In the end, through a negotiated plea, she pled guilty to misdemeanor evidence tampering and harassment.

She received eighteen months of intensive probation, court-mandated psychological counseling, and a fine that emptied, to the dollar, the small savings account our parents had spent years building for her — the account that had, more than once over the years, been quietly topped up out of mine.

Chapter 17 — The Plea and the Cease-and-Desist

My parents had tried, before the sentencing, to intervene.

Of course they had.

Not for me — never for me — but for Stephanie, and for the family name, and for the version of themselves they could not bear to see collapse.