“Alma has stability,” Marisela said.

“What Alma will not have is a grandmother who puts a collar on her at her own party, or a father who drafts custody petitions behind her mother’s back.”

But it was Beaufort who moved the room from cruelty to something far darker.

He had turned to Ophelia.

“How,” he said, “did you come to have these files?”

Ophelia took a breath, and her voice trembled for the first time, not with fear but with the effort of what she was about to say.