I had since learned that careless exposure could injure witnesses as surely as secrecy could.

The archive included handwritten notes from my mother, Clara, and they were harder to read than the financial records.

In one letter she described meeting a woman whose family had been displaced by a company project approved at a board meeting Clara had attended.

She had written, in narrow careful handwriting, that knowing something was legal had not relieved her of the responsibility to ask whether it was right.

That sentence explained the trust more clearly than any of its legal provisions.