They had been removed, two days earlier, and the evidence in my grandfather’s box showed exactly where they had gone: into a storage facility held through one of my father’s shell companies, where some of them, I suspected, still sat.

I spoke the address of that storage facility aloud, in the silent ballroom, and I watched my father’s face collapse, because the address was a thing he believed no one else on earth knew.

Samuel Ross spoke, quietly.

“That location,” he said, “was searched this morning.

Pursuant to a warrant.” Chaos broke across the ballroom.

My mother grabbed the edge of the table as though the floor had tilted.

“A warrant?” Jessica whispered, and I could see her recalculating everything, understanding at last that this was not a family argument, not a scene, not a dramatic outburst she could wait out.