When she finally did, she asked him to be honest with you.”

Joanna showed me a photograph of Miriam when she was young.

Beside her stood a man I recognized from the framed portrait on Colton’s childhood mantelpiece: his father, smiling in a checked shirt.

The family resemblance was obvious.

Yet Joanna wasn’t asking me to approve their history or to pretend that it explained Colton’s choices.

“I thought helping him help you was a good thing,” she said.

“When I discovered those mismatched invoices, I couldn’t sleep.