My daughters could have brought that action at twenty-five if they had wanted to.

The claims were fraud, fraudulent concealment, and tortious interference with parental rights, which is a strange and narrow cause of action that some states do not recognize at all and that Peter described as “the third-best horse in a three-horse race.”

And the point, which he made to me on day one and which I did not want to hear, was that none of it was about the money.

He said: “You are not going to get rich out of your mother, and you don’t want to, and a judge will see it if you try.