One uncle admitted, under the pressure of the investigation, that he had signed trustee waivers for years without reading them, because my father had been slipping him cash under the table to do it.

Another relative admitted he had suspected the accounting was dirty a long time ago, but had chosen to stay quiet, to protect his own financial interests.

This was the hardest thing to sit with, harder in some ways than my parents’ guilt, which was at least simple.

It was the understanding that my parents’ crime had been possible only because so many others had chosen, in small and large ways, not to look, not to ask, not to make trouble; that a fraud of that size does not survive for fifteen years without a whole surrounding ecosystem of people willing to be paid off, or willing to look away, or simply willing not to know.

My parents were the thieves.