She had her pen out again, turning the cap between her fingers.

“I’m letting him pay,” I said.

“The payment is the point.

A courtroom would take a year, and your mother would have to sit in it.”

Rachel wrote something down and didn’t read it back to me.

“She’s right about the year,” Carl said from the doorway.

He had come by with the endorsed copies and a folder of his own.

“Assault charges in this county would mean a misdemeanor and a fine.