The doctor looked at the three of them for a long moment — the flowers, the folder, the handbag, the arrogance — and then he said the sentence that I have played in my memory more times than I can count, because it was the hinge on which their whole world turned over.

“You should speak,” he said, “to the federal investigators waiting downstairs.”

The silence that followed was total.

On the feed, I watched Fiona’s flowers slip out of her hands and scatter across the floor.

I watched the color drain out of Arthur’s face until he was genuinely gray.

And I watched my husband, who had smiled while his parents broke my leg, whisper a single word.