My lawyer emailed me last week to tell me she'd be responding to another filing.

Thousands of dollars, again, to answer not just the lateness, but everything underneath it — every argument he's making, on the merits, in case the lateness doesn't end it first.

I read the email twice before I understood what she was actually telling me.

His lawyer missed the deadline.

Not by a day. Not by an hour.

By one minute.

The filing came in just after midnight, when it needed to be in by midnight, and now his lawyer is arguing that minute shouldn't count.

I have spent three years watching this lawyer do everything at the last possible second.

Every motion. Every response. Every deadline stretched to its very last breath.

I used to think it was just how he operated. Now I wonder if it was ever really about the lawyer at all — or if it's simply what happens when someone represents a man who has never once believed the rules were built to apply to him.

And now, for the first time in three years, I am hoping that habit is the thing that finally catches them.

Not a judge weighing the merits. Not a courtroom moment where the truth finally lands the way I've imagined it landing.

A clock.

I didn't expect that to be what I'm rooting for at this point. I pictured something bigger. Something that felt more like justice.

But after this long, I've learned not to be picky about what winning looks like.

I just want one thing — one single thing — to go my way. After almost three years of fighting for what is mine, I would take it in any shape it came.

Even sixty seconds.

I don't know yet what the court will decide. I may not know for a while.

So today I'm sitting with the not-knowing, which is its own kind of exhausting, the kind that doesn't show up on the outside.

Jaycee doesn't know anything about deadlines or filings. She just knows when I've gone quiet, when my shoulders have that particular slump. That's when I pick her up — squeeze her, hold her, kiss her — and she lets me, every single time, no matter how many times I need it that day.

Some days that's the only thing that actually goes my way. And some days, that's enough to get me to the next one.

Jane and Jaycee, of course

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P.S. This week's question is a quick one — no reply needed, just click whichever fits:

​I've been here too, waiting on something small to break my way →

​This made me want to look at what I've quiety stopped hoping for → ​

​Not this week →