“This hearing,” Judge Alvarez said, “is adjourned until the accountant’s review is complete.” And the gavel came down, one sharp crack against the wooden block, and it was done.

Chapter 14 — It Was Done

Across the aisle, the three of them absorbed the sound of that gavel like three separate small collapses.

Roman sagged forward in his chair, staring into the middle distance at a future that had just rearranged itself into something unrecognizable.

Bianca stared blankly at the floor, already, I could see, mentally packing.

And Marion rose slowly, her posture rigid, holding herself with the last shreds of a family dignity that had just been hollowed completely out from the inside, a woman standing very straight around an absence.

The three of them gathered themselves and left the courtroom in tense, humiliated silence, and not one of them looked at me as they went, because there was nothing left in any of them to look at me with.