“You were brave, Noah,” I said.

“You saved your baby sister.”

Mariana kept her eyes on the pavement between her shoes.

“She told me when I was nine that if I ever talked about the hall closet, she’d cut me out of my grandfather’s trust,” Mariana said.

“What trust?” I asked.

“My grandfather left four hundred thousand dollars in commercial property,” she said.

“She controlled every dime until I turned thirty, and she brought it up every time I questioned her discipline.”

A siren wailed three blocks away on Thomas Road, growing louder as it neared the emergency bay.