My mother was charged as well, with conspiracy and with identity theft, for the phone calls in which she had impersonated her own dying father-in-law.

Chloe faced civil claims for knowingly receiving stolen funds, and then criminal charges of her own when investigators found the fake invoices she’d manufactured to make the two hundred thousand dollars look legitimate.

As the officer drew my father’s hands behind his back, he turned to me, and his face was full of something I think he genuinely believed.

“You’re destroying your own family,” he said.

I stood up.

“No,” I said.