Maybe next time you’ll learn some respect.

I looked at that photograph for a long time.

Not with the fresh burst of anger you might expect, but with a cold, clarifying attention, the way I used to study an opposing counsel’s sloppy filing, looking for the places they had made my case for me.

Because the photograph was not just an insult.

It was evidence.

His mother was wearing my insured jewelry, taken from my home without my permission, and Ethan had sent me a timestamped, resort-tagged photograph of it, with a gloating caption, in writing.

They thought they were rubbing my face in their vacation, in their comfort, in my exile.