She tried to give me a share of what would be recovered, more than a million dollars, and I shook my head and said I only wanted my own professional fees for the accounting work, and she looked at me for a long moment and folded the paper back into her purse.

Through the thin wood of the vestry door I heard the sharp sound of metal ratcheting tight, and I did not wait to watch them lead Jonathan down the steps.

I walked out past the empty pews into the pale afternoon and kept walking until the brick church was gone behind the dunes.

In the months that followed the law finished what the church had begun.

Jonathan was denied bail as a flight risk, and faced federal charges for the fraud and the forged probate filing; Duncan Apex was dissolved, and the shell companies registered under my name were struck from the record, clearing me of every liability he had hung on me; Rowena’s trust was restored to her, and she boarded the Lewes ferry one bright afternoon to begin a life that was finally her own, and told me, at the rail, that the numbers had finally balanced.