I looked at the papers on the counter — the legal instrument by which my mother intended to take formal, signed control of the four hundred thousand dollars she thought was coming, having already stolen the hundred thousand that came before.

She had learned nothing.

She had abused my wife nearly to death robbing me of my last paycheck, and now, with a smile, she was sliding a document across the counter to help herself to the next one.

The sheer, bottomless greed of it was almost breathtaking.

And it was, I realized, the final piece of evidence I needed — greed, documented, in writing, reaching for more even now.

She had just handed me the last thing.