I looked down at the woman who had raised me, and I felt no cruelty and no triumph, only a great and final clarity.

“I sent you a hundred thousand dollars to take care of my wife,” I said.

“You put her in a storage shed.

You shaved her head.

You let her go hungry while you ate off new granite.

You took the necklace off her neck while she was fighting for her life and you wore it in front of her.” I reached into my pocket and drew out the gold hummingbird, which I had recovered from Selina’s nightstand at dawn with a police officer standing beside me, and I held it in my open palm where she could see it.

“You treated my wife like she was trash to be swept up off the yard.