“You’re too generous.

We don’t deserve this.”

It was, Hattie told me, a genuinely beautiful performance.

If she hadn’t known better she might almost have believed it herself.

And that was the moment.

The lie was one sentence away from becoming a signed and lawyered fact.

The lawyers were coming Monday.

If it was ever going to be said, it had to be said now, in this room, with all these witnesses and the old woman still standing with the spoon in her hand.