His firm, Vance and Associates, severed ties with him within a week; a corporate partner convicted of conspiring to conceal a child’s death is not a man any firm keeps its name beside.

And Celina — who had known enough to warn me and not enough to stop it — was sentenced to two years of court-mandated probation and a heavy set of financial penalties for her role in trying to suppress the investigation.

It was less than her son received, and more than her cowardice deserved to escape, and I let it be what it was.

I did not celebrate any of it.

A child was still dead.

No sentence handed down in any courtroom was going to change that central, immovable fact.