The benches bite through my coat. The wood is older than the fluorescent lights, older than the plastic pitchers that sweat on counsel tables, older than the stale coffee drifting from a kiosk by the metal detector. I sit with knees tight together, palms flat on the manila folder that holds printouts I already memorized: escrow terms for Mara, clinic invoices under my alias, a clean copy of my mother’s voicemail transcript. The room breathes like a waiting room for storms.
“Drink,” Tamsin says, offering a paper cup that dents under my grip. The coffee tastes scorched and medicinal, which is to say perfect for the morning I need.
“My mouth is doing that copper thing,” I whisper.
“Chicago air and court nerves,” she says. “Ozone and adrenaline. Good combo for clarity.”
I look through the frosted window at the faint wedge of the glacial lake. A pale ring scuffs the shoreline where the dam’s schedule dropped levels overnight. Even water has to submit to paperwork here.
The clerk calls the case number. I stand when Tamsin stands, my folder under my arm like a small shield. Julian isn’t here; his counsel is, carrying a leather binder fat with adjectives. The judge walks in with a quickness that says time evaporates in this room. I catalog the details to anchor myself: the rook-shaped silhouette on the courtroom door handle—unintentional, just a decorative flourish that still reads like a dare; the scent of cedar from a bailiff’s overconditioned jacket; the cold chewing-gum note trapped in the carpet.
We announce ourselves. “For petitioner, Lena Calder,” Tamsin says, voice even, pen aligned perfectly with her legal pad. “Limited appearance for today’s motion.”
“For respondent, Julian Rook,” the other lawyer says, oiled and sure. He smiles toward the gallery, where no one important sits, as if donors might materialize with applause.
The judge glances down, then up. “We’re on a motion to seal,” she says. “I’ve read the papers.”
Those words loosen something behind my ribs; so much of my life lately has been trying to make people read. Today, someone did.
Tamsin starts first. “Your Honor, we move to seal narrowly: medical records relating to Ms. Calder’s pregnancy; the identity and identifying details of a nonparty young adult who has provided sealed testimony; and address and contact information that could lead to harassment. We propose pseudonyms and targeted redactions, not blanket secrecy.”
She slides a binder forward with a tab system so tidy it almost smiles. She does not say Mara’s name. She does not say the clinic’s address. She points to the index where those things exist behind codes.
The judge nods once. “And you, Counsel?” she asks the other table.
“The public has a right to know,” he begins, pivoting into the cadence he probably practices in donor salons curated like museum exhibits. “We’re dealing with a figure of significant public interest. Transparency protects everyone—”
The judge lifts one eyebrow. He swallows the rest of the sentence like a marble. The room stills. I hear the fluorescent buzz, loud as a beehive.
“We will do law here,” the judge says. “Not branding.”
Tamsin doesn’t smile; she moves her pen one inch, which is her version of fireworks.
“Your Honor,” opposing counsel tries again, softer, “we don’t object to basic privacy. But there’s a risk petitioner is using secrecy to shape narrative. A ‘pregnancy crisis’—his fingers air-quote in a way that makes my molars grind—“could become a weapon in the court of public opinion.”
The judge leans back. “Counsel, I don’t care about your assurances of civility or your client’s public relations. I care about harm, relevance, and the record. Receipts only.”
The phrase lands like a small gavel inside my sternum. I file it with the others I keep for strength—my mother’s you don’t owe anyone your silence, the clinic’s humming machines, the clean ping of a checksum completing.
Tamsin steps into the opening. “We’ve provided receipts,” she says, and taps the binder tabs. “Exhibit D under seal contains medical verification. Exhibit F contains the escrow terms supporting the nonparty’s independence. Exhibit H is a deposition transcript already sealed by stipulation. We’re not asking you to elevate dignity above due process. We’re asking you to prevent collateral damage while we litigate the core claim.”
“And what is the core claim, in one sentence?” the judge asks, eyes on me now.
I stand. My legs are steady, which surprises me. “That a private trust and its operators cannot use contractual definitions of ‘dependent’ to police my body or purchase my silence,” I say, evenly, “and that any support arrangements used to hide qualifying dependents are relevant to motive, timeline, and credibility.”
The judge studies my face for an extra beat, then nods as if checking a box labeled coherent. “Good,” she says. “Now let’s talk scope.”
—micro-hook—
Scope becomes a map we redraw inch by inch. Tamsin proposes pseudonyms: I will be Calder; Mara will be Finch; the clinic becomes Clinic A. Opposing counsel pretends confusion like it’s a chess opening, then pivots to a speech about the public’s right to judge credibility. The judge’s eyebrow rises again; the speech suffers an abrupt death.
“Credibility belongs to the trier of fact,” the judge says. “Not to your client’s followers, donors, or enemies.”
He tries a different path. “If we seal too much, Your Honor, petitioner can leak selected details while hiding the context. That creates a misimpression. We simply want fairness.”
“Do you plan to leak?” the judge asks me, dry as paper.
“I plan to litigate,” I answer. “I’ve learned that speaking is not the same as posting.”
“You’ll have ample opportunity to speak under oath,” she says. “That’s where speech matters here.”
The clerk coughs. Papers rustle. Somewhere behind me, someone opens a peppermint, sharp scent cracking the room’s coffee gloom. The lake flashes in the window, a thin mirror slice.
Tamsin returns to specifics. “We’re not asking to seal payment timelines,” she says. “We intend to introduce ledgers, metadata, and correspondence. We simply request redaction of bank account numbers, home addresses, and GPS coordinates precise enough to endanger a 19-year-old woman who did not choose this spotlight.”
“Nineteen?” the judge repeats, voice cooling. “That matters.”
“Yes,” Tamsin says. “And immuno-compromised. We have medical letters under seal. Not a spectacle. A person.”
