“You can’t prove where that down-payment money originally came from,” he said.

“You know you can’t. The account’s closed.”

That was when George took out his phone.

He opened a saved photograph and turned the screen around and held it up in front of his son’s face.

The handwritten receipt — in Jason’s own handwriting, from years ago, thanking his parents for the twenty thousand toward the house — sat there on the screen beside the matching bank slip, dated two months after the wedding.

For the first time in the whole exchange, the lawyer’s face came apart.