“You hid her from me for thirty-four years,” I said.

“I saved this family,” Gene barked.

“If Frank had gone to prison for kidnapping in 1990, the store equity would’ve been gone.

The bank would have called in our commercial mortgage inside forty-eight hours and taken everything.”

He turned his back on me and waved his clipboard at the two movers on the porch.

“Take the desk down.

She doesn’t own one nail in this house anymore.”

I walked back down the gravel driveway, unlocked the Buick, and drove three miles down the bypass to the courthouse parking lot.