Because the confession I wanted to force out of him was already happening; he was making it himself, into a recorded line, unprompted, denying a forgery no one had yet named.

The girl I used to be needed him to admit it to her face.

The woman I was becoming understood that his admission to the bank was worth a hundred times more, and that the surest way to ruin it was to give him the argument he was so desperate to have.

So I sat on my porch, and I held my tongue, and I let my father talk himself the rest of the way into the trap.

So I said nothing.