Opposing counsel lifts his hands like a conductor. “We don’t want to harm anyone,” he says. “But petitioner has courted attention.”
The judge’s eyebrow. Silence like a lid.
“Your client bought attention,” I say before I can stop myself. Tamsin’s pen taps once on the pad—warning—but the judge gestures for me to continue.
“He staged donor salons with live-captioned toasts about ‘choosing less,’” I say, carefully, “paid for HOA listserv sponsorships that celebrated ‘child-neutral amenities,’ and fed a smear piece into friendly hands. I didn’t file this to win the internet. I filed this to stop a contract from colonizing my body.”
The judge lets the words sit, not hostile, not indulgent, just weighing. “All right,” she says. “Here is what we will do.”
She reads from her notes, making law sound like a shopping list. “The motion to seal is granted in part and denied in part. The court will seal: (1) all medical records and ultrasound images relating to Ms. Calder’s pregnancy; (2) the name, date of birth, and any directly identifying information of the nonparty witness referred to in petitioner’s papers as ‘Finch’; (3) residential addresses, personal phone numbers, email addresses, and nonpublic account numbers for any party or witness; and (4) precise GPS coordinates and server IPs that identify physical facilities not already public.”
I exhale through my nose. The bench doesn’t feel softer, but my spine resets a degree.
“The court will not seal,” she continues, “transaction ledgers, payment schedules, correspondence headers, or timeline exhibits that do not disclose what I just listed. Redactions should be targeted; brackets, not black holes. If either party over-redacts, I will unseal on review. If either party under-redacts, I will sanction. Understood?”
“Understood,” Tamsin says.
Opposing counsel hesitates the length of a heartbeat too long. “Understood,” he echoes.
“One more thing,” the judge says, eyes on both tables. “There will be no arguments about PR or philanthropy during evidentiary motions. I don’t care about your hashtags. Receipts only.”
The phrase hangs like a banner I want to stitch into a pillow and a protest sign at once.
—micro-hook—
We step back into the hallway where the stale coffee sharpens into something like relief. The fluorescent hum fades under the murmur of elevators. I lean against cool cinderblock painted beige, a color designed to mute heat.
“That’s a win,” Tamsin says, and her shoulders drop the way mountains do when snow sloughs. “Not perfect, but clean.”
“Mara’s safe on paper,” I say. “At least for now.”
“Safer,” she corrects. “Paper is only one wall. We’ll build the rest.”
My phone buzzes with a new HOA message: Reminder: no strollers left in lobby alcoves; please preserve aesthetics. I bark a laugh that startles a clerk. “Aesthetics,” I say to Tamsin, showing her the screen. “They have more rules for empty hallways than for harassment.”
“Let them police the lobby,” she says. “We’re policing truth. All right—next steps. Opposing will file a press-friendly ‘we welcome daylight’ statement within the hour. Ignore it. I need you to send me the original metadata on the pixel pings and the cupcake receipt from the celebration the other day.”
“Cupcake receipt?”
“Juries like small human purchases,” she says, deadpan. “It tells them you breathe. Also, your mother’s voicemail—we’ll file a sealed notice describing it, not the audio. If they push, we offer in camera review. I want you eating protein, not headlines.”
We share the paper cup’s last bitter sip. The aftertaste sticks to my tongue like iron. I slip my hand to my belly the way I do when I want a compass, not a performance. The baby doesn’t respond; the baby owes me nothing yet but a heartbeat. That’s enough.
“He’ll test the edges, won’t he?” I ask. “Leak something just outside the order.”
“He will,” Tamsin says. “We’ll match with motions and patience. You’ve trained for this. Pages, not panic.”
A deputy brushes past and the cedar of his jacket ghosts the corridor. The smell folds into the building’s permanent notes of paper and toner. I imagine the rook-shaped cufflinks glinting wherever Julian paces right now, strategizing which comma to cut next. Control disguised as strategy—that’s the logo stamped on my life. Today someone else pressed a different stamp into the record.
We head toward the elevators. The glass at the end of the hall frames the lake like a still from a documentary: light gray water, darker gray sky, the pale bathtub ring of the shoreline. A gull rides air like a kitemark. I watch it and breathe until my shoulders stop bracing for an alarm.
“One more,” Tamsin says at the elevator, hand on the button. “No unsolicited statements. If a journalist calls, refer to me. If a neighbor stops you to ‘offer love and questions,’ smile and keep walking. Document anything that feels like surveillance. And text me photos of the shower crack tonight. I want the time-lapse to look worse than their spin.”
“It will,” I say. “Physics loves me.”
She huffs a laugh. “Physics loves nobody. But it’s fair.” The elevator arrives with a bell that sounds like a toy. “Lunch?”
“Later,” I say. “I want to sit by the lake first, write down the order exactly. If I don’t write it today, it will rewrite me tomorrow.”
“Fair,” she says, stepping in. “Send me your notes.”
The doors draw a thin line between us, then close. I walk back to the benches and sit in the same spot to test my pulse against the wood. I open my notebook and copy the order in my own hand: the sealed categories, the unsealed exhibits, the threat against theatrics. I add a title line because I know how narrative works on me: Receipts Only — 2025-06-14.
A law clerk passes and glances at the page. “Good day for paper,” she says, not stopping.
“Good day for people,” I answer, and I mean it.
Outside, the air tastes wet and metallic. The lake lifts in tiny, stubborn ripples like a crowd deciding to stand. I tuck the manila folder tighter against my ribs and start the slow walk toward the water.
I end with a question I fold into the space behind my teeth, private as a prayer: Will the discovery we just earned arrive intact before a leak tries to rot it—or will I have to learn a new way to seal a door that keeps insisting on being beautiful and glass?