Elijah leaned back, his hand trembling against the phone. "How do you know all this?"
Isaac didn't blink. "I've been reading every law book in your courthouse for three years, Dad. Every case file I could get my hands on. Every statute, every precedent, every loophole. I know how Sullivan builds his cases. I know where he cuts corners. I know how Carson files reports. I know that building better than some of the lawyers who work there."
Elijah's eyes filled. He didn't speak for a long time.
"Your mother," he finally said. "She always said you were different."
"I'm not different, Dad. I just pay attention."
The next morning, Isaac put on his cleanest shirt—a white button-down with a small stain on the left cuff that he hid by rolling the sleeves—and walked into the Greenfield County Courthouse. Not through the back entrance Elijah used, but through the front door: past the metal detectors, past the security desk, past the spot on the marble floor where his father had been handcuffed.
He went straight to the clerk's office. The woman behind the counter was Dorothy Adams, 62, gray hair pinned back, reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She'd worked in that office for twenty-six years. She was also the only person in the entire courthouse who said good morning to Elijah every single day.
Isaac placed the paperwork on the counter. "I'd like to file a motion to represent my father as family counsel. Section 14-22."
Dorothy looked at the paper. Then she looked at Isaac. Then back at the paper.
"You're Elijah's boy."
"Yes, ma'am."
She picked up the motion and read it line by line. Her eyebrows lifted once, then again.
"You wrote this yourself?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She set it down, took off her glasses, and looked at him the way nobody in that building had ever looked at anyone named Ingram. "You sure about this, sweetheart? Once this goes through, you're standing in that courtroom alone against Sullivan's office."
"I know."