What he got instead was a stack of records and my absolute refusal to give him the scene he needed.

I have never done anything harder, or anything I am prouder of, than staying calm while my father went down.

The calm was not forgiveness.

It was the surest weapon I had, and the last thing he ever expected from the daughter he’d spent a lifetime training to flinch.

Chapter 16 — The Footsteps in the Hall

Courtney left him before the first hearing.

There was no money left to laugh beside, and whatever had held her to a man thirty-two years her senior did not survive the freezing of the accounts.