My son h.i.t me 30 times in front of his wife… so the next morning, while he sat in his office, I sold the house he thought was his.

The law moves slowly in Texas, until it decides to move all at once.

On a rainy Thursday morning in early March, the grand jury returned a true bill of indictment against Trevor Sutter: one count of Felony Aggravated Assault on an Elderly Individual Causing Serious Bodily Injury, and one count of Tampering with a Witness, stemming from threatening text messages he had sent me from a burner phone pleading with me to drop the charges.

Trevor was arrested at a dingy extended-stay motel off Interstate 10, where he had been living on the few hundred dollars he managed to scrape out of his liquidated personal checking accounts.

There were no cameras, no high-profile press conferences, no dramatic courtroom entrances in designer suits. When the two Harris County deputies brought him into the central processing center, he was wearing a stained gray sweatshirt, slip-on shoes without socks, and plastic handcuffs.

I sat in the observation bench behind the glass partition in the courtroom during his preliminary arraignment.

His court-appointed public defender—because Trevor could no longer afford the thousand-dollar-an-hour defense attorneys he used to brag about at brunch—tried to argue for low bail, citing Trevor's lack of prior criminal history and ties to the community.

The assistant district attorney stood up immediately.

"Your Honor, the defendant stands accused of a prolonged, unprovoked physical assault on his sixty-eight-year-old mother. The medical records indicate three fractured ribs, facial lacerations, and severe soft-tissue trauma. Furthermore, the defendant has shown no remorse, has repeatedly attempted to contact the victim in violation of a temporary protective order, and currently has no verified residence or legitimate employment."

The judge, an elderly woman with silver hair cropped short and eyes that looked like they had seen every excuse ever uttered on earth, looked down at Trevor over her bench.

"Bail is set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, cash or corporate surety," the judge declared, bringing her gavel down with a sharp crack. "In addition, should the defendant make bail, he will wear an ankle monitor with continuous GPS tracking, surrender his passport, and remain under house arrest within Harris County."

Trevor turned his head toward the gallery. He saw me sitting there in the third row, dressed in a simple navy blue wool suit, my face mostly healed, my eyes cold and steady.

"Mom!" he yelled across the courtroom, his voice echoing off the wood paneling as the bailiff grabbed his arm. "Mom, please! Don't let them take me to county! I can't survive in there! You know what they do to guys like me in there! Mom!"

I didn't blink. I didn't move. I watched as the bailiff guided him through the heavy steel door leading to the holding cells.