And in that living room, watching Steadman’s imaging team unpack their equipment while my father’s mouth opened and closed, I watched that belief die in him — watched him understand, too late, that the arithmetic he’d trusted his whole life had never been a law at all, only a habit, and that the habit had just run out.

He had told me paper didn’t scare him.

He was right that paper is not frightening.

What is frightening is a person who knows precisely what the paper means, and has all of it, and has stopped being afraid of you.

Chapter 13 — Probate Court

The reckoning itself happened two weeks later, in probate court, and my family walked in dressed as the injured party.