Your mother put her hands on a child.

You sat three feet away and whispered to her not to do it in front of people.

You don’t get to pay a fee to pretend you were a good father.” His lawyer winced.

And Luca stared up at me, his mouth opening and closing, understanding at last that the quiet, compliant wife who used to clean up his mother’s messes was gone, permanently, and was never coming back.

Chapter 16 — Swift Consequences