don't want Skyler in a courtroom."
"No. Neither do I. So we give your wife a choice. Mutual consent. She signs a settlement agreement that tracks the prenup, she takes what she brought into the marriage and what she's entitled to under that document and not one dollar more, she agrees to be out of the house in thirty days, and she agrees to have no contact with your daughter. In exchange, you don't file on cruelty, and the diary stays in a drawer and never becomes public record." Hadley Moss looked at him. "That's the polite version. If she doesn't sign it, we file the other version, and everyone she has ever played tennis with can read it at the courthouse."
"And Renée Albright?"