They handed me pieces daily, in voicemails and messages and demands, never once suspecting that the quiet woman they’d dismissed was doing to them, patiently and by the book, exactly what she did to strangers for the federal government every day of her working life.

My grandfather had chosen his weapon well.

He had chosen the one member of the family whose entire profession was the unhurried, unglamorous, undefeatable work of proving what happened to the money.

Chapter 11 — Reckless

And then, because greed is impatient in a way that patience can simply wait out, they got reckless.

Chloe, unable to wait even the few weeks for probate to close, tried to auction off a piece of our grandmother’s jewelry — jewelry that was now, legally, part of a contested estate under active investigation, which meant that attempting to sell it was its own fresh crime.