At the door, with an officer’s hand on his arm, Leon turned and looked around the room at all our relatives, searching their faces for someone who would step in and rescue him the way people had been rescuing him his whole life.

No one moved.

Uncle Clive, who had told me in the church that our father would never choose me, dropped his eyes to the floor.

My aunt Celia crossed the room and pressed a clean towel into my hands for my lip.

And Dahlia had begun, quietly, to cry — not for Leon, I think, but for herself, because one of the investigators had just explained that the accounts used to buy her diamonds and her car had been frozen that morning.

I noticed, in that moment, how completely the room had reorganized itself.