“Your mother told me you girls wanted nothing to do with me.”

“She told us you were trying to take Dad’s money,” I said.

“Your father made me swear I’d never touch a cent of your inheritance,” he said, and he took out his phone.

“I kept everything.

Every email.

Every call log.

Every letter that came back.” Those records became some of the most important evidence in the case: forty-six separate attempts to reach us over three years, every one blocked, plus emails sent from my mother’s account posing as us — including one telling him we were terrified of him and would take legal action if he ever tried to make contact.

For three years, my mother had stood between us and the one man sworn to protect us, forging our voices to keep him away, so that when the danger came, there would be no one to call.