Hale had prepared me for two hours the night before.
He had gone through every document, every likely objection, every moment where Douglas’s side might try to introduce doubt.
He had been calm and precise and had said, at the end: “The evidence is on our side.
The only question is whether we can keep it simple enough that the other side can’t bury it in procedure.”
Pryce opened by doing exactly that.
He spent twenty minutes on the question of verification — arguing that without a DNA test, the connection between me and the trust’s intended beneficiary could not be established to legal certainty.
He used the word *speculative* four times.
He called Eleanor’s video statement *the sincere but unverifiable belief of a grieving woman*.
I watched the judge’s face.
She was writing something.
Then Hale stood up.
He was not theatrical.
He did not raise his voice.
He simply laid the documents on the record, one by one, in the order Eleanor had organized them.
