“For seventeen years I tried to work out why he was always short on subcontractor payroll,” I said.

Dad stopped writing and looked straight at me.

“I’m finished asking him why,” I said.

“Now we show the judge what he did.”

Dad gave one nod and reached for his yellow legal pad.

“Then let’s lay out the minute-by-minute timeline before Douglas opens the court file,” he said.

By nine o’clock Dad was upstairs in the living room reading Sadie a storybook.

I sat by myself at his gray steel desk in the corner of the workshop under one bare overhead bulb.