The children think we sold them out. Ynez thinks we called her a thief without saying it. Mr. Ozuna thinks the whole thing is ridiculous and has said so at volume.

Nobody is satisfied. Nobody has been destroyed.

I have come to understand, slowly and against my preferences, that this is what a good outcome in this work actually looks like, and that my grandmother’s Christmas — where the guilty were unmistakable and the penalty was total and the housekeeper got five million dollars — is the fantasy version.

Ours is the real one. Ours has a lot of paperwork and no eulogy in it.

Chapter 13 — What Marcus Said

My brother came to Denver in June because Cottonwood Ridge needed a second family signature for a procedure and I couldn’t reach Linda, and because — I think, though he would never say it — the parking garage story had gotten into him somewhere.

We met at a diner near the facility. He is forty-two, thicker through the middle, greyer than our father was at that age. His startup failed in 2020. He sells commercial insurance now and is reasonably good at it.