It never once crossed my mind, hanging that small device on the ceiling, that its true purpose would turn out to be recording my own son and his wife as they hurt me.

That is one of the strangest cruelties of what Michael did.

He turned the safeguards I had built out of love and grief, the cloud account for our family photographs, the cameras for my safety in widowhood, into the instruments of his own undoing.

He made my protections into his prison, without ever knowing they were there.

Chapter 8 — You’re Making This Worse

The courtroom watched the footage in complete silence.